The article makes reference to the Nordic approach and refers to changes they made to urban areas to reduce deaths. All of the changes they made are genuinely great, except for the fact the article also discloses that most deaths in Ireland are in rural areas.
So what to do about rural areas?
horgantron on
Ummm what about the elephant in the room? The complete and utter lack of enforcement.
EchoedMinds on
“No, the kids walking to school need to wear high vis and helmets in case they’re hit by a vicious cyclist and then the Expert blames the poor innocent drivers of Ireland” – the RSA probably
Hundredth1diot on
I agree with the sentiment, but there’s a frustrating lack of apples-apples comparisons in that article, e.g. comparing Helsinki (zero traffic fatalities) with the whole of Ireland.
Faux concern and mealy mouthed platitudes to show that “we” need to do something, making it everyone else’s problem.
Regardless of the problems society faces here, that’s the approach.
Pupcup2 on
Stopped reading when she referred to the Nordic country of Finand as Baltic.
IrishLad1002 on
I disagree that cars come first in Ireland. Speed limits have been drastically lowered, roads have been narrowed substantially to create cycle lanes and our road infrastructure is God awful. You can barely move beyond 30km/h in the mornings due to the amount of traffic on the roads.
In what way do cars come first ? Everyone loses due to our piss poor infrastructure, planning and management.
RoyRobotoRobot on
Quick Google search copy paste job.
As of 2024–2025, Ireland ranks among the top 10 safest countries in Europe for road safety, typically placing 7th to 9th.
Key Time-Based Statistics (2024–2025):
Highest Risk Time Band: Almost a quarter (24%) of all 2024 fatalities occurred between 4pm and 8pm.
Afternoon Peak: 12pm to 4pm accounted for 27% of deaths in early 2025.
Nighttime Risk: 26% to 31% of fatalities occur between 8pm and 4am, despite lower traffic volumes during these hours.
Most Dangerous Days: Friday through Monday saw the highest number of fatalities.
Worst Weekends: In 2024, 23% of weekend fatalities occurred between 12am and 4am, and 36% occurred between 4pm and 12am.
I think the increase is mostly caused from people being underpaid and overworked. A lack of policing, a lack of educating the public on pedestrian safety for both sides (we need hedgehog ads).
I also believe the papers run with it as it keeps the finger pointed on us rather than the cause which is poor governance.
WeaknessOtherwise325 on
Live in the city, narrow footpaths, cars regularly accelerate as fast as possible to get the 100m between lights, breaking as hard as possible. Would welcone 30km limit for urban areas.
Playful-Parsnip-3104 on
A few things to say, some of which others have touched on already:
1. There is a nationwide culture of casual lawlessness on the roads, strengthened by a complete lack of any deterrent from AGS. For example, probably >50% of drivers around me at any given moment are speeding.
2. Ireland suffers from a historical tragedy in that a great deal of our current transport infrastructure was designed and built after the rise of the motor car. Everything has been planned with four wheels and an engine in mind and much of the country, both rural and urban, is actively hostile to pedestrians. This is why everyone here feels the need to wear a high-visibility jacket when they go out for a walk. When I lived in Britain, absolutely nobody did this, because the country is both physically and culturally friendlier to travel by foot.
3. Much of the country has precisely zero public transport to speak of. This means the car is the only option to get around, and getting in your car to do absolutely anything and everything down to the smallest milk run has a tendency to diminish the sense of care, responsibility, and seriousness that every person should feel when he sits down behind the wheel and takes contol of half a tonne of steel hurtling down the road. It also means that large numbers of elderly people who are totally unsafe on the roads have no choice but to continue driving or become prisoners in their own homes.
4. For various reasons, including silly planning laws, much of Ireland’s rural population lives in an extremely low-density sprawl, rather than concentrated in villages. This means the average speed through what are really residential areas, strictly speaking, is much higher than in comparable countries. A much higher percentage of the Irish population face onto roads with 80 or 100km/h speed limits (and no pavements), with obvious consequences.
5. If I were to guess, I’d say we have a much higher per-capita rate of farming accidents which are (rightly) counted as road deaths – for example tractor crashes involving very young or underage farm hands losing control of enormous modern agricultural machinery.
Edit: One must also remember that trends in road death statistics are thoroughly misleading. This is because modern cars are much safer than the cars of decades past, and because modern medical technology and expertise is so much better. As a result, many people who would have died in car accidents in the past now survive them. It doesn’t mean the rate of serious accidents is not increasing significantly. (The same is true of, e.g., knife crime – you’re much more likely to survive a stabbing wound today than decades ago, which makes the statistics on violent crime misleading in the same way).
