Ireland has the lowest death rate across Europe on motorways

32 comments
  1. Once got a taxi from the airport in Bulgaria on the way to Bansko.

    Taxi was in bits, no working seatbelts, driver didn’t bother with his. Motorway was also in bad shape, driver tailgating the whole way, easily hitting 140km. The rocking and creaking of the taxi wasn’t reassuring either…

  2. A few here overthinking it. Go on a holiday in Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Czech Republic etc. and get a taxi. They’re fucking insane. Much safer roads here.

  3. One thing that helps is our motorway network is relatively new and built to a good standard overall

    Also we have some motorways in particular that potentially never needed to be constructed as full motorway. Ones like the M9 or M18 or the M6 after athlone. So those wouldn’t have huge traffic volumes

  4. Recently moved to Ireland and I have to say that Irish drivers are really courteous and law abiding, especially compared to South Africa. People keep to the speed limit, there is virtually no tailgating, they indicate if they want to turn, almost everyone gives you space if you need to change lanes, very little impatience. Your extremely narrow backroads do scare me a little I have to admit hehe.

  5. Lovely to see that the actual speed limit has nothing to do with it. Population density on the other hand seems to be the culprit here.

  6. Relatively new motorways, relatively well maintained, with relatively light traffic, in particular freight. I’m just back from a holiday in Germany, and holy feck those autobahns are busy.

  7. Listen, wasn’t Gay Byrne great. Sure he’s the best host the Late Late ever had, that Tubridy is as wooden in performance as his poxy puppet body, and Gaybo also helped us stop murdering each other on roads. A great lad altogether.

  8. Also the smallest highway network, very few cities are connected by highways, half of the country has no highways. This surprised me a lot coming from Spain were the whole country is covered and can travel most of your journey anywhere on a highway.

  9. I’m in Portugal now and got into my friend’s car (local) in the back passenger seat. Of course I immediately put on my seatbelt and he says to me “oh that’s not required by law here, only the front seatbelts are. If it’s too uncomfortable, you don’t have to wear your seatbelt”. Funny enough I responded “Thanks to years of traumatising road safety tv adverts back home, I will always wear a seatbelt”. It’s fair to say the RSA achieved exactly what they intended. Credit where credit is due.

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