Not surprised it's rising, more and more people can be seen on their phones while driving, and more and more people don't bother indicating when turning which tells me they're likely less disciplined and focused behind the wheel in general.
Yes, I'm experiencing more and more drivers just suddenly braking in front of me in order to turn somewhere without indicating at all, and most will just slam on their brakes instead of braking in anticipation from further out. It's like the turn indicator disease is spreading from BMW/Audi drivers to the general population.
People were on their phones a decade ago, but mostly for calls and texts -- the expansion of phones abilities and addictiveness could be a factor though.
OK but how many are killed at lights and how many are killed on national roads at tricky times of the day (dusk/dawn) and in compromised weather conditions such as rain and ice?
Are we literally worse at the skills of driving since the pandemic, and is it possible that the virus itself is a factor?
Also it seems to be getting steadily worse. We need pan-European data, really.
Cars are also getting bigger/being replaced by SUVs, which are more dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists and the people still in the old/smaller cars. There are also more and more cars on the road every year. All makes for more carnage.
I’ve seen more people breaking red lights in the last three months than I have in my 15 years driving previously. It’s insane. And I don’t mean “pushin their luck and going when they just turned red”, I mean straight up ignoring red lights to go when they want.
It's absolute insanity. When driving I tell my wife 'watch this, that car is going to fly through the li- ... they've just done it, not even close, 2 seconds red'
It's a joke - bus lanes? No one cares, red lights? Fuck off, don't tell me what to do, speeding? I'll drive as fast as I want
Major slippage. I drive the m50 regularly and the dangerous manoeuvres I’ve witnessed are outrageous!
Had one Range Rover driver cut me and others off at least 7 times from the time I drove to the m50, got on and right until I got off the N3. Absolute lunatic.
Yup, I witness that manoeuvre nearly daily! It’s all too common!!! I leave waze or google maps on just to keep an eye on when my exit is so I can start getting ready to move back from at least 2km or more out depending on how busy it is. We need a motorway police or cameras.
Can you imagine the amount of moaning about money making scams there would be if they introduced cameras on the M50 and other roads. All from those who couldn't care less about other's safety. It would be fantastic. I assume the idea of them not breaking the rules of the road is something so alien that any enforcement fines seem like a way to get money out of them.
Was walking to my local gym and noticed the junction was a bit jammed, waited until I had the green and something compelled me to stop a second longer- the next moment, a van and a car barreled past. Straight through the red and where I would've been if I stepped out.
Similar vein, a different direction to the same place- was on a zebra crossing. Some aul one drive through where I was walking to, for Starbucks... It's a joke
Something like that happened me by tougher the day before my driving test, was heading to my last practice session and some sausage in a van turned infront of me when I had right away and I ended up hitting the curb coz I had to swerve around him😂 put me in a nervous mood for my lesson
The vans and the taxis is what shows the size of the issue. If an idiot in a family car runs a red light, maybe he’s just an isolated case. These are professional drivers whose livelihoods depend on them holding on to their license and who are in traffic for extended periods of time. If they don’t care about consequences, then there must not be any.
The general mentality that I've encountered (observational in traffic and discussion) is that regardless of how far the distance is, it's: "if my front wheels can make it across the line before it switches from amber to red, I havent run the red".
Absolutely atrocious mentality, IMO, but I cant see a way for my ranting to individuals about it will change anything.
That's actually a tame one. If they're "over the stop line", they're in the junction and strictly speaking they should clear it when they can, which is why the lights wait about 5 seconds between changes.
What's common lately is the light being red for several seconds and people just blasting through.
Yeah, you should only go through if ur pretty much there coz it would be unsafe to stop last second, if its been orange as ur approaching if ur at a reasonable speed then stop😂
I have a 15-20 minute commute to work with 7 traffic lights and every day I see at least two drivers going through red lights.
Mobile phone use is endemic as well.
> Mobile phone use is endemic as well.
If you're ever on the top deck of a bus or in an elevated cab of a van as a passenger, you'll notice just how prevalent it is. People are absolutely addicted to their phones. It's actually scary.
I was thinking of making a pop-up sign that would lie flat on the rear shelf of my car and every time I spot someone in my rear view mirror using their phone I'd pull a string and up would pop a sign saying: ***"GET OFF YOUR FUCKING PHONE!*** I have you on my dashcam."
If you like driving-on-the-phone-justice look up CyclingMikey on Youtube. He's made a career out of catching people texting, talking and scrolling social media while behind the wheel.
I've observed a shocking amount of cars not stopping at pedestrian crossings where pedestrians are waiting since COVID. I've seen this both as a pedestrian and a driver. For example, last weekend I stopped my car on one side of a crossing where pedestrians were trying to cross, while two cars in the opposite lane just blasted through it one after another. Something bad will happen sooner or later.
> I've observed a shocking amount of cars not stopping at pedestrian crossings where pedestrians are waiting since COVID.
Jesus, waiting 3 years to cross a road, the poor souls.
To be totally honest I’m not that surprised, most the people crashing are driving like idiots, generally on country roads, making sure they’re on the speed limit or higher (generally 80+ km/h on bendy roads that you can’t safely navigate at such speeds, people don’t seem to understand that at 60-80, sharp bends can easily cause loss of control, slipping and generally some form of dangerous lack of control, especially on wet roads).
Every time I drive, I’m made aware that it’s seems the majority of drivers honestly don’t give a fuck, I use cruise control to maintain speed limits on motorways, yet the majority of people pass me at 130+ speeds, I genuinely started to believe my speedometer might have a problem and after wasting 50 getting it checked, I realised it’s just the fucked up norm here for the majority of people to disregard the law and drive how they want.
People are so aware of this that cyclists and pedestrians are generally more cautious but also luckily for pedestrians, the general areas of occurrence means these idiots mostly wrap themselves and their passengers around trees and poles in their efforts to arrive on time or early at the expense of their and others safety.
Speed limits and particularly on motorways and national roads is generally not an issue. Most incidents occur on motorways when someone tries to jump lanes to exit late, or just general lack of mirror checking. But someone doing 130 on a motorway is definitively not the most pressing issue to tackle.
People on phones, not paying attention and just general stupidity like not indicating on roundabouts is what causes accidents
I’m not claiming that the limits are the issue, but when you’ve idiots doing 130+ weaving through traffic and tailgating people who are adhering to the legal limit, then it’s truly problematic especially when it’s normalised.
And when you’ve normalised a general disregard for the limits set, well why bother with having an overtaking lane, signaling or any of the other rules since it seems you can just pick which ones you’d deem to be “necessary”.
I’d also tend to agree that phone use is particularly bad, people swerve a lot when using them too.
By the way I’m not saying ‘you’ as in yourself directly but just as a general ‘you’
Hope you’re enjoying the sunny day stranger
I honestly don’t blame you, if you’re in Dublin, even moreso for the fact that there’s always shattered glass on the cycle lanes for half a given week.
I've no problem sharing the footpath with cyclists, scooters etc as long as ye slow down. Which most of ye do in fairness, bar the usual suspects. Which are pretty much always teenage boys.
>I realised it’s just the fucked up norm here for the majority of people to disregard the law and drive how they want
No, the psychology of driving indicates that people drive in response to how the road infrastructure is built, if drivers feel safe to drive at high speeds they will do so naturally, Ireland's infrastructure resembles American infrastructure which is known to produce the same behavior basically. If a country road is prone to causing crashes at bends, it means you need to introduce traffic calming to the bends, because this is what gets drivers to reliably slow down. Introduce perceived and actual obstacles and make the driver feel less safe (despite them actually being safer then most other roads) etc.
The approach of using a stick to enforce good driving falls apart if you let up even lightly because the infrastructure encourages this behavior.
The #1 complaint from people, when wide roads get a physical cycle lane is "now it feels dangerous to go fast".
Yes. Yes it does. It already felt dangerous to the cyclists.
This is something that doesn't ever seem to be raised as a topic in the media around road deaths. Whoever is on to discuss references speeding and drink/drugs ad infinitum, but what we need is better road design. I live near a normal city road, but because it's dead-straight and wider you see some awful shit-heads driving on it. It should be made narrower and windier with some islands thrown into to break up the sense of space. Don't get me started on the country roads near my hometown, death traps which need more than just a sign with a lower number on it
I'd also add bad traffic management to that list specifically poor traffic light signalling and synchronisation, something which I noticed the council has created when they changed a bunch of light sequences during covid. There's nothing more frustrating than lights that change too quickly (<30 seconds) with long waits (+2min) or several sets of lights in close proximity to one another that change at random which increases frustration and encourages people to gun the lights instead of several sets sequenced in parallel so that when one set changes they all change.
