'People are not listening' to Christmas road safety campaign, warns senior garda

At a roads policing event in West Dublin, Garda Superintendent Stephen McCauley said that, despite an ongoing safety campaign, the number of arrests of people operating vehicles while intoxicated has increased exponentially since the start of December, with 170 such arrests made in the last week.

Senior gardaí are "very worried" at the surge in arrests of people driving under the influence of both drugs and alcohol, and also that "people are not listening" to the Christmas road safety campaign.

In the last week, six more people have died on the roads. This brings total fatalities for 2025 to 184 so far. 

That means the country is on course to record a significantly higher death toll on the roads for 2025 than 2024, when 167 people lost their lives over the same period — a more than 10% increase.

At a roads policing event in West Dublin, Garda Superintendent Stephen McCauley said that, despite an ongoing safety campaign, the number of arrests of people operating vehicles while intoxicated has increased exponentially since the start of December, with 170 such arrests made in the last week.

“Those numbers unfortunately have been steadily increasing since we launched the campaign [on December 1]. So people are not listening,” he said.

'Very worrying trend'

The split of the 170 figure is 56% for alcohol-related offences, and 46% for “other intoxicants” — including prescription drugs — a fact Supt McCauley described as “a very worrying trend”.

“It is close to 50:50, it is not far off and a very worrying trend. Drugs have remained a big issue over the last number of years, and those figures are quite worrying."

He said that, in the past week, gardaí have conducted over 2,000 checkpoints, with over 1,000 of those having been mandatory intoxicant checkpoints.

“Our first message is always ‘do not take intoxicants, either drink or drugs, before you get into your car'. There have been 170 arrests in the last week for intoxicated driving. 

"That is hugely disappointing when we have so many messages put out there between ourselves and our partners about safety on the roads,” the superintendent said.

In terms of speeding offences, he said 459 people have been detected driving with excess speed in the past week — not including other tickets which have yet to be counted such as those picked up by roadside camera vans. 

All told, just less than 5,400 speeding offences have been recorded since the start of December when all forms of detection are accounted for, gardaí said.

The top speeding offences in that period include a driver recorded travelling at 192km/h in a 100km/h speed zone at Kilmeaden in Waterford, and another doing 122km/h in a 60km/h zone on the N15 at Oola in Limerick.

Another 453 tickets, meanwhile, have been handed out over the last seven days for distracted driving, which the superintendent described as “one of the biggest causes of fatalities on our roads”.

'Wear your seatbelt'

“Put the mobile phone away. Put other forms of distraction away when you’re driving a car, and please wear your seatbelt,” he said, noting that belting up “gives you the best defence against serious injuries if you are involved in a crash”.

Meanwhile, more than 650 vehicles have been seized for a variety of motoring offences under the Road Traffic Act since the Christmas safety campaign began.

Supt McCauley said it is “hard to put your finger on” just why offences have ramped up to such an extent.

“All I can say is people are obviously not abiding by the message that we’re delivering. 

"If people just slowed down, drove the appropriate speed for a road condition, minimise distractions and never, ever take intoxicants, I’m sure we could make a difference,” he said, while adding that lowering the statistics is not just the responsibility of the gardaí. He added the speed limit is "not a target".

“We’re enforcement, and we do that well. We’re out all the time, not just Christmas, but it’s everyone’s responsibility,” he said.

Of the six deaths on the roads over the last week, three people — two men and a woman — lost their lives in separate road crashes in Limerick, Monaghan, and Tipperary, all within the space of 12 hours.