153 DRIVERS WERE arrested for drink driving over the course of the Easter Bank Holiday.
Gardaí say that the arrests between Good Friday and Easter Monday demonstrate that the message about the dangers of drink driving are “still not getting through”.
“Tragically, we did not have as safe a weekend on our roads we would have liked,” assistant commissioner John Twomey said today. ”No matter what the circumstances, two people lost their life on our roads over the Easter Bank Holiday period.”
We made very public the fact there would be significant enforcement activity over the Easter period, especially for drink driving- yet 153 people were arrested on suspicion of drink driving from Good Friday to Easter Monday. These are selfish acts by irresponsible people, and we will continue to target those who put themselves and others at risk.
The arrests over the Easter Weekend comes as gardaí also revealed that so far this year nearly 10,000 drivers have been detected using a mobile phone while driving.
The offence which can result in two penalty points and a €60 fine is committed when a driver is seen to be ”holding a mobile phone while driving”.
A person need not be engaged in a phone conversation to be penalised with new specific laws also to come into operation at the beginning of next month which will target people texting or using the internet on their phones.
Gardaí are to hold a specific two-day mobile phone enforcement operation on Thursday and Friday of this week to detect people driving while using a phone. A similar operation held in March led to a 300 per cent more detection of the offence than an average day.
Gardaí say that a successful campaign over the over the two days this week will be the failure to detect any driver using a phone despite, this they say would indicate better compliance.
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