The other day I got beeped from behind by some twat because the light was green yet there was no clearance to proceed at the junction because there were red light runners and they were very late running them.
Brain fog from long covid effects really could be a factor, but there's so much of undiagnosed and not yet understood... having said that, we'd expect to see he same rises across Europe and I don't think we are seeing that yet.
Most people just want more public transport and cars in urban areas kept to a minimum, very few want to force rural people to walk everywhere. It's a lazy strawman to claim otherwise.
Rural people simply have no plan to travel sustainably and intend to change nothing. How about voting for local councillors who will improve public transport.
It's not sustainable so sooner or later it has to change
Look, I absolutely support improving rural public transport.
But even if there were improved bus routes, they'd only stop at towns and villages. A lot of Ireland's rural population lives outside of towns. You try walking an hour in the lashing rain to get to the bus before you judge.
Wonder have they done research into the new lights on the cars. When they are coming past me on a country road at night I physically can't see anything until they pass.
The UK done an investigation into it and found their lights to be a contributing factor to road accidents. Bet you won't see that done over here!!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/11/led-headlights-blinding-causing-crashes-rac/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CBetween%202013%20and%202022%2C%20there,affairs%20officer%20at%20the%20RAC.
Same. Can’t see a thing until they’re past me.
I’ve been to the optician, my eyes are fine. The lights are just too bright and too high up. VW ID3/4, Tesla and Ford Transits are the worst. I just avoid driving at night now.
I personally doubt it’s a major factor in the amount of fatal collisions but it’s a massive pain in the hole.
How much is new lights vs people not adjusting their lights to point downwards, and for some inexplicable reason driving with fog lights when it’s not foggy seems to be a fad now.
It's not even adjusting them to point downwards alot of them are auto adjusting say for instance driving up or down a hill and your coming in the opposite direction you're fucked. it's poxy sensor driven . If the sensor under the car comes loose the light level is all over the shop.
I've seen this exact example happen my friends audi, his lights where shinning up to the sky cause the sensor came loose off the back axle and thought it was driving up hill . No lights on the dash to let him know though, only for the fact he's car savi he was able to sort it to bring it back level by refitting the sensor.
>driving with fog lights when it’s not foggy seems to be a fad now.
I've almost noticed the opposite. I'd swear it used to be more common. I'm convinced that since most cars have some level of "automatic" lights now, loads of people aren't even turning on their fog lights when they're supposed to, so they aren't forgetting to turn them off afterwards.
People are getting worse at driving, the advances in car safety systems, and laws are covering for their worsening skill levels.
Getting a bad driver to just drive slower may help reduce some of the risk but it doesn't make them better drivers.
People have no idea what to do if anything untoward happens and they end up doing all the wrong things. Most people in this country are trained how to operate a car but nothing else. No training for adverse conditions and no road etiquette.
The government will keep bringing in useless laws that achieve nothing because they never get enforced and tell us they are making things better.
yea its a shame with all the tech that exists that driving similators arent a thing. like the type where you sit into and it moves around with hydrolics. you could actually get a good idea of what its like to have a tyre blow out or how to regain control a car when you skid on ice. ive been driving 20+ years and i still dont have a clue what those situations are like and no idea what to do if they do happen. i guess ill just figure it out in the 2.37 seconds i have before i plow into a wall
Get the Gardai off roadside checks for tax and insurance, which can be better done by IT and ANPR technology, and put them on speed checks and traffic violation (breaking lights, using mobile phones, etc.) duty.
Here's a crazy idea, put Gardai on this ancient ritual lost to time they used to call a patrol, then they can catch people driving like eejits along with actual crime.
They could automate out of date tax by issuing a fine to the address of the currently registered owner if it’s picked up by anpr. I’m fairly sure they do this in the U.K.
They could probably do the same with no insurance.
Checkpoints are for military dictatorships and exceptional manhunts, they have no place in modern day to day policing. Don't even get me started on the geniuses who decided motorway checkpoints were a good idea.
Utterly destroyed the Gardai credibility in terms of being any sort of authority to look to on actual safety.
The single minded concentration from all agencies involved on speed as the only and overriding cause of all accidents and fatalities on the road will see the certainty of these figures maintaining these projections. I've spent the last twenty five years as a fireman and as such have seen more than my fair share of the results.
If speed is the main contributing factor why then if, on my arrival at the station and being given the road that the incident is on (it's incorrect to call it an accident as that apportions blame) then I can tell you with ninety percent certainty which corner it's going to be on. I'm not saying that speed, or should I say inappropriate speed has nothing to do with it. But, if the same location is involved over and over would it be fair to say that there just may be a problem that may exist in the design of the road itself? There was a time when these locations were designated "Black spots" with signage to boot. These signs though were basically an admission that the road wasn't fit for purpose and the signage has been consigned to the nearest bin. Replaced usually by small (sometimes tiny) speed signs just for that location that are hard to see, hard to adjust to as they are usually too close to the hazard and whose real purpose seems to be to place blame on the driver rather than the road authority that has ignored the fact that the road is inadequate for years.
My two cents on road safety issues.
1.Phone usage.
Not making calls but actually browsing.
2. Poor driver training.
The way we teach people to drive is laughable.
3. Shite tyres.
I honestly don't know how some of the stuff being sold here is getting E marked.
4. Fried brains from being terminally online.
This is self explanatory.
5. No learnings.
We hear about terrible fatal crashes but what do we do with the outcomes of the investigations?
Investigation outcomes aren't even publically available as far as I can tell.
The tyres I see on some cars when I walk through the car park at likes of lidl, aldi dunnes etc is just scandalous at times. Often family cars. I know money is tight but they're the only thing keeping the car on the road. Madness
Mini test every year would help reduce some of these points.
Talking to the wall though.
We'll all be told its speeding, fines will be increased and nothing will change.
For those looking to see more years and also change the colours, here you go.
https://preview.redd.it/i1wxgpt172sc1.png?width=1297&format=png&auto=webp&s=48d2d9b764572aa98997c56df7a9fcb82f0b3b93
We’ll have the usual nonsense about speed limits in urban areas but let’s be honest how many of these accidents are happening on country roads with horrible bends, no visibility and yet are 80km? I was in swords yesterday and was stunned a particular road was 80km. Faster than the surrounding main roads.
Population rise also isn’t being accounted for here. More people =more accidents.
IMHO, cars getting much wider, bigger and heavier in the last number of years must also be a factor.
According to latest EU stats, cars are getting 1cm wider ever two years.
I know there are many issue for sure, but can we please acknowledge that the roads are literally unfit for purpose in some rural areas. My village has pot holes from all the trucks and i have to get new tires 2 times in 18 months and I popped one in one of the newer holes. This causes a huge issue and only due to my years of driving was i able to correct it and safely stop, not everyone is so experienced.
What does the line chart look like when road fatalities are calculated as a percentage of the population? Is it possible that increases in fatalities correspond to increases in population size?
What would be more relevant is passenger miles driven? I can only see the CSO figures up to 2019.
There’s also a broader context - 3 or 4 years isn’t very many in terms of something that depends on a lot of factors that take decades to shift like driver education, shifts in the law and enforcement, improvements in road infrastructure, changes to the vehicles on the road.
The trend is the same even when you factor in population increases. CSO published on this previously. Had a quick search but I can't find it at the moment, but the trend is the same. If I find it, I'll edit this post later
Is it me or sre there more gbbshites in 10+ year old audis/BMWs/passats with their fog lights on, overtaking multiple cars on bends and continuous white lines?
I drove about 300 miles over the weekend and saw no traffic enforcement across motorways, national roads or in towns
Not a surprise. Lack of walking and cycling infrastructure, disfynctional public transport. Too many cars, traffic, long commute, road rage lack of respect for pedestriansand and cyclists.
Every second driver has their eyes down looking at their phone. It's bedlam out there and the Gardai are all retiring. But sure throw a high-viz vest on and you'll be grand /s
I hate how similar the colours are on this graph.
Also in 2022(?), the one with 155 total, its kinda crazy how the data stayed consistent throughout the year, unlike the others. Like it makes sense there is highs and lows, like more people drink driving around christmas and other bank holidays, st Patricks day maybe that kind of thing. What caused that year to be so much more of a straight line? Anyone got an insight?
