'Alarming' 8% of motorists caught using mobile phones while driving last year

As the bank holiday weekend road safety campaign continues, the RSA and An Garda Síochána appealed to drivers to avoid distractions. Stock picture: Alamy

An "alarming" 8% of motorists were detected using mobile phones while driving last year, the Road Safety Authority (RSA) has revealed, as gardaí appealed for drivers to avoid distractions going into the bank holiday weekend. 

As gardaí launched their latest road safety campaign — which started on Thursday and continues until 7am next Tuesday — RSA chief executive Sam Waide said its new survey on mobile phone usage "represents a deterioration in behaviour" when compared to the year previously.

“This is alarming because distracted driving due to handheld mobile device usage is one of the dangerous behaviours that leads to road traffic collisions,” Mr Waide said.

The bank holiday garda campaign will see every member on duty conducting road traffic enforcement activity, in addition to the normal dedicated bank holiday checkpoints seen across the country.

Christmas 2025 had seen a similar Garda drive to reduce the number of accidents on Irish roads, but one which broadly fell on deaf ears, with significant numbers of deaths, accidents and arrests for both drink and drug driving seen across the holiday period, a fact bemoaned repeatedly by senior road policing gardaí across the month of December.

Garda assistant commissioner with the roads policing and community engagement division, Catharina Gunne, said distracted driving was an ongoing issue, while underlining that driving is a task which “requires your full attention”.  

"When you pick up a mobile phone, read a message, or interact with any device behind the wheel, you are placing yourself, your passengers, and every other road user at risk," she said. 

No call, message, or notification is worth a life. Put the phone away, remove distractions, and stay focused on the road. 

While 2025 was poor for Ireland as a whole concerning deaths on the roads, 2026 to date has seen a slight improvement with eight deaths recorded in the first 27 days, compared with 14 over the same period in 2025.

Mayo and Donegal have the worst record in terms of road fatalities, new data shows.

The Connacht and Ulster counties are the worst by some distance when their relative populations are taken into account, according to the Road Safety Authority (RSA) annual report for 2024.

The four worst-performing counties that year were Dublin with 22 deaths, Mayo with 19, and Cork and Donegal with 18 and 17, respectively.

However, the populations of both Mayo and Donegal are dwarfed by Cork and Dublin. Mayo’s record equates to one death for every 7,223 people in the county, with Donegal’s standing at a death for every 9,784.

Carlow, Sligo, and Roscommon are the next three counties in order of road death prevalence.

The three counties with the fewest road deaths when population is taken into account were Laois, Tipperary, and Dublin.

Meanwhile, the RSA’s figures for serious injuries on the roads taken per head of population show Monaghan and Leitrim as the most dangerous.

Laois was the safest for road users in the country, both in terms of injuries and deaths.