Wrong-way driving on Irish motorways is now “out of control”, gardaí have warned, amid a 32 per cent increase in the number of incidents detected in 2026 so far.
Cars have been detected driving the wrong way down motorways 62 times so far this year, against 47 such incidents between January and mid-August 2025, data released to The Irish Times shows.
“These numbers show that these perpetrators are now out of control,” said Garda Representative Association (GRA) deputy general secretary James Morrisroe.
“This is no longer a trend, it’s a clear and present threat to every road user in the country.”
The data, from Transport Infrastructure Ireland’s (TII) Motorway Operations Control Centre, shows there were seven wrong-way driving detections between August 1st and 17th – more than in the entire month of July (six) and the same number as in June.
Though this figure is high, it is understood to represent an underreporting of the number of wrong-way driving incidents. TII’s data is based on camera detections and reports made by other drivers.
A source with close knowledge of Garda operations said the number of incidents so far this year was “meaningfully” higher than the detections suggest.
The agency’s camera network is predominantly focused on motorways in and around Dublin and Cork, with wrong-way driving in other areas less likely to be captured by the data.
It is understood that less camera coverage exists on regional motorways such as the M9, where five teenagers were killed early last Sunday morning while travelling on the wrong carriageway of the motorway, injuring four innocent people, including a seven-year-old.
The crash has led to an increased focus on the issue of wrong-way driving, but it is not an isolated incident and neither is the issue restricted to Ireland.
In England, seven people – including two police officers – died in a similar crash in the early hours of Saturday morning.
A Volkswagen Passat was travelling the wrong way down a motorway near Middlesbrough and collided with a police vehicle on the same road going in the right direction. The occupants of the Passat were all young males.
In addition to joyriding and dangerous driving incidents, the TII data includes accidental contraflow driving, with some instances of tourists or elderly drivers included in the data.
The State agency said there was “no specific time of year which shows a trend for more wrong-way events”.
However, since 2019 the peaks have been in March, June and September, while the periods with the lowest frequency of incidents were in February, July and November.
A spokesman for TII said that when its operations control centre is made aware of wrong-way driving, it issues a warning to motorists that there may be an oncoming vehicle ahead on the variable message signs placed on some motorways.
Morrisroe said the GRA has been demanding a “full roll-out of driver training (CPD2) and pursuit training for years, yet it seems that it must take a tragedy on this scale to finally push Garda management and Government into action”.
“It’s no longer time for soundbites and empty promises,” he said. “We need actual start and completion dates for this training, plus the necessary legislative change to support our members to do the job that is so urgently required.”