This article is from page 18 of the 2013-12-17 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 18 JPG
CLARE motorists have received more penalty point each over the past two year than motorists from any other county in Ireland.
New figures released by the Department of Transport show that between January of 2011 and November of this year each Clare motorists received an average of 0.28 penalty points.
This means that motorist in Clare are more than twice as likely to receive penalty points as motorists in Donegal – who had the lowest level of penalty points.
After the Banner County, the counties with the worst records of penalty points were Longford, Kildare, Wicklow, Meath and Roscommon while the safest drivers were found to be in Donegal, Monaghan, Mayo, Kerry and North Tipperary.
The figures also revealed that the rate at which penalty points are being handed out to drivers in Clare is also increasing.
“It is a short period in trying to analyse a trend but what is key is the figures are going up, it is a cause of concern and it should galvanise us all into action,” said a spokesman for the Road Safety Authority (RSA).
“We need to ask ourselves, both individual drivers and state agencies, what we can do to reverse those trends. We should be mindful of using the roads at this time of year as we don’t want any further loss of life.”
A total of 684,974 penalty points have been handed out to motorists between January of 2011 and November of this year accounting to the Department of Transport.
More than 111,000 drivers dodged receiving penalty points over this period because they did not have a driving licence or failed to bring it to court when summoned to appear for offenses that require a mandatory court appearance.
Some 177 people have been killed so far this year, which is an increase of 25 on the same period in 2013.