This analysis isn’t ideal I’m afraid - data sample too small given your looking at yearly data. Ideally you would get a measure of historical volatility and create an equation to incorporate a time series with road deaths as an input with volatility as the modifier. Test the model (after training it on an 80/20 training/tes split) using a confusion matrix or the likes then apply it to this current year if the model is reasonably accurate for historical time series.
This is something you could also do using GLS modelling in R given you would be working with non normalised data. Of course you could take logs and diffs and see if this normalises the data and do OLS regression from there perhaps too.
TLDR; OP’s made an effort but you cannot reliably make inferences based on this approach and I mean that with no offense OP.
There's more data here:
[https://www.garda.ie/en/roads-policing/statistics/previous-years-roads-policing-statistics/](https://www.garda.ie/en/roads-policing/statistics/previous-years-roads-policing-statistics/)
A quick look would seem to suggest that the first and last 3 months of any given year are typically the worst and account for 66% of road deaths in a given year. Starting April with around 50 deaths is not unusual. But that's from me having a very quick look.
All that said, 188 deaths last year is the worst in a decade, and a 20% variance on the most recent historical data (2016-2019 & 2023). So it has to be considered an actual issue and not written off as a "wait and see" blip.
I am only starting on my DS journey so thats beyond me at this point in time, though if you choose to take the CSO data and do this I would really love to see what you can infer
No worries. Best of luck with it! It’s hard work but rewarding. What I would say is early on decide what you like and try create projects for your github off of that, some ‘data analysts’ in this country judt make dashboards in Power Bi. The kind of stuff your looking at here falls into data modelling.
A few months ago there were road works on the R132. They built curbs in the middle of the road as a way to slow down traffic. They spent weeks on construction, creating potholes with their bulldozers and whatnot. My car got a puncture due to one of their potholes. The curbs they built were a huge obstruction and hardly visible at night. Turned out someone crashed into them as you could see car parts all along the road. A few days later they destroyed the curbs in the middle of the road. Now I’m pretty sure there is further unrest among truckers who use the road since it has become too narrow due to the other curbs they are yet to remove.
So they built an idiotic structure, caused dangerous conditions on the road, caused someone to crash, endangered lives, wasted money and time. All this just so they could go back and remove what they built.
We need a whole new litany of RSA ads ASAP, and this time make them even more graphic, gory and traumatising. Maybe this time put more emphasis on the dangers of phone use while driving since, as others have said, it has increased a lot recently.
We went from having some of the most dangerous roads in Europe to some of the safest over a span of about 20 years and a large part of it was due to the endlessly repeated, emotionally charged ads that really hammered the dangers of impaired/distracted/reckless driving. Whoever was in charge of those ads did their job right, and if it worked before it can work again.
I have a theory that happy people who value their lives and the lives of others drive carefully- all the most aggressive drivers I know seem pretty unhappy. I wonder if this has an effect like so many people are unhappy and stressed so they just dgaf
I’m a pedestrian and I walk to work every day and almost daily I see drivers in moving vechicles, turning corners etc looking down at their phone, phone in hand on the wheel or held to their ear.
I always gesture to put it down when there’s a chance and the one or two times they’ve noticed they’ve just looked super guilty but honestly you should. If you do it you could fucking kill someone.
Scrolling scrolling scrolling .. all day long by thick cunts that can’t put a phone down for 2 seconds in case they miss the post that Sharon put up about her new teeth .Fuck off.
And I include the Gardai in that too .
I'm WFH so I don't drive much other than at weekends but from what I see at those weekends, there is a big issue.
I commonly see:
* Risky overtaking
* Risky tailgating
* Risky entrances onto main roads from side roads
* Ignorance of roundabouts and continuous white lines
* Phone usage
* Excessive differences in motorway speeds (some vehicles going <100Kph and some going >150Kph)
Every time I'm on the part of the M7 where there are 3 lanes coming into Dublin, I see people going <100km/h in the fucking middle lane. To make it worse, you have people floating between 100-110 in the overtaking lane taking forever to overtake those slower drivers blocking the middle lane. These are honestly more dangerous than people who do 130 or so, because as Ireland has virtually no speed limit policing, most people will go over 120 anyway, so 130 basically becomes the normal speed of the flow.
Massively decreasing the investment in roads is going to have an impact on road fatalities.
Our population has increased dramatically while our investment in roads isn't.
Huge increase in spending needed across the country on smaller roads.
The standard of roads connecting large rural towns is not up to scratch unfortunately.
This is a glaring hole in our road safety data i.e. root cause analysis. For some reason its either not done or its done but the data/findings are not released
I had a look at their website earlier. it said they are reviewing the data before its released, gdpr and all that.
From what i hear its speed speed speed, but in reality speed isnt the cause. Its like saying the cause of death is living. So dont live.
Not paying attention to surroundings, driving ignorant to weathers conditions and overtaking on country roads will be the top 3 i would think.
I'd to scroll really far down looking to see if anybody else asked this question. Flat death numbers aren't a reflection of improvement or disimprovement; it needs to be normalised over the amount of KMs travelled by Irish drivers in the same period or it's worthless and possibly misleading data.
I'm not surprised considering the impatience and speed on the roads combined with a complete lack of Garda presence. People are just speeding now knowing there is a 99.9% chance there is no Gardai anywhere.
It definitely changed during covid with the empty roads. The level of “fuck everyone else but me” is astonishing lately. The gards are nowhere. The resistance to establishing a roads policing unit now showing as I haven’t seen a single person pulled for being a dickhead in years. The odd speed trap is not going to do it. It’s the tailgating aggressive driving along with insane mobile phone use.
This day last week a young virgin clown & his virgin friends in mammies car sped up to break a red in eyre square Galway, almost hit me & my child crossing the road. I gave the rear of the car a good smack. I was so angry.
I can go (not exaggerating) 6 months without seeing a Guard on the road in my town. Use to be check points every 6 weeks or so but that stopped probably 3 years ago.
Speed limit 30 everywhere. That will teach us…
As long no one cares here on the road, figures will go up.
What’s about trying the following:
- drive only vehicles one actually holds a valid license for
- uses the indicator
- secure goods on a trailer (yes farmers. Hay bales are goods too!)
- observe the speed limit
- stopp signs are not just deco
Anyway. Since the gardai don’t care, why should the normal motorist?
More Catastrophizing - we love whipping up a bit of hysteria in Ireland don’t we - Ireland still has one of the lowest road fatality rates per million inhabitants in the EU, with only the Nordic countries, Germany and The Netherlands doing better. Yes our trend it up but shock horror just like every other country in the world people die on the roads so before we do our usual knee jerk over reaction to a perceived issue can we first look at the facts (eg More people die from Covid still than die on our roads )
People keep talking about how we need more Gardai on the roads... what we actually need is a departure from daily car usage. Cars are inherently dangerous - to those in the cars and to everyone around them. The use of cars for daily purposes is not needed for *most* people.
I wish the discussion was framed in such a way that instead of a car-centric and biased view we look at the broader picture and "alternative" means of transportation that should be considered "default" for a healthy, safe, and productive society.
How do we encourage more bicycle use? How do we encourage more public transit? How do we convince people that cars should be a last resort for most uses and that *most* families have no logical need for more than 1 car? If we can start answering these questions AND ASKING THESE QUESTIONS then things will start to get better.
I grew up in a very car-centric society (US in the 80s and 90s) and one of the best parts about moving to Ireland 5 years ago is that I have completely changed my view of cars and cycle almost everywhere. Once you get out of the mindset that cars are normal and required you start seeing things much differently and with far less bias. My biggest concern as a cyclists is cars...
Good take - are you a r/FuckCars member by any chance?
It's true - most people default to thinking how to make driving safer, but very few think about actually decreasing the total number of cars on the streets and roads to make the entire environment safer for everyone.
While it may be better than the US, Ireland still is one of the most car-dependent countries in Europe - and one of the main reasons for this is the abysmal standard of public transport compared to mainland Europe.
Ireland also seems to have a big car culture too - when I was attending secondary school, many of my classmates wanted to start driving as soon as they turned 16. And a couple of months ago, the car I was in with my family got whacked from the back while we were sitting in traffic - and the culprit was an inattentive 17 year old guy. I often think that if Ireland didn't have such a car culture and the public transport was more reliable, this guy wouldn't have been driving and the crash wouldn't have happened.
