Donegal accidents and deaths.

Soc_Alt

It seems that every week there are news articles abouts deaths caused on the roads or farms in Donegal.

May all rest in peace.

My question is why does there seem to be so many accidents like this occurring in Donegal compared to other counties?

Rows Grower

As you were typing that myself and the wife were discussing the exact same thing.

creeper1

There is a culture of rallying and that in Donegal. I feel it is more popular there than the average county though I don't have statistics to back that up.

Not saying dangerous driving was a factor here.

We must be very close to having the technology that allow driverless cars.

I firmly believe all these deaths are avoidable and driverless technology is the way forward.

I genuinely hope human driving will be made illegal and we'll order rides by app.

People are just a danger to themselves.

28064212

Is there actually more, or do you just have a perception that there are more?

• According to the HSA, there was one work-related fatality in Donegal in 2023: https://www.hsa.ie/eng/news_events_media/news/press_releases_2024/health_and_safety_authority_reports_43_work-related_fatalities_in_2023.html
• According to the RSA, there were 10 road deaths in Donegal in 2023: https://www.rsa.ie/news-events/news/details/2024/01/01/road-deaths-in-2023-increase-by-19

Neither of which suggest Donegal as a notable outlier

Gregor Samsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591180#Comment_122591180

Maybe you're married to the OP.

magicbastarder

Last year, mayo recorded more fatalities than Donegal (12 Vs 10) despite having a lower population. But there have been 13 already this year in Donegal, so it's a bad year so far.

NIMAN

Donegal would often pop up on Boards as a place where there's a lot of road deaths. I think we are like anywhere else, we have our bad driving and deaths, but perhaps people have a bit of confirmation bias and are waiting for a donegal road death so they can say, "there you go, another one ".

As someone who lives in Donegal, I'd watch our accident rate in the news. We had a very quiet period there for a long time, and then a sudden surge. Of the recent deaths, 2 lads were actually from Derry, and a woman was knocked down, so not a crash per se.

Have we bad drivers? Of course we do. But all counties have. I have been all over this country and seen pretty terrible driving standards everywhere. The North as well. It's not solely Donegal, but some folk can't wait for a death in Donegal so they can point it out.

Have you ever driven in Donegal? There is an appalling standard of driving up there in general. Bundoran is full of boy racers with their stupid mufflers. The road from Donegal to Mayo is a death trap.

DL and LH registration plates, definitely worth staying away from when you encounter them on the roads.

magicbastarder

I think people also associate Donegal with road deaths because several of the very high fatality count crashes have occurred there over the last decade or two.

NIMAN

Obviously no final figures for 2024 yet, but Donegal wasn't even in the Top 5 for last year

downthemiddle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591345#Comment_122591345

The road from Donegal to Mayo is called Sligo.

zell12

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591377#Comment_122591377

and Loveless Leitrim

downthemiddle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591380#Comment_122591380

Nobody remembers those three miles.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591377#Comment_122591377

Haha woops I meant road from Donegal to Sligo😂 dodgy stretch!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591380#Comment_122591380

N15, That's the one. Treated like it's an autobahn by the boy racers of Donegal.

magicbastarder

I was in carndonagh for a family funeral a few years ago, and it was quite frankly astounding to see the s***housery several dozen assholes were pulling in their boy racers car through and around the centre of the town, up to about 1 or 2am. God forbid anyone trying to get any sleep within about half a kilometre. And they clearly weren't worried about getting in trouble for it.

ednwireland

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591418#Comment_122591418

I think the road from Sligo to tuam is worse

AndrewJRenko

Let's stop calling road deaths accidents for a start.

https://www.roadpeace.org/working-for-change/crash-not-accident/

tayto lover

Rally mad county.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591425#Comment_122591425

Not that said behaviour is ok, but few road deaths/injuries are attributed to people's exhausts being loud and doing donuts in the middle of the night.

The issue by and large is poor road design. Most of the deaths happen in the same spots year after year. Poor sightlines, road markings and a lack of lighting through villages on main roads. Latest death is in Quigley's point as were previous 2? And I think 1 more this year. That road has seen double digits in the past few years combined I believe. It's clearly the road design

Thelonious Monk

any time i've been in donegal it feels like one vast sprawling housing estate, and there's no public transport, so you must have to drive every time you leave the house. it's the best example of bad planning, or zero planning, you'll ever find. so it doesn't surprise me people are dying in crashes, drink driving must be a big problem there.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591200#Comment_122591200

Beat me to it, I'd be curious if it isn't similar to 'Florida Man' syndrome (Florida's freedom of info laws make it easy for low-effort journalism to crawl vast public records), in this case where journalists in Donegal simply may be having a tendency to consider it newsworthy and make reports on it more frequently than other counties. In other words a reporting/publication bias going on.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591323#Comment_122591323

IME the border has a negative effect on both sides (I'm from Derry). Most people respect the law no matter which side they are, but the bad elements know that in practice they can get away with stuff on the other side of the border more easily.

