Gardai have reiterated their appeal to people to people to be extra safe while on our roads.
Leading the appeal a top Garda warned the public that driving is probably the most dangerous thing they will do with their day.
Superintendent Liam Geraghty urged passengers that do not feel safe to tell drivers to slow down, and warned drivers not to use their phones while driving.
As of Wednesday morning, there had been 124 fatalities on Irish roads so far this year, an increase of 24 compared with the same period in 2022 and 38 more than the same period in 2019.
Four of those have been on Donegal roads, the latest on Tuesday morning when a Derry man, Davey Doherty, died when his car crashed at Bridgend.
There have been more than 600 “serious” road collisions, which means people had suffered life-changing injuries.
“We take using our roads for granted sometimes,” Garda Superintendent Liam Geraghty said.
“Using the road is probably the most dangerous thing you will do on any given day.
“We ask everybody to please take care on the roads.”
When asked what had caused the increase in road deaths this year, Supt Geraghty said there had been an increase in the number of collisions where there had been multiple fatalities.
He said: “Certainly across the border in Northern Ireland, we’re also seeing a very, very similar increase in road fatalities taking place over there.
“I haven’t seen full level research into why that is happening at the moment. But certainly our levels of drink and drug-driving seem to be increasing.”
“If you’re the passenger in a vehicle, you have a say… you can speak up, you can ask the driver to slow down if you’re not feeling safe, you can ask them to drive a little bit more carefully.”
An Garda Síochána had carried out 27,000 checkpoints so far this year, and detected 5,100 people driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, with a further 105,000 people detected breaking the speed limit.
More than 12,500 people have been issued with fixed charge penalty notices for using phones, but Mr Geraghty said a bigger problem was “distracted driving”.
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