RSA figures show that cost of crash deaths and injuries in 2005 was €1.44 billion, reports Tim O'Brien
The financial cost of road deaths and injuries in 2005 was €1.44 billion, according to detailed figures released yesterday by the Road Safety Authority.
The figures contained in the report, Road Collision Facts 2005, also indicate that while significant decreases in fatalities were recorded for all other road users, the numbers of people who died in cars rose from 218 in 1996 to 222 in 2005.
The report, which predates the introduction of random breath-testing in July 2006, revealed 27,807 vehicle collisions were reported to the Garda that year, among them 396 fatalities.
Some 9,318 people were injuried and 21,274 collisions involved material damage only. The fatality rate per 100,000 of the population was 9.6, an increase of 0.3 per cent on the previous year.
While the most dangerous time to be on the State's roads appears to be between four and six in the evening - a feature ascribed to fatigue on the part of those returning from work - the highest number of fatalities occurred in the early hours of the morning.
The figures show that 30 per cent of all fatal crashes involved only one vehicle, and the period with the highest number of fatal crashes was in the early hours of the morning, at weekends.
These are the hours normally associated with drink driving and figures show that in 2005 100 people, almost one-quarter of all those killed, lost their lives in the hours between 9am and 3am. The report confirmed the worst days of the week were Saturdays and Sundays which accounted for 177 fatalities, or 45 per cent of the total. The days of the week with the fewest associated fatalities were Tuesdays and Wednesdays when 67 people were killed in 2005.
The worst month for fatalities was October, when 44 people died. The lowest number was recorded in June with 22 deaths.
But the figures also showed there were some successes over the 10-year period from 1996. The number of pedestrians killed dropped from 115 to 74. Recent post-2006 experience has shown that the numbers of pedestrians being killed, while roughly static, is rising as a portion of all road fatalities.
The number of pedal cyclists killed fell during the period from 22 to 10, a fall of more then half and a feature which might question the reasoning for Dublin City Council's proposed reduction in city speed limits.
Motorcyclists continued to be a feature of the fatalities with little reduction over the 10 years. Numbers killed fell from 58 to 56.
Success was, however, achieved in a significant reduction in the number of overall injuries which in 1996 stood at 13,772, but which in 2005 had declined to 9,714.
As regards the locations of crashes, Tipperary South had just five fatalities in 2005, as did Roscommon. Dublin had 41 while Cork had 39.
The 10-year period to 2005 covers the lifetime of the Government's first five-year road safety strategy, and two of the three years of the second road safety strategy which ended in 2006.
The high cost of deaths and serious injuries, at €1.44 billion during 2005, also indicates that economist Dr Peter Bacon, and the last two chairmen of the former national safety council Cartan Finegan and Eddie Shaw, were correct in their appraisal that Government investment in road safety would provide a financial as well as humanitarian return.
But in a commentary with the figures, the RSA highlighted the fatality rate of 185 per million registered vehicles in the Republic in 2005, as against a rate of 346 a decade earlier. Nevertheless the report noted that for all the advantages of vehicular transport, deaths and serious injuries were unacceptable and it remarked "much remains to be done".