More than 800 drivers caught for being under influence of alcohol or drugs over Christmas

One person per hour was found to have been intoxicated behind the wheel of a vehicle during An Garda Síochána’s Christmas road safety campaign.

The initiative, which ran from December 1st to 7am on Thursday, saw 818 arrests for driving under the influence, some 206 (25 per cent) of which were driving under the influence of drugs.

Garda Chief Supt Jane Humphries, who is responsible for road safety, said it was “beyond belief” that people thought it was still acceptable to drive under the influence as it was the biggest contributory factor to road deaths alongside inappropriate speed.

There was a total of 4,429 incidents in the 34 days from December 1st to January 4th. This was down 15 per cent on 2022/23 and 12 per cent on 2019/2020, the last pre-Covid-19 year.

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The number of road deaths decreased from 17 during the 2022/23 Christmas period to 14 this year though there were three deaths in the first two days of the new year. Serious injuries were down from 104 to 82 and material damage to vehicles from 4,497 to 3,982.

Non-serious injuries were up, though, from 374 in 2022/23 to 410 this year.

Chief Superintendent Humphries said the reduction in deaths and serious injuries on the roads this Christmas period was “not a good news story. We would like to see those reductions far lower than what they actually are.”

In 2023 the number of road fatalities at 184 on Irish roads was the highest since the 192 people recorded in 2014 and a 19 per cent increase on the year before.

She described last year’s statistics as “dreadful” and said they could only be tackled by better road design and engineering and education

Chief Superintendent Humphries said there had been a notable upward trend in terms of road deaths across Europe since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, but the causes of that are as yet known.

During the 34 day period, there were 15,542 speeding offences and 1,011 offences for the illegal use of mobile phones while driving and 291 people were fined for not wearing seat belts.

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