Bad roads are part of the problem, but that stretch from the border to Letterkenny is terrible for accidents and deaths precisely because it's a long, straight stretch of road in good condition. You can't win, it seems.

NIMAN

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591799#Comment_122591799

I'm not sure where last night's fatality took place, bur re: the 2 young Derry lads who died a couple of weeks ago, I've seen bridge they hit and I can't fathom how they hit it. It was a straight bit of road, and I would guess the car simply veered off the road, or the wheel caught the ditch or something and forced them off the road. Why this would happen we might never hear. Perhaps the driver was glancing at a phone? It only takes a second or two of taking your eye off the road for a car to drift off and get into an irrecoverable position.

But I would agree that road design is often an issue, but I'd also agree that it's mostly bad driving that are the cause, and excess speed. If the roads were inherently dangerous, then how come thousands of other drivers manage to drive the same roads without issue?

I think we are too quick to jump on fatalities in this country as someone else's fault. Quite often it's the driver to blame. Plain and simple. They were either not paying attention, driving dangerously or going too fast for the conditions.

drury..

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591826#Comment_122591826

Its not just the long straight road that's the problem

The problem is the N roads cross through loads of minor roads when built creating dangerous junctions everywhere

AyeGer

I’m from Donegal and we do have an issue with dangerous and aggressive driving imo. Aggressive overtaking, tailgating, speeding, lack of indicators etc.

Only a few weeks back outside Lifford in the middle of the day on a busy road, a northern reg car stopped and started doing doughnuts. I’m not sure of the difference between doughnuts and diffing but they were going round in circles burning up the rubber on their tyres. Cars coming both directions had to stop and wait for them to finish.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591920#Comment_122591920

Ok but that's still speed, and possibly inattention.

There was a man killed some years back, at his stand selling potatoes on a lay-by on that road. Either it's too dangerous to be there and the police need to put an end to it, or it's safe enough if people are attentive. It wasn't anything to do with junctions though.

L1011

Donegal has quite a lot of very, very wide N roads, on which the normal running speed is probably about ~110km/h to begin with, and on which drivers often overtake without checking for oncoming traffic because two cars will fit on one side of the road; if they're positioned for it it. Much of the N13, N14 and N15 are built to this standard.

That driving position (one car half in the hard shoulder, another hugging the centre line) becomes fatal if there's someone pulling out from a junction, someone broken down, etc etc. Have two drivers pushing it beyond what they can get away with and you now have a closing speed of 250km/h or so.

The bad roads are the R/L roads and some bits of the N56. These are not the accident blackspots.

Some of the more runway-alike bits are going to be converted to dual carriageway at some point - basically close up some of the side roads, skim off the top surface, resurface for four driving lanes and put a barrier down the middle - which will have a huge impact.

enricoh

Very spread out county, to go to the cinema for example could take an hours driving easy. Bringing kids to matches etc could take up your day. I'll bet Donegal drivers do more miles per year than most.

No motorways which is safest of all roads, lot of elderly plodding down the road and bad decisions overtaking them as a result.

beachhead

Driving in Donegal is a death trap. Majority of roads there are designed to kill people.Even those who obey traffic laws Boyracwrs etc don't come into it but includes a lot of the casualties

Victor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591200#Comment_122591200

Donegal is persistently bad on a per capita basis, as shown by the heavy black line here. If you combine the years from 2018 to 2023, only Tipperary (the pale blue line at the top) and Monaghan (the orange line at the top) are worse per capita.

selectamatic

100% confirmation bias.

Always see this when some young fella is involved in a fatal accident in Donegal. Post straight in about rallying, boy racers. Speeding etc. despite not actually knowing at all what may have caused the accident.

Never a dickie bird when these sort of accidents happen anywhere else in the country.

I say all that as someone with no connections to Donegal.

Fact is the roads have never been busier and quite a few of the old small two lane yet no white line roads are simply too narrow for modern traffic.

No matter what initiatives are brought in road death numbers will creep up in line with population growth.

Rows Grower

Everyone throwing out stats from last year and before and claiming Donegal is no different to other counties, anyone got any stats for this year or the last couple of months?

Donegal has deffo been in the news a lot recently for fatal road accidents.

NIMAN

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122592288#Comment_122592288

Yes it has been recently there's been 5 deaths in a month I think.

But before that, Donegal wasn't in the news for a road death in a long time.

Why is there never threads for 'another Mayo road death', or 'another Cork road death'?

