IRELAND IS CURRENTLY at a lethal crossroads. Despite a decade of glossy strategies, Vision Zero pronouncements, “thoughts and prayers” from politicians, our roads are becoming visibly more dangerous.

The data for 2025 is an indictment of current policy: 190 people lost their lives — the highest number of road fatalities in over a decade. While the government points to driver behaviour and individual responsibility, the reality is that road injury reduction is being strangled by a lack of political courage and a chronic retreat from evidence-based policy.

To understand the scale of our failure, we need only look to the Baltic states. In 2019, and again in the 12-month period ending July 2025, Helsinki, with a population of 1.6 million in its metropolitan area, recorded zero pedestrian and cyclist deaths. Oslo has achieved similar milestones. If Ireland had matched Helsinki’s safety rate per capita, we would be mourning fewer than 50 people this year, rather than 190.

The Nordic approach accepts that humans are fallible. We will make mistakes, we will be distracted, and we will occasionally be reckless. Therefore, interventions to reduce road injuries must factor these assumptions into policies. That means redesigning roads, lowering speeds, and strictly enforcing the existing bans on using, for example, mobile phones, alcohol or drugs while driving.

Helsinki and Oslo responded to rising fatalities not by asking drivers to “do better,” but by physically narrowing streets, removing through-traffic from residential cores, and making 30 km/h the default urban speed.

Their approach is based on unimpeachable evidence: a collision at 30km/h usually results in minor injuries. At 50km/h, a pedestrian has a 50% chance of survival; at 60km/h, that chance drops to just 10%; at 80km/h, 9 in 10 pedestrians will be killed. The Road Safety Authority (RSA)’s 2025 report found that in 2025, close to half (54%) of fatalities occurred on roads with a speed limit of 80km/h or greater compared to 70% of fatalities in 2024.

There were 22 fatal collisions in Dublin, 21 in Co. Cork and 17 in County Galway, with none recorded for County Longford. Mayo, Donegal and Galway report consistently high numbers of fatalities per head of population, pointing to the need for measures that specifically target rural communities.

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However, as former Minister Shane Ross recently reminded everyone in a widely shared piece for the Sunday Independent, many politicians have a Dáil record of voting against increasing drink-driving and other penalties under the assumption that overly stringent enforcement would harm the social and economic life of rural areas.

Rural TDs also frequently argue that rural drivers are being unfairly targeted with speed cameras. The statistics show that rural roads are, in fact, where the majority of deaths occur: seven in 10 fatalities (roughly 70%) consistently occur on rural roads (defined as those with speed limits of 80 km/h or higher). 

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The view that deaths and life-changing injuries are somehow the inevitable and necessary cost of car dominance is increasingly widespread, as is the phenomenon of “victim-blaming”. Many incidents do not get reported, and it is arguable that the level of offending and injuries overall is seriously underestimated. District and circuit courts issue inconsistent fines and sentences for lesser road traffic offences that arguably constitute the bulk of the risky driving behaviour on the roads.

Sentencing guidelines from the Judicial Council address the more serious offences only. The plea that a defendant needs their car or van for work, or the negative impact that a conviction would have on a young person’s record, may invite undue leniency from the courts. All of this, combined with the slow action to enforce the rules for learner drivers, signals to drivers that road traffic offences are not really that serious, or that cyclists are to blame for incidents involving........

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