A mum who lost her son in a road traffic crash six-years-ago has described new figures showing the scale of Northern Ireland’s road deaths as “devastating”.
The rate of road deaths in Northern Ireland continues to be much higher than other parts of the UK, road safety charity Brake has revealed ahead of Road Safety Week (November 17-23).
Across the UK, 1,695 people died on the roads in 2023 and 28,967 were seriously injured – with road deaths and serious injuries showing no significant signs of reduction.
So far in 2024 (until November 14) 57 people have been killed in road traffic collisions in Northern Ireland. That’s the same number as the same date in 2023, and already two more than the whole of 2022.
There have been two fatalities this month alone, including 29-year-old Eoin Lynch, from Castlederg who died following a crash in the Orchard Road area and 42-year-old Yevhenii Ivanenko who passed away after a two-vehicle collision in Enniskillen on the Derrylin Road as he was coming home from work.
And though the 2023 figure for Northern Ireland fell by 1% compared to the previous year, 951 people were killed or seriously injured on our roads, making them the most dangerous by head of population across the UK.
According to Monica Heaney – who lost her son Karl following a crash back in May 2018 – the slow process of trying to make road improvements is hurting the efforts to reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries.
While progress had been made on the notorious A5 corridor between Derry and Aughnacloy, a stretch of road which has claimed almost 60 lives since improvements were first planned some 15 years ago, Ms Heaney has been campaigning for vital work to be done on the A1 between Lisburn and Newry.
It was along the A1 dual-carriageway road that her son was killed in a collision near Banbridge.
While her energies have been channelled into campaigning for improvements, she has also been volunteering with Road Safe NI, supporting hundreds of others who have lost loved ones through road traffic accidents.
“Since Karl’s death I have been volunteering with Road Safe NI and have developed support services through The Road Ahead campaign,” she said.
“It is devastating for us to see the number of collisions is showing no sign of slowing.
“People have no idea of the trail of devastation that follows these collisions. Lives are shattered forever,” she said.
“The frustrating thing is that the majority can be avoided if we could all take responsibility for road safety.
“We know the A1 upgrade is moving closer,” she added. “But it’s still behind schedule and every road user using that road is vulnerable and at high risk of being involved in a serious collision.
“We are currently supporting so many people affected by that road through our support services, but sadly we expect this number to continue to rise while we wait for work to start.”
According to statistics released, in 2023 the Mid and East Antrim council area saw the biggest increase in road casualties, with the number killed or seriously injured up 56% from 2022.
There have also been significant rises in Fermanagh and Omagh (up 24.2%) and Ards and North Down (up 23.5%) and Antrim and Newtownabbey (up 17.2%) while the figure rose in Derry and Strabane by 10.2%.
The overall total did fall by 1.5% in 2023, but still came in just short of 1,000 people killed or seriously injured (951) for the year.
Belfast saw the largest decrease in road casualties between 2022 and 2023 – the number of people killed or seriously injured on roads in the borough falling by 21.8%, from 170 to 133.
The statistics show that in 2019 some 8,872 total casualties were recorded, and while that figures dropped in 2020 to 6,487, the first year of Covid lockdowns, it has been steadily rising ever since. In 2023 it was back to near pre-Covid levels, with 7,985 casualties.
UK Road Safety charity Brake is now calling on the government to support a new Road Victims’ Charter which demands essential action for road victims.
A survey carried out by the charity showed 79% of people believe families bereaved or seriously injured from a road crash should be able to access the same level of support as families of homicide victims.
Ross Moorlock, chief executive at Brake, said: “Every road victim deserves the very highest standard of support and for that to happen we need a coordinated approach and national standards that meet best practice for post-crash response. We need national, multi-year funding for the provision of support to the affected road victim community.
“Our families have told us what they want and what they need – and that includes recognition of the trauma of sudden road death and injury, parity with other victim groups, sentencing to fit the crime and lessons learned to prevent future road death and injury.”
by Realistic_Ad959
14 comments
Moved here from London, roads are shite, driving is atrocious.
Just saw a woman pull out from a farm lane and nearly clean up a fella on a motorbike. Didn’t even look. Retests for blind old bats please.
Perhaps the current focus by Northern Ireland Road Safety Partnership (NIRSP) aren’t fit for purpose then?
The current focus being speed detection operations using the G4S operated speed camera vans.