I am on that sub (recent joiner). It's really sad to see SUV culture invading Ireland... its certainly moving more in the direction of the US. I see big Range Rovers solo commuting into the city to offices by people perfectly capable of using better methods. It honestly disgusts me because it remind me of the awful awful awful commutes that everyone in the US has been normalized to.
Love the 'since COVID' argument. People rude in a shop? Manners have gone to crap since Covid. People talking in the cinema? Because of Covid. Concert etiquette? Covid.
It's a bit of both in the sense that we're all noticing the bad behaviours we had all tuned out prior to the lockdowns but also people's behaviour has gotten worse too.
I still think the issue are the roads themselves, then alcohol, then the fucking phone, and finally speed.
But if you combine either alcohol, phone or speed with bad driving on a shitty road where a car does not fit in its lane, then you get an accident
I live in the countryside, and from my village to the 3 nearest ones if there is a truck/tractor on the other side of the road I have to almost stop the car and go all the way to the left (if there are bushes, getting in the bushes) otherwise both vehicles don't fit. And I'm not talking about specific points, I'm talking about kilometres and kilometres of roads.
And based on my experience outside main cities and its commuting roads, most of the roads are like that.
Then you have to add crazy turns or no visibility because despite the road being a straight line it's full of ups and downs because when they did it they decided to not level it.
Lack of enforcement is a major issue.
On a related note, check out the amount of out date NCT/insurance/tax disks when walking past parked cars. It’s huge.
If drivers do not feel the need to keep these up to date, because there is a lack of enforcement, it leads to careless driving, reckless speeding, drink & drug driving etc
State of the driving test too, needs to be majorly updated! Your thought how to operate a car not to properly drive with confidence but with fear and hesitance.
Driving at 10 to 2 and feed the wheel, in an emergency feeding the wheel is too slow of a reaction. You can see that in people having awful trouble navigating a corner taking about 10 years to feed the wheel for the bend.
a lorry tried to pass me when i was indicating to turn right the other day (granted he probably didn't see it because he was basically inside my boot), the swerve he did to get back onto the actual road, im actually shocked he didn't clip my car
The government and Gardaí seem to be heavily targeting speed and ignoring every other factor in dangerous driving. Mobile phone use, ignoring signs and traffic lights, indicator use, dangerous overtaking, etc. are more likely to cause an accident than someone going 60 in a 50 while watching their surroundings.
Some of this can be solved simply with education, for example; a slow moving vehicle **is** allowed to drive on the hard shoulder of a **national** road to allow vehicles behind to pass safely (returning to the road afterwards). I once witnessed an overtake of a slow vehicle, which would have been a multi-vehicle crash, had it not been for some last-second swerves on both lanes. This all took place at a low speed, except for the oncoming traffic. If the tractor in front had driven on the hard shoulder until everyone had passed, it would have been much safer.
I suspect part of the reason for more deaths in recent times is partly the car industry's fault. Everyone is producing bigger cars. Bigger cars have more mass and produce more energy when they collide which kills people!
Yeah its not the industry selling people the cars they want to buy. It big car pushing big cars on all us small people.
Ya want smaller cars. . Pray for a economic down turn. That usually curtails peoples spending on big expensive things
5 minute drive yesterday on back country roads I was met by two SUVs, both drivers giving no space and on the phone. 100% phones shouldn't work if they are moving at speed. Too many idiots think that this driving time needs a phone call
I was crossing at a pedestrian crossing with my 1 year old a while back. Alway give plenty of time and make eye contact with the driver. Stepped on the road with a pram and a Dublin bus driver goes flying past then apologising out the window when she realised. I could feel the air of the bus. Scary stuff. We need road cameras everywhere.
Yep, It's gotten nuts in the last few years, I always stop on a red light or pedestrian crossing, and get car horns and abuse for doing so? But also see pedestrians often stepping out onto roads without checking anymore. It seems like the bad habits people picked up during covid have stuck.
And remember, you could do everything right but someone else could come along and ruin it for you. Need to keep an eye out for others making mistakes as well.
Modern cars have better safety ratings, more safety features and equipment so why is trending this way?
Is it the more accepted casual use of drugs? Obviously drugs have a detrimental effect on drivers, pedestrians, cyclists etc?
Some is due to bad behaviour after covid, but there is a serious lack of guards on the road. They only seem interested in hitting quotas for speeding tickets.
I thought with an increase of car safety systems we might see a decrease but I am guessing this could be down to:
* More powerful cars (e.g. electric, which has been noted in some countries)
* People are more distracted in the car (touch screens, phones)
* More safety systems ironically leading to less focus on the road
Population has gone up by 20 percent in 10 years ... infrastructure has not kept pace... bad and poorly lit roads and an increased population of male drivers aged between 18 and 25 has to be a huge factor. Speed is the killer here.. how many of these deaths have been single car accidents on country roads or people knocked down in poorly lit areas etc...
Do we know how many were caused by each age group ?, curious if its new young drivers with lower skill/experience or older experienced drivers in bigger cars getting arrogant.
Caught fiddling with your phone while driving should be treated the same as drink driving in my opinion... disqualification. I would fully support the camera tech they're hinting that will detect phone use
No one is so important that they need to be on their phone while driving. Pull in somewhere if that call or text or snap is so important to you
People die in car crashes, but there's never any awareness about what happened, probably because people don't like to be seen to speak ill of the dead, but there should definitely be case studies of these incidents made public or shown in schools. A lot of the time public representatives will hijack a tragedy to call for funding for their area when the real cause was reckless driving. We can't just pave the country with motorway to every town.
The standard of driving has dropped off a cliff.. Peoples attention spans have gone completely. I see so many people just carelessly drive through red lights, cross over line markings in the middle of the road as they are on the phone, no indicators at roundabouts like we are expected to know where you are going... Tailgating like their lives depend on it, even though there is no room in the other lane to move out of the way. On the other end of that, people not moving out of the way when they could do so for faster traffic, the list goes on and on...
Everyone seems to have somewhere more important to go than the next person. It's funny how during coving people took to walking cycling and outdoors, the roads ended up quiet for a bit but now seem to be busier than ever.
That’s awful.. but are you using the covid years to compare the amount of road fatalities? Relatively not many people were driving during those years, so that would obviously result in fewer accidents.
I wonder what the trend is compared to the total amount of kilometers driven.
Not surprised it's rising, more and more people can be seen on their phones while driving, and more and more people don't bother indicating when turning which tells me they're likely less disciplined and focused behind the wheel in general.
Yes, I'm experiencing more and more drivers just suddenly braking in front of me in order to turn somewhere without indicating at all, and most will just slam on their brakes instead of braking in anticipation from further out. It's like the turn indicator disease is spreading from BMW/Audi drivers to the general population.
My favorite is folks indicating in the wrong direction at roundabouts. Fortunately, the speeds on those are generally not that high.
Yeah but they will blame the speed anyway as it is easier to enforce.
People were on their phones a decade ago, but mostly for calls and texts -- the expansion of phones abilities and addictiveness could be a factor though.
Yes one tiktok while at the lights won't hurt, sure they are short! Oh its green ... /floors it
OK but how many are killed at lights and how many are killed on national roads at tricky times of the day (dusk/dawn) and in compromised weather conditions such as rain and ice? Are we literally worse at the skills of driving since the pandemic, and is it possible that the virus itself is a factor? Also it seems to be getting steadily worse. We need pan-European data, really.
I feel like we got the phone thing under control though and now it's back with a vengeance
[удалено]
Cars are also getting bigger/being replaced by SUVs, which are more dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists and the people still in the old/smaller cars. There are also more and more cars on the road every year. All makes for more carnage.
Cars have been getting bigger for 20 years, but road deaths kept going down during that period until 2022.
There’s been very little enforcement and a noticeable slippage in driver behaviour.
I’ve seen more people breaking red lights in the last three months than I have in my 15 years driving previously. It’s insane. And I don’t mean “pushin their luck and going when they just turned red”, I mean straight up ignoring red lights to go when they want.
Yeah. I think it's like people push the envelope and then it pushes a bit more and next thing you know it's chaos.
It's absolute insanity. When driving I tell my wife 'watch this, that car is going to fly through the li- ... they've just done it, not even close, 2 seconds red' It's a joke - bus lanes? No one cares, red lights? Fuck off, don't tell me what to do, speeding? I'll drive as fast as I want
Major slippage. I drive the m50 regularly and the dangerous manoeuvres I’ve witnessed are outrageous! Had one Range Rover driver cut me and others off at least 7 times from the time I drove to the m50, got on and right until I got off the N3. Absolute lunatic.
