Weekend road carnage takes year's fatalities past 100

The number of people killed on the Republic’s roads this year topped 100 today.

The latest spate of accidents, which saw six road users die since the beginning of the weekend, brought the death toll in 2006 to 102.

On the day gardaí began enforcing 31 new penalty points offences, their colleagues were investigating four separate fatal crashes, which meant there were four more deaths so far this year than at the same point last year.

A motorist was killed at Rassan, on the main Dundalk to Castleblaney Road when his car went out of control, crashed off the roadway and burst into flames.

The incident was discovered at 9.30 this morning and the body of the single occupant of the car was removed to Louth County Hospital, Dundalk.

The identity of the deceased is not yet established, a garda spokesman said.

Meanwhile, a man and a woman in their late 20s or early 30s died in a car crash in Co Westmeath.

It is understood their vehicle crashed through a wall at the Department of Education building on the Ballymahon Road, Athlone, in the early hours of this morning.

Gardaí said the accident was discovered at 7.30am but it is thought it may have occurred several hours earlier.

A 62-year-old man also died from the injuries he received in a car crash at Urlingford in Co Tipperary yesterday afternoon.

The deceased was the driver of one of the cars and died yesterday evening at Kilkenny General Hospital.

He was the second person to die as a result of the two-car collision that occurred on the N8 Dublin to Cork road. A woman in her 40s was pronounced dead at the scene.

Elsewhere, Kevin Walsh, 16, from Bruff, Co Limerick, died when the car in which he was a back-seat passenger was struck from behind by a 4x4 vehicle at Toomevara, Co Tipperary, shortly after 5am on Saturday.