More than halfway through 2026, a year the Government promised would bring a “renewed focus” on road safety, four men died in three separate collisions in one weekend. The latest fatalities reaffirm a bleak trend on the State’s roads, where weekends and men feature disproportionately in statistics on crash fatalities. According to the Road Safety Authority (RSA), road deaths between January and June were already up 10 per cent on the same period in 2025. Another 600 people were seriously injured in road incidents in the first half of this year. More than half (54 per cent) of those who died on the roads between January and June were either car drivers or passengers. Vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists made up the remainder. About 40 per cent of fatalities happened on a Saturday or a Sunday, and three-quarters of those who died were male. Almost a third of those killed in road incidents in the first half of the year were aged under 25. For most of this decade, the Government has been trying to meet what has become a very ambitious target to halve the number of road deaths and serious injuries between 2021 and 2030. Seán Canney, Minister of State at the Department of Transport, said this year would be a “year of renewed focus” on road safety. So why is it not working? The RSA, the State agency tasked with reducing the number of deaths and injuries on our roads, has recently lost the confidence of organisations such as the Parc road safety group and Irish Road Haulage Association over its performance. The authority has also faced an existential threat to its very existence. In 2024, a report by Indecon Economic Consultants suggested splitting the RSA into two new agencies – one devoted to road safety and another with a focus on administrative matters such as driving tests and the National Car Test (NCT). There was a concern that having one agency focused on both was not sustainable. Although the Government initially backed this plan, it U-turned late last year and decided it would instead try to reform the RSA. Last month, Canney said proposed reforms for the authority would be brought forward shortly, but there is no sign of them yet. There is still some confusion about what the RSA is and is not responsible for when it comes to road safety. Earlier this year, the Government published its first national safety camera strategy. Although the RSA was involved in a working group creating the strategy, the main responsibility for the plan is shared between the Government, Transport Infrastructure Ireland and the National Transport Authority. Canney recently told the Oireachtas Transport Committee that “perhaps ‘authority’ is the wrong name” for the RSA, which he said, “does not have the remit to do everything about road safety”. He has continually stressed the importance of personal responsibility in trying to reduce road deaths. Seán Canney, Minister of State at the Department of Transport, said this year would be a 'year of renewed focus' on road safety. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA Wire “I am serious when I say that if we expect any one entity to bring down the number of road deaths on its own, we are at nothing. The road deaths and collisions that occur in this country are the responsibility of everyone who uses the roads,” he told a committee meeting in June. The same committee has heard consistent testimony from road safety groups who are unimpressed with the performance of the RSA, and TDs sitting on it may press again for the Government to reconsider splitting it in two. For its part, the RSA points out demographics that naturally increase the risk on our roads. As the national population, number of people with driving licences and total kilometres travelled by those on Irish roads increase, so does the risk of crashes resulting in serious and fatal injury. Other emerging trends are making Irish roads more dangerous, right at the point in time when serious incidents are expected to be decreasing. The number of fatal and serious injuries involving e-scooters has grown significantly over the last five years, from 33 such incidents in 2021 to 79 last year.