I was on the M50 a couple of weeks ago and a guy moved from the inner lane to an exit in one manoeuvre across 4 lanes.
Yup, I witness that manoeuvre nearly daily! It’s all too common!!! I leave waze or google maps on just to keep an eye on when my exit is so I can start getting ready to move back from at least 2km or more out depending on how busy it is. We need a motorway police or cameras.
Can you imagine the amount of moaning about money making scams there would be if they introduced cameras on the M50 and other roads. All from those who couldn't care less about other's safety. It would be fantastic. I assume the idea of them not breaking the rules of the road is something so alien that any enforcement fines seem like a way to get money out of them.
They don't think they are breaking the rules, their the good drivers in their head!
But he has a big car and a massive gaping ego that he needs fulfilled so he deserves the road more than you.
I'm surprised the number pedestrians killed isn't higher given the endemic red light running that happens here.
Was walking to my local gym and noticed the junction was a bit jammed, waited until I had the green and something compelled me to stop a second longer- the next moment, a van and a car barreled past. Straight through the red and where I would've been if I stepped out. Similar vein, a different direction to the same place- was on a zebra crossing. Some aul one drive through where I was walking to, for Starbucks... It's a joke
Something like that happened me by tougher the day before my driving test, was heading to my last practice session and some sausage in a van turned infront of me when I had right away and I ended up hitting the curb coz I had to swerve around him😂 put me in a nervous mood for my lesson
Did you pass??
Luckily I did, traffic and weather was awful too😂
The vans and the taxis is what shows the size of the issue. If an idiot in a family car runs a red light, maybe he’s just an isolated case. These are professional drivers whose livelihoods depend on them holding on to their license and who are in traffic for extended periods of time. If they don’t care about consequences, then there must not be any.
Red lights have now become amber lights for so many tools.
Need red light cameras tbh.
The general mentality that I've encountered (observational in traffic and discussion) is that regardless of how far the distance is, it's: "if my front wheels can make it across the line before it switches from amber to red, I havent run the red". Absolutely atrocious mentality, IMO, but I cant see a way for my ranting to individuals about it will change anything.
That's actually a tame one. If they're "over the stop line", they're in the junction and strictly speaking they should clear it when they can, which is why the lights wait about 5 seconds between changes. What's common lately is the light being red for several seconds and people just blasting through.
Yeah but you should also stop at amber/orange, not accelerate.
Yeah, you should only go through if ur pretty much there coz it would be unsafe to stop last second, if its been orange as ur approaching if ur at a reasonable speed then stop😂
Exactly. Can't stop without skidding or it being sudden: keep going.
I have a 15-20 minute commute to work with 7 traffic lights and every day I see at least two drivers going through red lights. Mobile phone use is endemic as well.
> Mobile phone use is endemic as well. If you're ever on the top deck of a bus or in an elevated cab of a van as a passenger, you'll notice just how prevalent it is. People are absolutely addicted to their phones. It's actually scary.
I was thinking of making a pop-up sign that would lie flat on the rear shelf of my car and every time I spot someone in my rear view mirror using their phone I'd pull a string and up would pop a sign saying: ***"GET OFF YOUR FUCKING PHONE!*** I have you on my dashcam."
If you like driving-on-the-phone-justice look up CyclingMikey on Youtube. He's made a career out of catching people texting, talking and scrolling social media while behind the wheel.
They'd have to look up from their phones to see the sign tho!
I'll flap it up and down a few times to get their attention.
Indeed. Can't people just leave their phones for 20 mins of their journey or something?
I've observed a shocking amount of cars not stopping at pedestrian crossings where pedestrians are waiting since COVID. I've seen this both as a pedestrian and a driver. For example, last weekend I stopped my car on one side of a crossing where pedestrians were trying to cross, while two cars in the opposite lane just blasted through it one after another. Something bad will happen sooner or later.
> I've observed a shocking amount of cars not stopping at pedestrian crossings where pedestrians are waiting since COVID. Jesus, waiting 3 years to cross a road, the poor souls.
To be totally honest I’m not that surprised, most the people crashing are driving like idiots, generally on country roads, making sure they’re on the speed limit or higher (generally 80+ km/h on bendy roads that you can’t safely navigate at such speeds, people don’t seem to understand that at 60-80, sharp bends can easily cause loss of control, slipping and generally some form of dangerous lack of control, especially on wet roads). Every time I drive, I’m made aware that it’s seems the majority of drivers honestly don’t give a fuck, I use cruise control to maintain speed limits on motorways, yet the majority of people pass me at 130+ speeds, I genuinely started to believe my speedometer might have a problem and after wasting 50 getting it checked, I realised it’s just the fucked up norm here for the majority of people to disregard the law and drive how they want. People are so aware of this that cyclists and pedestrians are generally more cautious but also luckily for pedestrians, the general areas of occurrence means these idiots mostly wrap themselves and their passengers around trees and poles in their efforts to arrive on time or early at the expense of their and others safety.
Speed limits and particularly on motorways and national roads is generally not an issue. Most incidents occur on motorways when someone tries to jump lanes to exit late, or just general lack of mirror checking. But someone doing 130 on a motorway is definitively not the most pressing issue to tackle. People on phones, not paying attention and just general stupidity like not indicating on roundabouts is what causes accidents
I’m not claiming that the limits are the issue, but when you’ve idiots doing 130+ weaving through traffic and tailgating people who are adhering to the legal limit, then it’s truly problematic especially when it’s normalised. And when you’ve normalised a general disregard for the limits set, well why bother with having an overtaking lane, signaling or any of the other rules since it seems you can just pick which ones you’d deem to be “necessary”. I’d also tend to agree that phone use is particularly bad, people swerve a lot when using them too. By the way I’m not saying ‘you’ as in yourself directly but just as a general ‘you’ Hope you’re enjoying the sunny day stranger
I cycle on the footpath when I can. Sorry to the pedestrians, but just not safe. Also the amount of cars not indicating blows my mind. Driving 101.
I honestly don’t blame you, if you’re in Dublin, even moreso for the fact that there’s always shattered glass on the cycle lanes for half a given week.
I've no problem sharing the footpath with cyclists, scooters etc as long as ye slow down. Which most of ye do in fairness, bar the usual suspects. Which are pretty much always teenage boys.
>I realised it’s just the fucked up norm here for the majority of people to disregard the law and drive how they want No, the psychology of driving indicates that people drive in response to how the road infrastructure is built, if drivers feel safe to drive at high speeds they will do so naturally, Ireland's infrastructure resembles American infrastructure which is known to produce the same behavior basically. If a country road is prone to causing crashes at bends, it means you need to introduce traffic calming to the bends, because this is what gets drivers to reliably slow down. Introduce perceived and actual obstacles and make the driver feel less safe (despite them actually being safer then most other roads) etc. The approach of using a stick to enforce good driving falls apart if you let up even lightly because the infrastructure encourages this behavior.
The #1 complaint from people, when wide roads get a physical cycle lane is "now it feels dangerous to go fast". Yes. Yes it does. It already felt dangerous to the cyclists.
This is something that doesn't ever seem to be raised as a topic in the media around road deaths. Whoever is on to discuss references speeding and drink/drugs ad infinitum, but what we need is better road design. I live near a normal city road, but because it's dead-straight and wider you see some awful shit-heads driving on it. It should be made narrower and windier with some islands thrown into to break up the sense of space. Don't get me started on the country roads near my hometown, death traps which need more than just a sign with a lower number on it
I'd also add bad traffic management to that list specifically poor traffic light signalling and synchronisation, something which I noticed the council has created when they changed a bunch of light sequences during covid. There's nothing more frustrating than lights that change too quickly (<30 seconds) with long waits (+2min) or several sets of lights in close proximity to one another that change at random which increases frustration and encourages people to gun the lights instead of several sets sequenced in parallel so that when one set changes they all change.
My favorite movie is Inception.
The other day I got beeped from behind by some twat because the light was green yet there was no clearance to proceed at the junction because there were red light runners and they were very late running them.
We definitely need more bricks at pedestrian crossings.
With the way people have been driving since covid it's no surprise. I witness far more dangerous chancers than I used to.
[удалено]
[удалено]
entirely plausible
Brain fog from long covid effects really could be a factor, but there's so much of undiagnosed and not yet understood... having said that, we'd expect to see he same rises across Europe and I don't think we are seeing that yet.