Statistics from PSNI showed that the top three principal causation factors for 618 Killed or Seriously Injured collisions were:
•Inattention or attention diverted (I.e. phone use) [21.8%]
•Impairment by drugs or alcohol – rider driver. [13.6%]
•Overtaking on offside (driver’s side) without care. [11.5%]
[Speeding being joint 5th, with turning right without care, on 9.4%]
Of the 5635 casualty collisions in 2023, speeding [5.5%] was 9th (of 10) principal causation factors, while the top three were:
•Inattention or attention diverted [23.4%]
•Driving too close [18.7%]
•Emerging from a minor road without care [10.5%]
When was the last time you heard of or passed a police checkpoint where they were breathalysing, vs. hearing about speed camera vans?
The Fatal Five from the PSNI are:
1) Drink/Drug Driving
2) Speeding
3) Careless Driving
4) No Seatbelt
5) Use of Mobile Phone
Yet one of those five seems to have a disproportionate operation for detection/policing.
[Link containing source of statistics on a post I made previously with pie charts](https://www.reddit.com/r/northernireland/s/cpxdA0sgVe)
Edit: Just to add, while BelTel lists 57 deaths, we are currently on 59 (as at 11:59pm 21st November) – one more death on our roads than this time last year.
I’ve been driving around 6 years mixturroads A and B roads mainly.
Drove mainland UK few times.
What’s the reason that NI drivers are so behind and causing all these deaths?
Just reading this article, thought I would look up the detailed trend analysis from 2023 from the PSNI: [2023 Detailed Trends Report.pdf](https://www.psni.police.uk/sites/default/files/2024-06/2023%20Detailed%20Trends%20Report.pdf)
Road safety constantly targets advertising to young drivers in NI, but when you look at the figures, 35–49 (mostly males) are the group responsible for the most at fault collisions (Table 2.4). If this doesn’t imply the need for retesting, I don’t know what else does.
It’s because the roads are shit.
There’s yapping about the A1 again. There is fuck all wrong with the A1 and most of our roads, it’s the mindless fuckwits that use them. Speeding tells a small part of the story, thinking over the last week alone I seen the following:
– Reversing down the M1 sliproad at Sprucefield
– twice I’ve seen trailers hung over the overtaking lane on the A1, one was a car, the other a tractor
– car coming onto A1 at underpass at Dromore and straight across to the overtaking lane without looking, almost took 3 cars out
– main roundabout at Sprucefield today, 40 ft lorry off the M1 and just ploughed on without even slowing down as we were on roundabout indicating to come off left towards Lisburn causing us to have to emergency stop
– various cars, vans and lorries changing lanes without looking on the M1
All potential heavy accidents, people have the act of driving 3rd or 4th on their priority lists while actually driving and arsing about on the road with their finger up their hole and mind elsewhere.
*Edit: Terminology changed to correct what I called the right hand lane, because that’s important in the grans scheme apparently*
Drivers in NI are horrendous, literally the worst drivers I’ve seen anywhere in Europe. I don’t know if it’s lack of exposure to multi lane roads, or just terrible driving instruction, but my blood pressure is through the roof every time I’m home
It’s the poor road quality for the most part. It’s insane that most rural roads are 60 when they are barely wide enough for two cars. Momentarily lapses on those roads at those speeds greatly increases the likelihood of an accident.
I’ve been in 3rd world countries with better road systems.
Figures are definitely devastating. Especially on a small island where everyone knows everyone. When someone dies it devastates the family as well as the community. The roads themselves are undeniably deadly but an overwhelming amount of drivers are complete cunts on the road with an astonishing lack of self awareness or humility. Do you really need to be doing 60 down a dark, windy, barely paved country road in your obnoxiously large SUV when it’s raining with your retina burning led lights? No. Also, indicate and do not drive up people’s arses, especially if the person is driving slowly. If someone is in the middle lane on the motorway or driving slow on any road, take it as the clue it is that they may not be familiar with the road and stop acting like aggressive dicks. A lot of people here live in very small worlds and seem to forget that they’re not special in general but definitely not special behind the wheel. Until people change their attitudes the roads will always be deadly
A union of equals
Meanwhile groups like the ‘Alternative A5 Alliance’ do everything they can to stop and delay the much needed A5 upgrade. Utter selfish bastards.
Almost all near misses I have are as a result of really poor overtaking , drivers here are obsessed with overtaking.I drove a little Hyundai of my mother’s for a week and noticed that drivers automatically tried to overtake me.There seemed to be a perception of small vehicle/ probably older driver so I’ve a god given right to pass it.It didn’t matter what speed I was doing, they had to overtake.
Newry to Belfast..you can’t see a bloody thing once the sun goes down, throw in some bad weather, lethal!
Comments are closed.