SIT INTO A car and something strange happens to many people. For many, their sense of risk drops almost instantly. They close the door, settle into the seat, and the world feels a little further away.

Inside a warm, quiet cabin surrounded by steel, glass, airbags and driver-assist tech, danger feels abstract. It is one of the strongest distortions in road safety. The reason is pretty simple: cars remove the sensory cues our brains rely on.

You can’t feel the wind, hear other people, or judge proximity the way you can on foot or on a bicycle or even on a motorbike. I don’t ride a motorbike, but I have friends that do and they tell me you literally cannot do anything else or think of anything else when you ride a motorbike. It demands your full, undivided attention. And often it is to make sure cars don’t hit you.

Because the car removes many signals, the brain often underestimates the risk. It can explain, in part, why we might tailgate without thinking, some use their phones at traffic lights, and creep above the limit on familiar roads. This cocoon makes danger feel distant.

But the real-world numbers cut through that illusion very quickly.

As of 19 November 2025, 158 people have died on Irish roads — nine more than at the same point last year. Drivers account for the largest share at 60 deaths, followed by 36 pedestrians, 28 motorcyclists, 18 passengers, 13 cyclists, two e-scooter users and one pillion passenger.

Fatal collisions themselves are also up: 149 crashes this year compared with 138 by the same date in 2024. The trend is moving in the wrong direction, and the cocoon effect we feel in newer cars stands in stark contrast with the fragility of the human body when things go wrong.

However, the protection that modern cars genuinely offer has limits – and those limits are set not by technology, but by physics. Seatbelts and airbags have saved countless lives. Although it is still astonishing, five decades (1979) after they became compulsory in Ireland, that a lack of them being used is often cited as a reason for a fatality. In 2025, there are many drivers that still have to be reminded to use them. And there are people who still don’t and won’t.

Strong crash structures, crumple zones and modern restraint systems........

© TheJournal