The Road Safety Authority (RSA) has released its official summary of road safety figures for Ireland in 2023, and they make for grim reading. Many of us will have seen what seemed to be a major uptick in road fatalities last year, and the RSA figures bear that out.
Fatalities up by 19 per cent
The headline numbers are that 184 people died in collisions on Irish roads last year. There were 173 individual fatal incidents, resulting in 29 more people dying on our roads than in 2022. That's an increase of 19 per cent.
It's the highest number of fatalities since 2019, when 192 people were killed on Irish roads.
Of those who were killed, 57 per cent were involved in a 'single vehicle incident', up from 54 per cent in 2022. Seven fatal collisions resulted in more than one death: four collisions resulted in two fatalities; two collisions resulted in three fatalities; and one collision resulted in four fatalities. It means that on average, each month saw 15 people lose their lives on the road, up from an average of 13 in 2022.
Drivers the most vulnerable group
Drivers represented the highest proportion of fatalities - 38 per cent of all those who died were behind the wheel. Pedestrians made up one quarter, or 24 per cent to be precise. Compared to 2022, there has been an increase in fatalities among all road user groups: drivers (+11), passengers (+12), motorcyclists (+ three), pedestrians (+ one), pedal cyclists (+ one) and other road users (+ one). The last time this many pedestrians died on Irish roads was in 2011. Of all the recorded incidents, 29 per cent took place on urban roads, while 71 per cent were on rural roads.
As ever, the age group with the highest risk was 16-24, who accounted for 26 per cent of fatalities. Compared to 2022, there was an increase (+49) in fatalities aged 0-55 years, while there was a decrease in fatalities aged 56+ years (-22). Of the fatalities, 78 per cent (144) were male and 22 per cent (40) were female.
July and September the safest months
July and September saw the lowest number of casualties, while May, August and October saw the highest levels - perhaps not coincidentally, those are months with major Bank Holidays. For the incidents for which there is full information, almost half (48 per cent) of fatalities occurred between 8pm and 8am, while almost half (46 per cent) of fatalities occurred between Friday and Sunday.
There is one thing worth considering amongst all this misery, however. Which is that, in spite of the rise in deaths, Ireland still performs relatively well in terms of road safety compared to our European neighbours. According to the 2022 statistics, Ireland saw 31 road deaths per one-million population.
That puts us on a par with Finland (35), Switzerland (28) and Germany (33). Even allowing for the dreadful 19 per cent increase in fatalities in 2023, it means that Irish roads are about as dangerous as those of Estonia, Spain and The Netherlands, and considerably safer than those of Belgium, Greece, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Austria, Poland and Portugal. The average number of deaths per one-million population across the EU stood, in 2022, at 46.
That is not to excuse Irish drivers and road designers, nor to say that we should be doing nothing, but it perhaps does provide some context to 2023's figures.