Almost 250 road crash victims were not wearing seatbelts
Year Drivers Died Who Not Passengers Seat Been Each Belt Were An Have Average Wearing Found Or To Of A 24
Almost 250 people who died in road crashes in the last 10 years were not wearing a seat belt, new figures have shown.
Data from the Irish Road Traffic Collision Database, compiled using records from the gardaí, found that an average of 24 drivers or passengers each year who died were found to not have been wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash.
The figures for 2013 to 2022 saw the highest number recorded in 2016 with 32 fatalities. In 2022, the most recent year for which the statistics are available, no seat belts were recorded in 16 deaths.
The figures were released to Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín via a parliamentary question.
“Over the past decade on average each year 16% of those who lost their lives on Irish roads were not wearing a seatbelt,” he said.
“This underscores all the more the need to properly enforce the law in relation to seatbelts, and for the State to pump more money into advertisements about seatbelts and to cite these horrific statistics in the advertisements.”
Despite 2023 being a year marked by a surge in deaths on Irish roads, the numbers so far this year have proven even higher again. In the first two months of 2024, 37 deaths were recorded on Irish roads, which is an increase of five on the same time last year.
Among the deaths have been 15 drivers, 12 passengers, seven pedestrians, two motorcyclists and one cyclist, according to garda statistics.
Mr Tóibín said that there are families around the country suffering “unimaginable grief at the moment”.
“The number of gardaí deployed to road policing has been decreasing in recent times, and I believe there is a direct correlation between the number of fatalities and the number of roads police in the country,” he said.
“I was in a very serious accident myself in 2016 in a vehicle which was shunted 10 metres down the road by an oncoming car, I have no doubt that were it not for the fact my family were wearing seatbelts, it would have resulted in tragedy.”
The statistics come as gardaí stepped up enforcement on the roads for a day dubbed National Slow Down Day.
Gardaí said it was a coordinated day-of-action targeting speed offences, with the overall aim of reducing the number of people being killed on the roads.
During their checks, they detected a car travelling at 142km/h in a 100km zone on the N11 in Wicklow and a driver going at 91km/h in a 50km zone on the R510 Dock Road in Limerick. By midday, it had detected over 100 vehicles speeding.
On Wednesday, minister with responsibility for road safety Jack Chambers addressed the Oireachtas Transport Committee on the Government’s new proposals on road safety.
He said that the main causes of deaths on our roads “remain the all-too-familiar and stubborn factors”, such as speeding, drink driving and people not wearing seatbelts.
One proposal is a change to penalty points where they can get multiple sets of points when detected for multiple offences at the same time.
“If anyone objects that this is unfair because people could be disqualified over a single incident, my answer is that this is about safety,” he said.