Boy racers and idiot drivers aren't exclusive to Donegal. They are all over the country. We have poor quality roads up here too, always remember that. We have no motorways, a dearth of national roads.

Rows Grower

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122592341#Comment_122592341

I knew it would be recent horrendous stats. About a month ago we booked a week off to drive up there for a holiday next month and since then it's been scary the amount of accidents. I probably wouldn't have taken as much notice only for the fact we'll be driving up there for the first time.

Boy racers are nothing new to us, they come from all over Ireland to do their doughnuts on the roads not too far from us when they are following the Rally's. I personally don't have an issue with them but would like to see it more organised with lads in Hi Viz making sure ordinary motorists are not delayed for more than 5 minutes.

John_Rambo

They are the worst drivers in the country and there's a certain immatureness that prevails in men behind the wheel in Donegal that seems to leave when they hit around 75 or 80. Any time I'm in Donegal I am shocked at the carry on from all ages. When a "dangerous" road is improved it just means it will be driven faster on it.

I met a 60 year old man from Donegal in France and he was telling me a youngfella "left his mark" up the road from him (did doughnuts & left tyre marks) so he got his BMW and drove up to the spot and did some doughnuts himself, to show the youngfella how it's done. I thought he was joking.

drury..

I guess we'll take your word on all that ?

John_Rambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122595705#Comment_122595705

You go ahead and take what you want on all that. I'm not in the habit of making things up like that.

nolivesmatter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591345#Comment_122591345

I can't speak for the Sligo-to-Mayo part of the journey but Donegal-Sligo is a decent road IMO.

niloc1951

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591353#Comment_122591353

Such stats are meaningless without reference to a 'per kilometres driven' metric.

For example, number of fatalities per 100,000 kilometres.

magicbastarder

well, yes and no. they're not useless - but the death rate per capita, how likely someone is to die on the roads in any year, is surely the bottom line stat?

the post you were quoting was a bare count, regardless of population or distance driven.

anyway, one reason in ireland people do drive more is because the population is so dispersed, and donegal is possibly the poster child for that, certainly in many parts of the county.

JVince

I'm in Donegal at the moment. Letterkenny, buncrana, downings areas (golf heaven)

The boy racer mentality is crazy especially on inishowen where the prevalence of souped up cars is unbelievable.

Simply zero visibility of Garda. So zero chance of being caught.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122596771#Comment_122596771

This is complete misinformation. The other car involved remained at the scene and the driver was interviewed by gardai already. They are not looking for any other drivers or cars involved.

plodder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591418#Comment_122591418

I witnessed an atrociously reckless overtaking maneuver by a van on that road today. The car in front was possibly over cautious in not passing a slow vehicle. Van man couldn't wait and passes them both on a bend, expecting traffic on the other side to pull into the hard shoulder.

JVince

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122597029#Comment_122597029

Ok, but that's what was being said locally in ballyliffin. Probably mis information

circadian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122591826#Comment_122591826

At grade junctions along that stretch are the problem, merging from the R239 at Inch to the N13 is steep and a blind spot. Both Manor and Newton have high enough traffic levels and barely anyone slows down going through there. It's in good condition but it's not engineered to a standard to handle the amount or speed of traffic.

Rows Grower

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122597029#Comment_122597029

For some strange reason that poster is frequently spreading misinformation.

If he told me today was Tuesday I'd have to double check.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122599691#Comment_122599691

Its a complete lie and you are complicit in spreading it.

News and radio contradicts your gossip - the other driver was present at the scene and tested for drink & drugs, as confirmed by the local Superintendent.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122599765#Comment_122599765

At grade junctions are the problem for most roads not just in Donegal but nationwide, although Donegal has a very high prevalence of bad junctions on major roads.

The fact that so few roads are National primary or secondary status in Donegal likely doesn't help - the local authority lacks the expertise and the budget to make safe the huge network of R roads serving the county.

John_Rambo

I've heard all the excuses regarding the roads and the mountains being to blame but I still don't know why locals drive like morons on these roads when they're completely aware they're not suitable for high speeds, drink/drug driving and dangerous manoeuvres. Not that any roads are, but smaller rural R roads need to be driven on accordingly and with a bit of respect to neighbours and others.

JVince

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122600665#Comment_122600665

As I said, it was probably misinformation and I also corrected the post.

Checked today and the guy said he was talking about a single car accident the previous weekend where the two in the car scarpered.

Why so angry? Boy racers are a scourge in that part of Donegal. There are feck all gardai and this seems to make these scum think they can drive anyway they like without consequence - until they kill or seriously injure someone.

AyeGer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122598585#Comment_122598585

Very common manoeuvre in Donegal unfortunately.