Irlands gefährliche Straßen: Wenn Autos an erster Stelle stehen, verlieren alle

Ummm what about the elephant in the room? The complete and utter lack of enforcement.

I agree with the sentiment, but there’s a frustrating lack of apples-apples comparisons in that article, e.g. comparing Helsinki (zero traffic fatalities) with the whole of Ireland.

According to [2024 stats](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20190410STO36615/road-death-statistics-in-the-eu-infographic) both Finland and Ireland have 32 deaths per million inhabitants.

Stopped reading when she referred to the Nordic country of Finand as Baltic.

Quick Google  search copy paste job. 
As of 2024–2025, Ireland ranks among the top 10 safest countries in Europe for road safety, typically placing 7th to 9th.

Key Time-Based Statistics (2024–2025):
Highest Risk Time Band: Almost a quarter (24%) of all 2024 fatalities occurred between 4pm and 8pm.
Afternoon Peak: 12pm to 4pm accounted for 27% of deaths in early 2025.
Nighttime Risk: 26% to 31% of fatalities occur between 8pm and 4am, despite lower traffic volumes during these hours.
Most Dangerous Days: Friday through Monday saw the highest number of fatalities.
Worst Weekends: In 2024, 23% of weekend fatalities occurred between 12am and 4am, and 36% occurred between 4pm and 12am. 

I think the increase is mostly  caused from people being underpaid and overworked.  A lack of policing, a lack of educating the public on pedestrian safety for both sides (we need hedgehog ads).  
I also believe the papers run with it as it keeps the finger pointed on us rather than the cause which is poor governance. 

A few things to say, some of which others have touched on already:

1. There is a nationwide culture of casual lawlessness on the roads, strengthened by a complete lack of any deterrent from AGS. For example, probably >50% of drivers around me at any given moment are speeding.
2. Ireland suffers from a historical tragedy in that a great deal of our current transport infrastructure was designed and built after the rise of the motor car. Everything has been planned with four wheels and an engine in mind and much of the country, both rural and urban, is actively hostile to pedestrians. This is why everyone here feels the need to wear a high-visibility jacket when they go out for a walk. When I lived in Britain, absolutely nobody did this, because the country is both physically and culturally friendlier to travel by foot.
3. Much of the country has precisely zero public transport to speak of. This means the car is the only option to get around, and getting in your car to do absolutely anything and everything down to the smallest milk run has a tendency to diminish the sense of care, responsibility, and seriousness that every person should feel when he sits down behind the wheel and takes contol of half a tonne of steel hurtling down the road. It also means that large numbers of elderly people who are totally unsafe on the roads have no choice but to continue driving or become prisoners in their own homes.
4. For various reasons, including silly planning laws, much of Ireland’s rural population lives in an extremely low-density sprawl, rather than concentrated in villages. This means the average speed through what are really residential areas, strictly speaking, is much higher than in comparable countries. A much higher percentage of the Irish population face onto roads with 80 or 100km/h speed limits, with obvious consequences.
5. If I were to guess, I’d say we have a much higher per-capita rate of farming accidents which are (rightly) counted as road deaths – for example tractor crashes involving very young or underage farm hands losing control of enormous modern agricultural machinery.