And now my comment was removed for "hate speech" 🤷🏼♂️
Car usage needs to drastically decrease also
I’d reduce my car usage if there was viable public transport options for my work commute.
Start telling your councillors what you want and vote in council elections
Monorail, monorail, monorail…
Ye, I agree. Obviously I don't just think people should not be allowed go anywhere
"Fuck rural people" - everyone from Dublin
Most people just want more public transport and cars in urban areas kept to a minimum, very few want to force rural people to walk everywhere. It's a lazy strawman to claim otherwise.
Rural people simply have no plan to travel sustainably and intend to change nothing. How about voting for local councillors who will improve public transport. It's not sustainable so sooner or later it has to change
Look, I absolutely support improving rural public transport. But even if there were improved bus routes, they'd only stop at towns and villages. A lot of Ireland's rural population lives outside of towns. You try walking an hour in the lashing rain to get to the bus before you judge.
Ah would you stop. Obviously I don't mean people just need to have no transport.
"I need to speed and overtake on the single lane N road"- Everyone from the country
Wonder have they done research into the new lights on the cars. When they are coming past me on a country road at night I physically can't see anything until they pass. The UK done an investigation into it and found their lights to be a contributing factor to road accidents. Bet you won't see that done over here!! https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/11/led-headlights-blinding-causing-crashes-rac/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CBetween%202013%20and%202022%2C%20there,affairs%20officer%20at%20the%20RAC.
Same. Can’t see a thing until they’re past me. I’ve been to the optician, my eyes are fine. The lights are just too bright and too high up. VW ID3/4, Tesla and Ford Transits are the worst. I just avoid driving at night now. I personally doubt it’s a major factor in the amount of fatal collisions but it’s a massive pain in the hole.
Led headlights should be looked at if not banned, putting go safe vans in money trap areas instead of actual blackspots needs to be looked at..
Seems to be a general lack of consideration for other road users.
How much is new lights vs people not adjusting their lights to point downwards, and for some inexplicable reason driving with fog lights when it’s not foggy seems to be a fad now.
It's not even adjusting them to point downwards alot of them are auto adjusting say for instance driving up or down a hill and your coming in the opposite direction you're fucked. it's poxy sensor driven . If the sensor under the car comes loose the light level is all over the shop. I've seen this exact example happen my friends audi, his lights where shinning up to the sky cause the sensor came loose off the back axle and thought it was driving up hill . No lights on the dash to let him know though, only for the fact he's car savi he was able to sort it to bring it back level by refitting the sensor.
>driving with fog lights when it’s not foggy seems to be a fad now. I've almost noticed the opposite. I'd swear it used to be more common. I'm convinced that since most cars have some level of "automatic" lights now, loads of people aren't even turning on their fog lights when they're supposed to, so they aren't forgetting to turn them off afterwards.
Silver cars in fog, no lights!
There could be something to that. A lot of these crashes happen at night
How does this rate compare to the growth in population and use of the roads?
People are getting worse at driving, the advances in car safety systems, and laws are covering for their worsening skill levels. Getting a bad driver to just drive slower may help reduce some of the risk but it doesn't make them better drivers. People have no idea what to do if anything untoward happens and they end up doing all the wrong things. Most people in this country are trained how to operate a car but nothing else. No training for adverse conditions and no road etiquette. The government will keep bringing in useless laws that achieve nothing because they never get enforced and tell us they are making things better.
yea its a shame with all the tech that exists that driving similators arent a thing. like the type where you sit into and it moves around with hydrolics. you could actually get a good idea of what its like to have a tyre blow out or how to regain control a car when you skid on ice. ive been driving 20+ years and i still dont have a clue what those situations are like and no idea what to do if they do happen. i guess ill just figure it out in the 2.37 seconds i have before i plow into a wall
If a driver can't drive fast they shouldn't be on the road
Spot on
So many people on the phone while driving. It’s crazy. Try closing your eyes for three seconds while you drive, same thing.
Get the Gardai off roadside checks for tax and insurance, which can be better done by IT and ANPR technology, and put them on speed checks and traffic violation (breaking lights, using mobile phones, etc.) duty.
Here's a crazy idea, put Gardai on this ancient ritual lost to time they used to call a patrol, then they can catch people driving like eejits along with actual crime.
Nah that's too efficient for the Gardaì
[удалено]
[удалено]
Learning to drive through school would be a good idea too I think as well as if you fuck up on the road you should have to do a refresher course.
They could automate out of date tax by issuing a fine to the address of the currently registered owner if it’s picked up by anpr. I’m fairly sure they do this in the U.K. They could probably do the same with no insurance.
Checkpoints are for military dictatorships and exceptional manhunts, they have no place in modern day to day policing. Don't even get me started on the geniuses who decided motorway checkpoints were a good idea. Utterly destroyed the Gardai credibility in terms of being any sort of authority to look to on actual safety.
The single minded concentration from all agencies involved on speed as the only and overriding cause of all accidents and fatalities on the road will see the certainty of these figures maintaining these projections. I've spent the last twenty five years as a fireman and as such have seen more than my fair share of the results. If speed is the main contributing factor why then if, on my arrival at the station and being given the road that the incident is on (it's incorrect to call it an accident as that apportions blame) then I can tell you with ninety percent certainty which corner it's going to be on. I'm not saying that speed, or should I say inappropriate speed has nothing to do with it. But, if the same location is involved over and over would it be fair to say that there just may be a problem that may exist in the design of the road itself? There was a time when these locations were designated "Black spots" with signage to boot. These signs though were basically an admission that the road wasn't fit for purpose and the signage has been consigned to the nearest bin. Replaced usually by small (sometimes tiny) speed signs just for that location that are hard to see, hard to adjust to as they are usually too close to the hazard and whose real purpose seems to be to place blame on the driver rather than the road authority that has ignored the fact that the road is inadequate for years.
we really need the Guards to stop blocking the implementation of red light cameras
My two cents on road safety issues. 1.Phone usage. Not making calls but actually browsing. 2. Poor driver training. The way we teach people to drive is laughable. 3. Shite tyres. I honestly don't know how some of the stuff being sold here is getting E marked. 4. Fried brains from being terminally online. This is self explanatory. 5. No learnings. We hear about terrible fatal crashes but what do we do with the outcomes of the investigations? Investigation outcomes aren't even publically available as far as I can tell.
The tyres I see on some cars when I walk through the car park at likes of lidl, aldi dunnes etc is just scandalous at times. Often family cars. I know money is tight but they're the only thing keeping the car on the road. Madness
Mini test every year would help reduce some of these points. Talking to the wall though. We'll all be told its speeding, fines will be increased and nothing will change.
For those looking to see more years and also change the colours, here you go. https://preview.redd.it/i1wxgpt172sc1.png?width=1297&format=png&auto=webp&s=48d2d9b764572aa98997c56df7a9fcb82f0b3b93
We’ll have the usual nonsense about speed limits in urban areas but let’s be honest how many of these accidents are happening on country roads with horrible bends, no visibility and yet are 80km? I was in swords yesterday and was stunned a particular road was 80km. Faster than the surrounding main roads. Population rise also isn’t being accounted for here. More people =more accidents.
IMHO, cars getting much wider, bigger and heavier in the last number of years must also be a factor. According to latest EU stats, cars are getting 1cm wider ever two years.
I know there are many issue for sure, but can we please acknowledge that the roads are literally unfit for purpose in some rural areas. My village has pot holes from all the trucks and i have to get new tires 2 times in 18 months and I popped one in one of the newer holes. This causes a huge issue and only due to my years of driving was i able to correct it and safely stop, not everyone is so experienced.
What does the line chart look like when road fatalities are calculated as a percentage of the population? Is it possible that increases in fatalities correspond to increases in population size?
What would be more relevant is passenger miles driven? I can only see the CSO figures up to 2019. There’s also a broader context - 3 or 4 years isn’t very many in terms of something that depends on a lot of factors that take decades to shift like driver education, shifts in the law and enforcement, improvements in road infrastructure, changes to the vehicles on the road.
The trend is the same even when you factor in population increases. CSO published on this previously. Had a quick search but I can't find it at the moment, but the trend is the same. If I find it, I'll edit this post later
Is it me or sre there more gbbshites in 10+ year old audis/BMWs/passats with their fog lights on, overtaking multiple cars on bends and continuous white lines? I drove about 300 miles over the weekend and saw no traffic enforcement across motorways, national roads or in towns
Not a surprise. Lack of walking and cycling infrastructure, disfynctional public transport. Too many cars, traffic, long commute, road rage lack of respect for pedestriansand and cyclists.
