Messaging on road safety needs to be backed by enforcement 

A startling disregard for the rules of the road has led to a wave of fatalities but, without vital action, the numbers are doomed to rise

Members of the National Ambulance Service and Cork City Fire Brigade demonstrating a simulated car crash at the AXA Roadsafe Roadshow at the Silversprings Hotel in Cork.

“The value of my child, for the state of Ireland in this case is a two-year sentence.” These are the words of Cesar Ladeiro in conversation with Joe Duffy on RTÉ radio in February.

His son, eight-year-old, André Castro Ladeiro died on August 12, 2023, when he was run over with the green light in his favour at a pedestrian crossing in Carrigaline by John Moynihan. On February 10, Moynihan was jailed for three years, with the last suspended, for dangerous driving in a case where he pleaded guilty.

Speaking on Liveline after the sentencing, André's grief-stricken father said that “enforcement needs to happen, somehow”. "Any simple thing that we see on the road that is against the rules like this just make us mad. You cannot imagine how we boiled from inside seeing someone not stopping in a red light."

Anyone who tuned in or caught up on it via a podcast would have been affected. Hopefully, they would consider their own actions on the road and perhaps think twice about the impact of their decisions made behind the wheel.

If they missed that interview, perhaps they could think of the 174 people who were killed on Irish roads in 2024. A total of 174 spaces at Christmas dinner tables, 174 birthdays. Missing from weddings, at Friday nights in the pub, at the concerts, the hurling.

But hopes can be futile.

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Over the St Patrick's Bank Holiday weekend, An Garda Siochána held a special roads policing operation in force from Thursday, March 13, through to Tuesday, March 18. Across those five days, there were two fatalities and seven serious collisions resulting in eight people receiving life-threatening injuries.

Those statistics are awful enough, but that wasn't all.

Officers arrested 214 people for driving under the influence, while more than 2,650 drivers were detected for speeding offences. Break that down further, 530 people per day were caught speeding on the roads, with 42 people arrested every 24 hours for driving under the influence.

Even looking at what some would consider ‘more minor’ offences, more than 285 fines were issued for using phones while driving, 62 people were found not to be wearing their seatbelts, and 425 vehicles were seized for having no tax or insurance.

What a way to mark our national holiday. Then, over Mother’s Day weekend, four more people lost their lives.

There’s nothing minor about the offences I regularly see on the road where I live and in my local village.

Living on a narrow road beside a school, I consistently see double-parked SUVs taking up an entire side of a road, dangerous turns from parents while their kids are still getting out of their back seats.

Further down, you see all kinds of road rage, you see people speeding through red lights that were amber seconds before, or ignoring pedestrian crossings.

Members of the Mayo Fire Service during a road crash re-enactment at the AXA Roadsafe Roadshow at the TF Royal Theatre in Castlebar, Co Mayo. Photo: Conor McKeown

However, in my mind, there is a slightly bigger issue, one that should be simple enough to remedy.

If somebody is disqualified from driving, their licence is supposed to be returned to them automatically when the suspension is completed.

I say 'supposed to be' because, as reported by my colleague Cianan Brennan earlier this week, many simply don't give up their licence at all. Only one in 20 or so driving licences (both full and provisional) that are ordered to be surrendered by courts are actually handed over.

It appears to be very much a sense of the authorities hoping the motorists have learned their lessons and will not re-offend when back behind the wheel. Irish Road Victims Association vice president Leo Lieghio said as much last month.

He said:

I don’t know what was involved in the most recent tragedies, but in general, people seem to have lost the fear of penalty points, of being caught speeding, or drink/drug-driving, or of losing their driver’s licence.

There are initiatives designed to prevent young drivers from ever displaying such risky behaviour. In March, Transition Year students attended a hard-hitting road safety event at the AXA Roadsafe Roadshow 2025 in the Clayton Silver Springs Hotel.

The event in Cork included a re-enactment of how reckless driving caused a night out to end in tragedy, and a demonstration of how firefighters used cutting equipment to free casualties from the mangled wrecks of crashed cars.

The Road Safety Authority is also going full speed in terms of their campaigning, with advertisements and advice messaging frequently appearing across TV, radio and especially social media platforms. We can only hope that the messaging gets across to all age groups.

Ireland is struggling with a road safety epidemic, one that is resulting in very slim hopes of achieving the ‘Vision Zero’ commitment to eliminate all road deaths and serious injuries on Irish roads by the year 2050.

If the messages aren’t being heard, and enforcement isn't happening either, then we will have hundreds more interviews like the one from Cesar Ladeiro.