Increase in road deaths - questions need to be asked

People don't care.

The culture thrives on profit, speed, drama and death. So long as more people are driving, buying, maintaining, fueling cars and so long as the tax payer pumps more money into roads, infrastructure and maintenance, it's all good.

For the people directly involved in a road accident it's an absolute tragedy that never ends. For everyone else it's click bait on the Irish Independent.

they couldn't be bothered unfortunately

I will say it again if people could upload dash cam footage of dangerous driving to garda .people will be lot more Cautious then . I even if see car in front has dash cam won't pass out on Continuous white line even if it's safe to do so

That's regional news, which I suppose is fine to report on.

I'm talking about the National news, like the Six one news for example.

Thats a good point - people vote for what affects them - for drivers, they dont see themselves at risk.

That brilliant statistic that came out in the US holds here too - that 90% of drivers think they are better than the average driver.

Bild isn't exactly regional news. It's sold all over Germany (although it's a rag tbh).

Road accidents would feature in regional TV news (Germany is a federation of states, so these regions are pretty large - for example the state of Hessen has 6 million people and Bavaria has 13 million) and bigger accidents (for example a bus crash a few days ago with 5 dead) would feature on national TV programs like Tagesschau.

And well known to those who fail to drive to the known condition, generally.

I don't disagree with anything you say, but often, the 'bad roads' is used as part of the general tactic of absolving drivers of responsibility and blaming anything and everything else for an 'accident'. We are where we are with the roads, so drivers need to drive to the conditions around them.

If you look at the linked data for 431 driver fatalities only, 362 had coronial files, and 334 had toxicology results available, 122 (37%) were positive for Alcohol & 45 (13%) for Cocaine.

Remember again that this data is only for drivers who died, and ignoring that data is intentionally presented that you can't tell how many drivers didn't test positive for something, the RSA data analysts did manage to get some important qualifiers in the small print which may or may not answer your question:

1. Anything over 20mg/100ml counts as Positive for the purpose of this chart.
2. "A positive toxicology result does not imply impairment".

I'm not for a moment advocating or excusing drink or drug driving, and it's clearly an issue to be tackled, but equally I think this data is massaged in order to add more shock value, when the important thing is the truth (not just in the smallprint) if you want to actually solve the problem.

The vast majority of drivers can (rightly or wrongly) can legally drink 2.5 times what would count at a positive result here - a mixed message at minimum, and while I don't disbelieve the cocaine figure from seeing how endemic it's use is in pubs in Dublin, like cannabis it can be detected 2-3 days after use.

Assigning root causes to Alcohol, Cannabis and Speeding, while at the same time making those definitions far looser than the law permits, is not a good strategy, and IMO fuels complacency among everyone else. I'm not above the drink drive limit, so I'm safe. I'm not about the speed limit, so I'm safe. Legal ≠ Safe.

https://www.rsa.ie/docs/default-source/road-safety/r4.1-research-reports/safe-road-use/contributory-factors-and-driver-fatalities-examining-key-dangerous-behaviours.pdf?Status=Master&sfvrsn=6d8cfbbb_3

I wonder if there are any figures for the amount of road accidents that occur whilst a driver is on their mobile phone.

A driver travelling at 30 km/h who glances at their phone for 3 seconds will travel blind for 25 metres. That's nearly a quarter of a football pitch.

Construction sites aren't dangerous. Construction workers are. Who needs health and safety standards, just blame idiot people