AS ANOTHER BANK holiday weekend draws to a close, typically a red flag for fatalities and serious injuries on Irish roads, motorists are urged to slow down, leave phones out of reach, and not drive when tired or under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
But it is not just drivers that are at risk. Up until 24 October, Garda figures reveal 26 pedestrians, 9 cyclists and 3 people on e-scooters died on Irish roads this year, representing more than a quarter (27%) of all traffic fatalities to date.
These tragic losses underpin the vulnerability of both pedestrians and cyclists on Irish roads in a world that is obsessed with cars. Amid an abysmal failure of the transport sector to address climate targets, and unacceptable levels of deaths and serious injuries among pedestrians and cyclists; all the indicators point to an urgent need to follow the example of our European neighbours by embracing active travel and ending our love affair with fossil fuels.
New data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports an overall fall of emissions in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same three-month period in 2023. However, transport emissions continue to go in the wrong direction.
The report outlines how overall greenhouse gas emissions in Q1 2024 fell by 2.2%. Yet emissions from transport increased by 2.7% in the first 3 months compared with the same period last year – driven by a 9.6% increase in petrol sales and a 1.3% increase in diesel sales. The transport sector has rebounded to pre-Covid levels (98% of 2019 levels).
Director of the EPA’s Office of Evidence and Assessment, Dr Eimear Cotter said that the data shows “that we can make progress in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions when concerted action is taken”.
The corollary is that without concerted action — as seen with transport emissions, we will fail to reach climate targets. Dismally.
Hitting climate targets is not the only reason why we should make a concerted move away from fossil-fuelled transport.
The Road Safety Authority (RSA) published two reports this month specifically highlighting the dangers to pedestrians on Irish roads. The first report Pedestrian Spotlight Report: Fatalities and Serious Injuries 2019-2023 shows that between 2019 and 2023, while a total of 164 pedestrians were tragically killed, a further 1,426 sustained serious injuries on Irish roads.
This equates to an average of 33 pedestrian fatalities and 285 serious injuries per year. Pedestrians accounted for more than one in five (22%) of all road fatalities and one in five (20%) of all serious injuries within this period. Notably, for every pedestrian fatality there were approximately nine serious injuries. The sheer magnitude of the lifelong impact of these injuries on people’s lives is not reflected in the continued focus on fatalities.
A second RSA report, Serious Injuries among Pedestrians in Hospital and an Garda Síochána data, used hospital data to examine the issue of pedestrian injuries for the first time over a ten-year period. The research was conducted in partnership with the HSE and Trinity College Dublin.
The report shows that over the period 2013-2023, there were a massive 2,843 pedestrians admitted to hospital as in-patients with injuries from road traffic collisions. More than a quarter (28%) of all hospitalised pedestrians sustained the most serious injuries from a clinical point of view, with a higher probability of having long-term consequences.
Another critical factor feeding into road safety statistics is the meteoric rise in SUV sales in Ireland in the last ten years.
Irish sales of SUVs are among the highest in Europe, accounting for over 60% of cars sold in Ireland in 2022, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturer’s Association. This has resulted in the average weight of Irish cars increasing by 300kg on average in two decades. SUVs are two to three times more likely to kill a pedestrian than a standard car, and the risk of hitting a pedestrian is higher due to poorer visibility. This data is not reflected in the RSA’s annual reports or the Government’s Road Safety Strategy.
There is a direct correlation between the number of cars on the road and the number of serious injuries. This was confirmed by the economic downturn between 20019 and 2013 and again during the pandemic lockdown in 2020.
A shift in gears from fossil-fuelled cars to bikes offers multiple advantages. While precipitously lowering greenhouse gas emissions from transport as well as air pollution, it would lead to a reduction in serious injuries and deaths on Irish roads. It would allow children and teenagers the much-needed independence that cycling affords, as well as improve the physical fitness of everyone who replaces their car with a bike for short commutes in and around cities.
Paris has taken the lead in advocating for a move away from cars in city centres. It now boasts of 1,300km of cycle lanes. The message is getting through. Now more Parisians cycle than drive through the city centre, according to a recent study from the urban planning agency Institut Paris Region.
Can you imagine Cork, Dublin or Limerick or Galway with more cyclists than cars? Unfathomable. But other cities are achieving it, so why aren’t we?
Barcelona is another example. My 23-year-old daughter arrived in the city a month ago and within two weeks, having barely sat on a bicycle her entire life, had signed up for the public bike sharing system Bicing that allows her to pick up and drop off a bike outside her door and travel freely throughout the entire city.
Bicing has been Barcelona’s public bike sharing system since 2007. As a Bicing member, you have access to over 6,000 mechanical and electric bikes and more than 420 stations found in most neighbourhoods across Barcelona.
The best thing is that you can rent a bike from any station and drop it off at any other station. You don’t need to return it where you took it from.
The equivalent in Cork would be a bike station within a few hundred metres from my front door that would allow me to travel across the city and suburbs to wherever I want to go and travel back on another bike at any time of the time or night.
The cost to sign up is about €50 a year, with small additional costs depending on the length of time you are cycling. Impossibly cheap. Impossibly convenient. Who wouldn’t use them with safe cycling infrastructure across the city?
European cities are knocking down the barriers to reaching climate targets by embracing active travel and showing that when the infrastructure is right, the masses will shift gears.
Is the Irish government and its citizens up to the challenge?
Dr Catherine Conlon is a public health doctor in Cork and former director of human health and nutrition, safefood.
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