Impressive-Smoke1883 on
Lol. They constantly bang on about this yet still, people are pointing their cars towards each other at 100kph while they WhatsApp. I’m no expert but coming up with some solution regarding mobile phone use whilst driving would be a priority to me. Get the car insusrty involved, they are really good at coming up with safety solutions in cars, all this other talk is farting in the wind.
Immortal_Tuttle on
What a stupid approach. It works there, because if you drive over the limit someone will call the police and report it. Rules are rules. And they are enforced. This won’t simply work in our culture.
Poland tried the traffic regulating obstacles. 4 lane road without any features was converted to two lane with 70km/h limit at every intersection and pedestrian crossing. Concrete features were also introduced. In the result drivers started to be tired faster HGVs started to hit those obstacles and amount of accidents increased.
Here if you want a safe road for cyclist we should do what other countries did and it’s working. Separate path for cyclists. The most safe one is basically car road – 1m gap – cycle path.
Soft-Affect-8327 on
* Sadhbh O’ Neill is a climate and environmental researcher. She is a member of the board of Transport Infrastructure Ireland but is writing in a purely personal capacity.*
Climate and road safety are two completely separate issues. We can’t have one use the other to beat us into their politics.
LightLeftLeaning on
I know it is useful to look at statistics to see how we are doing compared to road deaths in other countries. However, we should remember that no number of deaths on our roads is acceptable.
I travel by car, by bicycle, by foot and public transport depending on my needs. When cycling or walking, feelings on the down side vary from discomfort to fear. Cycling and walking infrastructure are improving but, they are sometimes disastrous. Cycle lanes and footpaths alike disappear and force active users onto roads where, although most drivers are considerate, some are downright aggressive, incompetent and some even take joy in scaring you. Many cycle lanes are never cleaned or repaired, again forcing users onto the road where you are screamed at and admonished to “use the cycle lane!”.
Walking or cycling in our cities can be nasty. Waiting times at crossings are long and even when the lights turn in your favour you have to wait for the straggling motor vehicles that chance an amber or even a red light to save no time whatsoever but, to put fear into other road users.
Crossing roads where there are no official crossings you have to decide if a car is slowing down for you or if the driver is just sending a quick text and not paying attention to anything else.
I honestly believe that we need to readdress our entire transport infrastructure and realise that the car cannot and must not come first.
17 Comments
The article makes reference to the Nordic approach and refers to changes they made to urban areas to reduce deaths. All of the changes they made are genuinely great, except for the fact the article also discloses that most deaths in Ireland are in rural areas.
So what to do about rural areas?
Ummm what about the elephant in the room? The complete and utter lack of enforcement.
“No, the kids walking to school need to wear high vis and helmets in case they’re hit by a vicious cyclist and then the Expert blames the poor innocent drivers of Ireland” – the RSA probably
I agree with the sentiment, but there’s a frustrating lack of apples-apples comparisons in that article, e.g. comparing Helsinki (zero traffic fatalities) with the whole of Ireland.
According to [2024 stats](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20190410STO36615/road-death-statistics-in-the-eu-infographic) both Finland and Ireland have 32 deaths per million inhabitants.
Faux concern and mealy mouthed platitudes to show that “we” need to do something, making it everyone else’s problem.
Regardless of the problems society faces here, that’s the approach.
Stopped reading when she referred to the Nordic country of Finand as Baltic.
I disagree that cars come first in Ireland. Speed limits have been drastically lowered, roads have been narrowed substantially to create cycle lanes and our road infrastructure is God awful. You can barely move beyond 30km/h in the mornings due to the amount of traffic on the roads.
In what way do cars come first ? Everyone loses due to our piss poor infrastructure, planning and management.
Quick Google search copy paste job.
As of 2024–2025, Ireland ranks among the top 10 safest countries in Europe for road safety, typically placing 7th to 9th.
Key Time-Based Statistics (2024–2025):
Highest Risk Time Band: Almost a quarter (24%) of all 2024 fatalities occurred between 4pm and 8pm.
Afternoon Peak: 12pm to 4pm accounted for 27% of deaths in early 2025.
Nighttime Risk: 26% to 31% of fatalities occur between 8pm and 4am, despite lower traffic volumes during these hours.
Most Dangerous Days: Friday through Monday saw the highest number of fatalities.
Worst Weekends: In 2024, 23% of weekend fatalities occurred between 12am and 4am, and 36% occurred between 4pm and 12am.
I think the increase is mostly caused from people being underpaid and overworked. A lack of policing, a lack of educating the public on pedestrian safety for both sides (we need hedgehog ads).
I also believe the papers run with it as it keeps the finger pointed on us rather than the cause which is poor governance.
