The Irish School of Motoring are teaming up with 'Crewger.com', Ireland's new collaborative filmmaking website, to bring you an exciting new competition designed to get your view of driving culture and driver safety in Ireland. 

 

Background: 

There has been a massive increase in the number of driver licence holders overall (full and provisional) over the past 10 years - from 1,848,890 in 1997 to 2,539,090 in 2007. 

 According to the Road Safety Authority, in 2007, of the 29,237 Garda-recorded motor vehicle traffic collisions: 

• 338 road collision fatalities were recorded, an average of 28 deaths per month

• 7,806 people were injured of which 860 were seriously injured

• 23,770 collisions involved property or material damage only

• the estimated cost of all road collisions reported to, and recorded by, An Garda Síochána was €1.38 billion.

 Road safety affects everyone: 

 Although more males were killed in 2007, female car passengers were almost twice as likely to be injured than male car passengers.

• 1 in 5 were pedestrians,

• 3 in 30 were motorcyclists,

• 1 in 30 were pedalcyclists.

• Sixteen children 

 Driver error accounted for 82 per cent of all contributory factors identified in fatal collisions.  

In single vehicle fatal collisions, exceeding safe speed limit was cited as the main contributory action in 47 per cent of collisions. 

The worst month for fatalities in 2007 was December when 38 people died in 36 collisions.