The Road Safety Authority's recently published Road Collision Factbook 2006 has shown the death rate against the number of cars on the road has more then halved in the last decade.

Despite the daily reports of mounting deaths tolls on Irish roads, the Factbook shows that road fatalities here are on a downward trend. In 1996, the fatality rate per million registered vehicles was 338. By 2006, the rate had fallen to 159 per million registered vehicles.

According to the Factbook there was an 8 per cent (31) drop in road deaths in 2006 (365) compared to 2005 (396). Of the 28,417 Garda-recorded motor vehicle traffic collisions that took place in 2006 a total of 365 people were killed, 907 were seriously injured and 8,575 suffered minor injuries. The remainder, 22,399 collisions, involved property or material damage only.

The contributory factors to road collisions listed by members of An Garda Síochána on collision report forms has changed little compared to previous years. Driver error accounted for 88 percent of all contributory factors identified, while the next most listed factor, pedestrian error, accounted for 7 percent. Road Factors accounted for 2.5 per cent of all listed contributory factors, while the figures for vehicle and environmental factors were 0.4 and 1.9 per cent respectively.

When the level of road deaths in the Factbook is measured against the country's overall population Ireland's rate of 86 per million in 2006, the latest year for which international comparative information is available, it moves Ireland up to twelfth out of the EU-25, although our ability to reduce road deaths is still below average compared to other EU member states.

Noel Brett, Road Safety Authority CEO says the Factbook does make for positive reading and it proves that Ireland's drivers are becoming more aware on the roads. "By examining how we are doing based on the number of vehicles on the road we get the clearest indication of whether our roads are getting safer," he explained. "And what this shows is that each individual road user is twice as safe now compared to ten years ago."

Comments (0) »

Show/Hide comment form

Name

Email

Title

Comment

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment