Meanwhile on the Roads...

that's different as it's deliberately using a car as a murder weapon. People have been convicted here for that too:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/driver-who-deliberately-ran-down-man-with-car-found-guilty-of-murder-1.918931

The Monaghan crash was due to extreme recklessness. If it had involved anything other than a car, it might have resulted in a manslaughter prosecution, but because the crime of Death by Dangerous Driving exists, the DPP will generally go for that as it's easier to get a conviction.

Next shiny tool incoming

Police announced they'd ticketed 20 motorists for distracted driving after using a drone to zoom in and record them using their phones on May 7.

Why use a relatively inexpensive drone when you can buy a HGV and use that instead?

Dublin City area, but it is a national issue

School wardens .. have been physically assaulted, told they would be “sorted out” and had lollipop signs knocked from their hands by irate motorists. In one incident, a taxi driver kept moving through the crossing, even as children were trying to cross the road to get to school. “He roared at the school warden, threatened to come back tomorrow to get the warden and drove the car up to the warden so that it touched them.” https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/school-traffic-wardens-abused-assaulted-and-threatened-by-irate-drivers-and-cyclists/a14912738.html

They should, but wouldn't you think there would be enough motivated parents around to deal with drivers like this, either by direct intervention or by recording and reporting?

3 women killed in 24 hours. It's quite unbelievable isn't it, I mean if there was ANY other cause for that the world would quite rightly come to a halt, but, no, they're just road "accidents" and the world scrolls on and strolls on :(

Cycling hasnt seen the same upward trend as pedestrians. After a reduction to 20ish we are now killing 40 plus pedestrians a year.

Regional roads with no hard shoulder and no speed limit enforcement is a deadly combination.

The biggest factor is the entitlement of drivers; the first reaction to a pedestrian on a high speed road with no hard shoulder should be braking. Braking gives the driver, pedestrian and any oncoming vehicle options.

A minimal steering input seems to be the norm.

As an aside no one fcuks with the lollipop lady outside my son's school. A lollipop man or woman should be treated the same as a Garda on the road.

Countryside is currently alive with large tractors pulling all sorts of yokes by young fellas. There's always going to be fatalities with the existing regulations

Four females slaughtered on our highways

Provisional garda figures for the first three months:

"They also said there are 130 road traffic collisions every day, 23 drivers are arrested every day for drink or drug driving while over 70,000 Fixed Charge Notices (FCNs) have been issued.

More than 31,000 of those FCNs are for speeding, over 6,000 are for mobile phone use and 4,400 were issued to provisional or learner drivers."

That's just the tiny proportion of detections but if 31/70k FCNs are for speeding what are the other 28k in relation to?

The IRHA rationale for this is seriously dubious. On RTE Radio 1 Drive Time, he gave an example of a truck driver not noticing a slow moving tractor ahead and coming up on it really fast. Then, having to take emergency action and possibly endangering other vehicles or, heavens above, having to over/undertake on the hard shoulder to avoid hitting the tractor.

Surely this is the truck driver not paying attention and not reading the road ahead and adjusting speed to the picture they see ahead. They do not want to slow down and some even swim the lanes, pulling in, out, in rather than slow down, thus endangering other vehicles.

While driving, I had one clown just this evening refuse to slow as I merged well ahead of them onto the Naas Road in heavy rain. The middle lane was busy, and I had traffic ahead of me but was still doing 70/80 and approaching the 80kmph stretch as well. I stayed in the left lane and matched the speed of the traffic ahead. The truck driver, rather than slow, drove right up to my rear bumper and flashed. I put hazards on. they beeped, flashed and beeped.

Then for good measure, because they had to slow, they just pulled into middle lane in front of another oncoming vehicle and skimmed past me over the lane markings, in heavy rain giving me zero visibility from their spray, and honking the horn. Totally unacceptable driving..

All they had to do, and shold have done, was gradually brake to match the speed of traffic ahead and allow me to merge without the bully tactics.

I hope the farmers win and the IRHA members (truck drivers) get the long overdue 80kmph /100kmph restriction and mandatory drive in left /inner mst lane restrictions, just like they must do when driving on the continent. Reason: The danger they pose to other road users.

I hate generalisations but a large cohort of truck driver are just bullys and very unprofessional/discourteous drivers.