“The morning after was shown to be a particularly high-risk period — 11% of all fatal collisions occurred from 7am to 11am in which a driver had consumed alcohol,” said Velma Burns, from the Road Safety Authority (RSA).
The RSA and An Garda Síochána launched their annual Christmas road safety campaign yesterday, with data from November and December from 2008 to 2016. It showed alcohol is the number one contributory factor in road fatalities at this time.
In 38% of fatal crashes, alcohol was a contributing factor. Speed was the second contributing factor, with it being an issue in 33% of fatal crashes during the Christmas period.
The RSA’s data also showed that Sunday was the most common day for road fatalities with 21% of them happening on this day. From midnight to 6am was the most dangerous time on a Sunday.
Dublin, Cork and Galway were the most dangerous counties for driving and all three accounted for 32% of fatalities that occurred at this time.
In Dublin, 81% of fatalities happened on urban roads and in Cork, 87% occurred on rural roads.
Separate from alcohol and speeding, dangerous driving, road conditions and weather were the three other contributing factors in fatal crashes.
An Garda Síochána’s data correlated with that of the RSA’s — showing that about 50% of all arrests on the roads happened on a Saturday or Sunday.
In relation to the time of day, 36% of arrests occurred between midnight and 4am.
Source: Joyce Fegan, The Irish Examiner, 01/12/17
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