Gardaí appeal to drivers to help reduce bank holiday fatalities

A 125 km/h crash has the same impact on a human body as falling from nine storeys, according to the television commercial.

The New Zealand ad shows a family sitting in a car suspended in the air, before it smashes into the concrete 75 feet below.

It won't air on Irish screens, but in the run up to the June bank holiday weekend, the Road Safety Authority (RSA) and gardaí like to use it as an illustration in briefings on the ferocious consequences of high speed collisions.

With the coming long weekend and its accompanying heavy traffic volumes, the challenge is often about finding new ways, aside from bald statistics, to get the driver safety message across: speed kills.

"[Statistics] qualify the argument; it makes a big difference to the way people actually behave. What we are trying to do here is change driver behaviour," said chief superintendent Mark Curran of the Garda National Traffic Bureau at the launch of its awareness campaign on Tuesday.

The statistics are stark. While it reduced to two last year, there were five deaths over the three-day break in 2013 and six in 2012. In the last five years, 17 people have died, not to mention 45 serious injuries.

This short time period also acts as an unwelcome watershed in a calendar year of road traffic statistics with summer ushering in higher volumes of crashes.

Since 2010, 256 people have been killed between June and August.

Moyagh Murdock, RSA chief executive said: “People assume that there are more risks in the wintertime because of the poor weather, poor road conditions and more hours of darkness. But the opposite is true. Summertime is more dangerous.”

The majority of fatalities occur on rural roads (73 per cent). Counties Cork and Dublin recorded the highest level of road deaths between 2010 and 2014, with 25 and 24 respectively, followed by Co Donegal (22), Kerry (17) and Mayo (15).

Car drivers pay the highest price with 33.6 per cent of deaths. Their passengers account for 23.7 per cent, motorcyclists for 15 per cent and pedestrians, 11.9 per cent.

However, as chief superintendent Curran points out, statistics can also be positive. “If you have a 1 per cent reduction in the general speed around the country, it can reduce the fatality rate by 4 per cent,” he said.

Targeting driver fatigue this bank holiday weekend, Applegreen garages will provide free coffee on Friday, May 29th and Monday, June 1st between 2pm and 8pm in 17 of its major outlets.