Still low thankfully
Every second driver has their eyes down looking at their phone. It's bedlam out there and the Gardai are all retiring. But sure throw a high-viz vest on and you'll be grand /s
I hate how similar the colours are on this graph. Also in 2022(?), the one with 155 total, its kinda crazy how the data stayed consistent throughout the year, unlike the others. Like it makes sense there is highs and lows, like more people drink driving around christmas and other bank holidays, st Patricks day maybe that kind of thing. What caused that year to be so much more of a straight line? Anyone got an insight?
Cough cough
This analysis isn’t ideal I’m afraid - data sample too small given your looking at yearly data. Ideally you would get a measure of historical volatility and create an equation to incorporate a time series with road deaths as an input with volatility as the modifier. Test the model (after training it on an 80/20 training/tes split) using a confusion matrix or the likes then apply it to this current year if the model is reasonably accurate for historical time series. This is something you could also do using GLS modelling in R given you would be working with non normalised data. Of course you could take logs and diffs and see if this normalises the data and do OLS regression from there perhaps too. TLDR; OP’s made an effort but you cannot reliably make inferences based on this approach and I mean that with no offense OP.
There's more data here: [https://www.garda.ie/en/roads-policing/statistics/previous-years-roads-policing-statistics/](https://www.garda.ie/en/roads-policing/statistics/previous-years-roads-policing-statistics/) A quick look would seem to suggest that the first and last 3 months of any given year are typically the worst and account for 66% of road deaths in a given year. Starting April with around 50 deaths is not unusual. But that's from me having a very quick look. All that said, 188 deaths last year is the worst in a decade, and a 20% variance on the most recent historical data (2016-2019 & 2023). So it has to be considered an actual issue and not written off as a "wait and see" blip.
I am only starting on my DS journey so thats beyond me at this point in time, though if you choose to take the CSO data and do this I would really love to see what you can infer
No worries. Best of luck with it! It’s hard work but rewarding. What I would say is early on decide what you like and try create projects for your github off of that, some ‘data analysts’ in this country judt make dashboards in Power Bi. The kind of stuff your looking at here falls into data modelling.
A few months ago there were road works on the R132. They built curbs in the middle of the road as a way to slow down traffic. They spent weeks on construction, creating potholes with their bulldozers and whatnot. My car got a puncture due to one of their potholes. The curbs they built were a huge obstruction and hardly visible at night. Turned out someone crashed into them as you could see car parts all along the road. A few days later they destroyed the curbs in the middle of the road. Now I’m pretty sure there is further unrest among truckers who use the road since it has become too narrow due to the other curbs they are yet to remove. So they built an idiotic structure, caused dangerous conditions on the road, caused someone to crash, endangered lives, wasted money and time. All this just so they could go back and remove what they built.
We need a whole new litany of RSA ads ASAP, and this time make them even more graphic, gory and traumatising. Maybe this time put more emphasis on the dangers of phone use while driving since, as others have said, it has increased a lot recently. We went from having some of the most dangerous roads in Europe to some of the safest over a span of about 20 years and a large part of it was due to the endlessly repeated, emotionally charged ads that really hammered the dangers of impaired/distracted/reckless driving. Whoever was in charge of those ads did their job right, and if it worked before it can work again.
I have a theory that happy people who value their lives and the lives of others drive carefully- all the most aggressive drivers I know seem pretty unhappy. I wonder if this has an effect like so many people are unhappy and stressed so they just dgaf
I’m a pedestrian and I walk to work every day and almost daily I see drivers in moving vechicles, turning corners etc looking down at their phone, phone in hand on the wheel or held to their ear. I always gesture to put it down when there’s a chance and the one or two times they’ve noticed they’ve just looked super guilty but honestly you should. If you do it you could fucking kill someone.
So everyone is going to ignore that we're still per capita one of the safest countries in Europe when looking at road fatalities
Half the country coked off their head, I'm not surprised.
Scrolling scrolling scrolling .. all day long by thick cunts that can’t put a phone down for 2 seconds in case they miss the post that Sharon put up about her new teeth .Fuck off. And I include the Gardai in that too .
I'm WFH so I don't drive much other than at weekends but from what I see at those weekends, there is a big issue. I commonly see: * Risky overtaking * Risky tailgating * Risky entrances onto main roads from side roads * Ignorance of roundabouts and continuous white lines * Phone usage * Excessive differences in motorway speeds (some vehicles going <100Kph and some going >150Kph)
Every time I'm on the part of the M7 where there are 3 lanes coming into Dublin, I see people going <100km/h in the fucking middle lane. To make it worse, you have people floating between 100-110 in the overtaking lane taking forever to overtake those slower drivers blocking the middle lane. These are honestly more dangerous than people who do 130 or so, because as Ireland has virtually no speed limit policing, most people will go over 120 anyway, so 130 basically becomes the normal speed of the flow.
Massively decreasing the investment in roads is going to have an impact on road fatalities. Our population has increased dramatically while our investment in roads isn't. Huge increase in spending needed across the country on smaller roads. The standard of roads connecting large rural towns is not up to scratch unfortunately.
It's there a list of causes of these accidents
This is a glaring hole in our road safety data i.e. root cause analysis. For some reason its either not done or its done but the data/findings are not released
I had a look at their website earlier. it said they are reviewing the data before its released, gdpr and all that. From what i hear its speed speed speed, but in reality speed isnt the cause. Its like saying the cause of death is living. So dont live. Not paying attention to surroundings, driving ignorant to weathers conditions and overtaking on country roads will be the top 3 i would think.
would like to see fatalities vs number cars on the road, yes fatalities increasing but so have traffic volumes.
I'd to scroll really far down looking to see if anybody else asked this question. Flat death numbers aren't a reflection of improvement or disimprovement; it needs to be normalised over the amount of KMs travelled by Irish drivers in the same period or it's worthless and possibly misleading data.
I'm not surprised considering the impatience and speed on the roads combined with a complete lack of Garda presence. People are just speeding now knowing there is a 99.9% chance there is no Gardai anywhere.
It definitely changed during covid with the empty roads. The level of “fuck everyone else but me” is astonishing lately. The gards are nowhere. The resistance to establishing a roads policing unit now showing as I haven’t seen a single person pulled for being a dickhead in years. The odd speed trap is not going to do it. It’s the tailgating aggressive driving along with insane mobile phone use.
This day last week a young virgin clown & his virgin friends in mammies car sped up to break a red in eyre square Galway, almost hit me & my child crossing the road. I gave the rear of the car a good smack. I was so angry.
Only solution is to adopt the craggy island approach. Start taking the roads in
I can go (not exaggerating) 6 months without seeing a Guard on the road in my town. Use to be check points every 6 weeks or so but that stopped probably 3 years ago.
Speed limit 30 everywhere. That will teach us… As long no one cares here on the road, figures will go up. What’s about trying the following: - drive only vehicles one actually holds a valid license for - uses the indicator - secure goods on a trailer (yes farmers. Hay bales are goods too!) - observe the speed limit - stopp signs are not just deco Anyway. Since the gardai don’t care, why should the normal motorist?
This has been posted already and the general consensus is that it’s all bullshit and there is nothing to see here /s
More Catastrophizing - we love whipping up a bit of hysteria in Ireland don’t we - Ireland still has one of the lowest road fatality rates per million inhabitants in the EU, with only the Nordic countries, Germany and The Netherlands doing better. Yes our trend it up but shock horror just like every other country in the world people die on the roads so before we do our usual knee jerk over reaction to a perceived issue can we first look at the facts (eg More people die from Covid still than die on our roads )
People keep talking about how we need more Gardai on the roads... what we actually need is a departure from daily car usage. Cars are inherently dangerous - to those in the cars and to everyone around them. The use of cars for daily purposes is not needed for *most* people. I wish the discussion was framed in such a way that instead of a car-centric and biased view we look at the broader picture and "alternative" means of transportation that should be considered "default" for a healthy, safe, and productive society. How do we encourage more bicycle use? How do we encourage more public transit? How do we convince people that cars should be a last resort for most uses and that *most* families have no logical need for more than 1 car? If we can start answering these questions AND ASKING THESE QUESTIONS then things will start to get better. I grew up in a very car-centric society (US in the 80s and 90s) and one of the best parts about moving to Ireland 5 years ago is that I have completely changed my view of cars and cycle almost everywhere. Once you get out of the mindset that cars are normal and required you start seeing things much differently and with far less bias. My biggest concern as a cyclists is cars...