Live in the city, narrow footpaths, cars regularly accelerate as fast as possible to get the 100m between lights, breaking as hard as possible. Would welcone 30km limit for urban areas.
A few things to say, some of which others have touched on already:
1. There is a nationwide culture of casual lawlessness on the roads, strengthened by a complete lack of any deterrent from AGS. For example, probably >50% of drivers around me at any given moment are speeding.
2. Ireland suffers from a historical tragedy in that a great deal of our current transport infrastructure was designed and built after the rise of the motor car. Everything has been planned with four wheels and an engine in mind and much of the country, both rural and urban, is actively hostile to pedestrians. This is why everyone here feels the need to wear a high-visibility jacket when they go out for a walk. When I lived in Britain, absolutely nobody did this, because the country is both physically and culturally friendlier to travel by foot.
3. Much of the country has precisely zero public transport to speak of. This means the car is the only option to get around, and getting in your car to do absolutely anything and everything down to the smallest milk run has a tendency to diminish the sense of care, responsibility, and seriousness that every person should feel when he sits down behind the wheel and takes contol of half a tonne of steel hurtling down the road. It also means that large numbers of elderly people who are totally unsafe on the roads have no choice but to continue driving or become prisoners in their own homes.
4. For various reasons, including silly planning laws, much of Ireland’s rural population lives in an extremely low-density sprawl, rather than concentrated in villages. This means the average speed through what are really residential areas, strictly speaking, is much higher than in comparable countries. A much higher percentage of the Irish population face onto roads with 80 or 100km/h speed limits (and no pavements), with obvious consequences.
5. If I were to guess, I’d say we have a much higher per-capita rate of farming accidents which are (rightly) counted as road deaths – for example tractor crashes involving very young or underage farm hands losing control of enormous modern agricultural machinery.
Edit: One must also remember that trends in road death statistics are thoroughly misleading. This is because modern cars are much safer than the cars of decades past, and because modern medical technology and expertise is so much better. As a result, many people who would have died in car accidents in the past now survive them. It doesn’t mean the rate of serious accidents is not increasing significantly. (The same is true of, e.g., knife crime – you’re much more likely to survive a stabbing wound today than decades ago, which makes the statistics on violent crime misleading in the same way).
Lol. They constantly bang on about this yet still, people are pointing their cars towards each other at 100kph while they WhatsApp. I’m no expert but coming up with some solution regarding mobile phone use whilst driving would be a priority to me. Get the car insusrty involved, they are really good at coming up with safety solutions in cars, all this other talk is farting in the wind.
What a stupid approach. It works there, because if you drive over the limit someone will call the police and report it. Rules are rules. And they are enforced. This won’t simply work in our culture.
Poland tried the traffic regulating obstacles. 4 lane road without any features was converted to two lane with 70km/h limit at every intersection and pedestrian crossing. Concrete features were also introduced. In the result drivers started to be tired faster HGVs started to hit those obstacles and amount of accidents increased.
Here if you want a safe road for cyclist we should do what other countries did and it’s working. Separate path for cyclists. The most safe one is basically car road – 1m gap – cycle path.
* Sadhbh O’ Neill is a climate and environmental researcher. She is a member of the board of Transport Infrastructure Ireland but is writing in a purely personal capacity.*
Climate and road safety are two completely separate issues. We can’t have one use the other to beat us into their politics.
I know it is useful to look at statistics to see how we are doing compared to road deaths in other countries. However, we should remember that no number of deaths on our roads is acceptable.
I travel by car, by bicycle, by foot and public transport depending on my needs. When cycling or walking, feelings on the down side vary from discomfort to fear. Cycling and walking infrastructure are improving but, they are sometimes disastrous. Cycle lanes and footpaths alike disappear and force active users onto roads where, although most drivers are considerate, some are downright aggressive, incompetent and some even take joy in scaring you. Many cycle lanes are never cleaned or repaired, again forcing users onto the road where you are screamed at and admonished to “use the cycle lane!”.
Walking or cycling in our cities can be nasty. Waiting times at crossings are long and even when the lights turn in your favour you have to wait for the straggling motor vehicles that chance an amber or even a red light to save no time whatsoever but, to put fear into other road users.
Crossing roads where there are no official crossings you have to decide if a car is slowing down for you or if the driver is just sending a quick text and not paying attention to anything else.
I honestly believe that we need to readdress our entire transport infrastructure and realise that the car cannot and must not come first.
https://preview.redd.it/6amsrldk3ofg1.png?width=1273&format=png&auto=webp&s=330998f6fb97d464066d8a70408f2608e77e35b5
For the most part it’s not the roads that are dangerous, it’s the people using them.
Cars don’t come first in Ireland, they’re just the least neglected.