Irish people’s addiction to their mobile phones has reached new levels. Gardaí report that motorists on roads such as Dublin’s M50 are regularly watching streamed shows on services such as Netflix as they crawl through rush-hour traffic. It is a story of our times, encapsulating not only the inability to ignore “ the mobile” but also the long commutes facing many people on increasingly congested roads.
The most obvious concern, of course, is road safety. Some 24,000 motorists were caught using mobile phones last year, an 11 per cent rise on 2024. And this is just scratching the surface of the scale of mobile use by drivers, as to be summonsed the motorist must be caught in the act.
When the phone is not in the motorist’s hand – as is the case for someone watching a TV show – then the offence is likely to be for careless driving, rather than mobile use. But either way mobile phone use on the roads is a huge issue, with gardaí reporting cases of extreme recklessness, often by younger drivers – in some cases making videos of themselves and responding to messages – but also mobile use across all age groups.
In some other countries, notably the Netherlands and the UK, AI cameras are used which can detect mobile use, providing a much greater deterrent. In Ireland, given the slow roll-out of average speed cameras which can measure speed between two different fixed points, the likelihood of AI cameras underpinning enforcement still seems a long way off.
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Mobile use is one of a number of behaviours – along with speeding, drinking and drug use – which have pushed up road deaths and injuries in recent years. With figures showing that delays and periods when vehicles are static on roads like the M50 are rising, the temptation to glance at the mobile – or worse – is rising. Drivers are not getting the message.
A common result of these poor driving habits are crashes leading to delays for thousands of commuters on roads such as the M50 every day. But we also know from the figures that deaths and injuries on the roads continue to rise, too, not only for motorists but also for cyclists, motorcyclists and pedestrians. While there are a whole range of reasons for this, distracted drivers are a vital contributor. And as well as phones, modern cars also include a range of other touchscreens, alerting drivers to messages, calls and emails as well as controlling radio and entertainment.
In our cars, as everywhere else, distraction from a mobile phone is all too easy. The problem is that, while driving, research from the UK department of transport shows that mobile use makes you four times more likely to be involved in an accident. Despite all this, public attitudes quietly accept drivers glancing at their mobiles, enforcement remains sporadic and penalties too low.