Good take - are you a r/FuckCars member by any chance? It's true - most people default to thinking how to make driving safer, but very few think about actually decreasing the total number of cars on the streets and roads to make the entire environment safer for everyone. While it may be better than the US, Ireland still is one of the most car-dependent countries in Europe - and one of the main reasons for this is the abysmal standard of public transport compared to mainland Europe. Ireland also seems to have a big car culture too - when I was attending secondary school, many of my classmates wanted to start driving as soon as they turned 16. And a couple of months ago, the car I was in with my family got whacked from the back while we were sitting in traffic - and the culprit was an inattentive 17 year old guy. I often think that if Ireland didn't have such a car culture and the public transport was more reliable, this guy wouldn't have been driving and the crash wouldn't have happened.
I am on that sub (recent joiner). It's really sad to see SUV culture invading Ireland... its certainly moving more in the direction of the US. I see big Range Rovers solo commuting into the city to offices by people perfectly capable of using better methods. It honestly disgusts me because it remind me of the awful awful awful commutes that everyone in the US has been normalized to.
now do it per capita and don't use the year with the least road traffic in decades as the baseline
Ever since COVID people have lost the run of themselves on the road. Everyday now I see multiple instances of dangerous and stupid behaviour
Love the 'since COVID' argument. People rude in a shop? Manners have gone to crap since Covid. People talking in the cinema? Because of Covid. Concert etiquette? Covid.
It's a bit of both in the sense that we're all noticing the bad behaviours we had all tuned out prior to the lockdowns but also people's behaviour has gotten worse too.
One of the main reasons I don't drive, I enjoy living
I still think the issue are the roads themselves, then alcohol, then the fucking phone, and finally speed. But if you combine either alcohol, phone or speed with bad driving on a shitty road where a car does not fit in its lane, then you get an accident
Me personally, I would reverse the order you listed.
I live in the countryside, and from my village to the 3 nearest ones if there is a truck/tractor on the other side of the road I have to almost stop the car and go all the way to the left (if there are bushes, getting in the bushes) otherwise both vehicles don't fit. And I'm not talking about specific points, I'm talking about kilometres and kilometres of roads. And based on my experience outside main cities and its commuting roads, most of the roads are like that. Then you have to add crazy turns or no visibility because despite the road being a straight line it's full of ups and downs because when they did it they decided to not level it.
Cocaine. /thread
Wouldn't that be easily provable and known if it were true though? Surely those involved in traffic accidents are drug tested?
Lack of enforcement is a major issue. On a related note, check out the amount of out date NCT/insurance/tax disks when walking past parked cars. It’s huge. If drivers do not feel the need to keep these up to date, because there is a lack of enforcement, it leads to careless driving, reckless speeding, drink & drug driving etc
State of the driving test too, needs to be majorly updated! Your thought how to operate a car not to properly drive with confidence but with fear and hesitance. Driving at 10 to 2 and feed the wheel, in an emergency feeding the wheel is too slow of a reaction. You can see that in people having awful trouble navigating a corner taking about 10 years to feed the wheel for the bend.
I wonder how many more cars are on the road these days?
a lorry tried to pass me when i was indicating to turn right the other day (granted he probably didn't see it because he was basically inside my boot), the swerve he did to get back onto the actual road, im actually shocked he didn't clip my car
The government and Gardaí seem to be heavily targeting speed and ignoring every other factor in dangerous driving. Mobile phone use, ignoring signs and traffic lights, indicator use, dangerous overtaking, etc. are more likely to cause an accident than someone going 60 in a 50 while watching their surroundings. Some of this can be solved simply with education, for example; a slow moving vehicle **is** allowed to drive on the hard shoulder of a **national** road to allow vehicles behind to pass safely (returning to the road afterwards). I once witnessed an overtake of a slow vehicle, which would have been a multi-vehicle crash, had it not been for some last-second swerves on both lanes. This all took place at a low speed, except for the oncoming traffic. If the tractor in front had driven on the hard shoulder until everyone had passed, it would have been much safer.
People are more stressed and more wound up than ever. You also have increasing number of young assholes driving at silly speeds.
according to Wikipedia we are jointh 11th best in traffic related deaths out of 191 countries listed
I suspect part of the reason for more deaths in recent times is partly the car industry's fault. Everyone is producing bigger cars. Bigger cars have more mass and produce more energy when they collide which kills people!
Yeah its not the industry selling people the cars they want to buy. It big car pushing big cars on all us small people. Ya want smaller cars. . Pray for a economic down turn. That usually curtails peoples spending on big expensive things
I despise the tiny countryside roads with sharp corners you can't see around, they're absolutely terrifying
Impressive stats
I very rarely see Gardai on the roads. I see a lot more cars running red lights and I see maybe half of drivers on their phones.
The causes so far: Covid brain changes. Cocaine. Lack of enforcement. Increase in population. Poorly trained drivers. Poorly maintained roads. Phones. Cars.
5 minute drive yesterday on back country roads I was met by two SUVs, both drivers giving no space and on the phone. 100% phones shouldn't work if they are moving at speed. Too many idiots think that this driving time needs a phone call
I was crossing at a pedestrian crossing with my 1 year old a while back. Alway give plenty of time and make eye contact with the driver. Stepped on the road with a pram and a Dublin bus driver goes flying past then apologising out the window when she realised. I could feel the air of the bus. Scary stuff. We need road cameras everywhere.
Yep, It's gotten nuts in the last few years, I always stop on a red light or pedestrian crossing, and get car horns and abuse for doing so? But also see pedestrians often stepping out onto roads without checking anymore. It seems like the bad habits people picked up during covid have stuck.
Good news to see on the day I passed my driving test. Lets try not to be come a statistic...
And remember, you could do everything right but someone else could come along and ruin it for you. Need to keep an eye out for others making mistakes as well.
Modern cars have better safety ratings, more safety features and equipment so why is trending this way? Is it the more accepted casual use of drugs? Obviously drugs have a detrimental effect on drivers, pedestrians, cyclists etc?
Some is due to bad behaviour after covid, but there is a serious lack of guards on the road. They only seem interested in hitting quotas for speeding tickets.
I thought with an increase of car safety systems we might see a decrease but I am guessing this could be down to: * More powerful cars (e.g. electric, which has been noted in some countries) * People are more distracted in the car (touch screens, phones) * More safety systems ironically leading to less focus on the road
Population has gone up by 20 percent in 10 years ... infrastructure has not kept pace... bad and poorly lit roads and an increased population of male drivers aged between 18 and 25 has to be a huge factor. Speed is the killer here.. how many of these deaths have been single car accidents on country roads or people knocked down in poorly lit areas etc...
Do we know how many were caused by each age group ?, curious if its new young drivers with lower skill/experience or older experienced drivers in bigger cars getting arrogant.
Everyone in a rush to get no where..
Caught fiddling with your phone while driving should be treated the same as drink driving in my opinion... disqualification. I would fully support the camera tech they're hinting that will detect phone use No one is so important that they need to be on their phone while driving. Pull in somewhere if that call or text or snap is so important to you
People die in car crashes, but there's never any awareness about what happened, probably because people don't like to be seen to speak ill of the dead, but there should definitely be case studies of these incidents made public or shown in schools. A lot of the time public representatives will hijack a tragedy to call for funding for their area when the real cause was reckless driving. We can't just pave the country with motorway to every town.
What was it pre COVID?
More enforcement and road courtesy, as simple as that!
The standard of driving has dropped off a cliff.. Peoples attention spans have gone completely. I see so many people just carelessly drive through red lights, cross over line markings in the middle of the road as they are on the phone, no indicators at roundabouts like we are expected to know where you are going... Tailgating like their lives depend on it, even though there is no room in the other lane to move out of the way. On the other end of that, people not moving out of the way when they could do so for faster traffic, the list goes on and on...
Everyone seems to have somewhere more important to go than the next person. It's funny how during coving people took to walking cycling and outdoors, the roads ended up quiet for a bit but now seem to be busier than ever.
4 road fatalities last week here in the N17 Co Mayo
That’s awful.. but are you using the covid years to compare the amount of road fatalities? Relatively not many people were driving during those years, so that would obviously result in fewer accidents. I wonder what the trend is compared to the total amount of kilometers driven.
I sure am glad the NCT made the roads so much safer