Worst road accident in the history of the state claims 8 in Donegal

Sponge Bob

I am not attributing fault except to the state and Traffic Corps that does not deploy resources to take this statistical anomaly into account.

The death and critical injury rate from idiotic behaviour in the Inishowen is just as significant as gangland killings in Limerick and deserves a special punitive enforcement regime as indeed do Limerick gangsters....which gangsters have not killed as many as the Inishowen roads have on a population weighed basis in the past decade.

Terrontress

Sofa King Great wrote: »

A few years ago I did a project on contributory factors in road deaths. One thing we noticed was that Alcohol was very rarely mentioned as a factor. upon digging deeper it appears as though the local coroners rarely mentioned the blood alcohol level in their reports. This seemed to be out of some sort of respect for the dead.

I reckon this is disrespect for the living and any future victims.

Not to say that alcohol consumption has been a contributory factor to last night's tragedy.

Ozil

Sofa King Great wrote: »

A few years ago I did a project on contributory factors in road deaths. One thing we noticed was that Alcohol was very rarely mentioned as a factor. upon digging deeper it appears as though the local coroners rarely mentioned the blood alcohol level in their reports. This seemed to be out of some sort of respect for the dead.

If you look beyond the scaremongering of the media, you will probably find alcohol has very minimal impact on most road deaths.

The coroner (in Donegal incidentally) a few months ago when they were talking about lowering the drink driving limit from 0.8mg to 0.5mg said it's a waste of time because any cases he does come across where alcohol is a contributing factor were on average 3 times over the current limit (they were roughly 2.5mg).

Implementing the current drink driving limits properly would have far more impact than lowering the limit, although that's another days discussion.

schemingbohemia

Suicide is another contributory factor to road deaths in ireland that is not properly accounted for by the coroners.

Sofa King Great

Terrontress wrote: »

I reckon this is disrespect for the living and any future victims.

I agree totally. Especially when innocent parties are involved

Sofa King Great

Ozil wrote: »

If you look beyond the scaremongering of the media, you will probably find alcohol has very minimal impact on most road deaths.

The coroner (in Donegal incidentally) a few months ago when they were talking about lowering the drink driving limit from 0.8mg to 0.5mg said it's a waste of time because any cases he does come across where alcohol is a contributing factor were on average 3 times over the current limit (they were roughly 2.5mg).

Implementing the current drink driving limits properly would have far more impact than lowering the limit, although that's another days discussion.

I think you are confusing the impact of driving with alcohol and the legal limits. They are two different things.

Fratton Fred

I was staying in Rathmullen a while back and caught the Greencastle ferry and then headed over to Buncrana for that ferry. It was one of the scariest drives ofmy life. Not only are the roads narrow and poorly maintained, in some points you even get sheep walking accross them.

i will not draw any conclusions at this stage, other than to say 8 people in one car is foolish, but there but for the grace of god.....

RIP to all those killed and thoughts and sympathies to the families involved.

FlutterinBantam

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

It will be entirely up to the Gardai and the courts to determine who was doing the dangerous driving. No one should speculate at this stage, its such a sensitive issue.

RIP to all eight that lost their lives.

Indeed.:rolleyes: seems fairly obvious to me though

Christina2010

robbie_998 wrote: »

how the feck can ya fit 8 grown lads into a 5 seater car ?

sounds like a joy ride was going about.

This is why insurance cost a fecking bomb... cos of idiots like these running a muck :mad:

poor guy in the corolla.

Robbie you have obviously never made a mistake in your life otherwise you would not be so critical today. its an absolute shame that you have made a comment like that on such a tragic day in our country.
8 families have been left absolutely devestated and all you can complain about is the cost of your insurance. im sure the families involved would pay any amount of money just to have their loved ones back for just one minute. you should be ashamed of yourself.

robbie_998

Christina2010 wrote: »

Robbie you have obviously never made a mistake in your life otherwise you would not be so critical today. its an absolute shame that you have made a comment like that on such a tragic day in our country.
8 families have been left absolutely devestated and all you can complain about is the cost of your insurance. im sure the families involved would pay any amount of money just to have their loved ones back for just one minute. you should be ashamed of yourself.

I have the upmost respect for the 60 year old man in the corolla on his own bit the lads in the passat, well it was quite clear what they were up to

I think others in this thread have made it perfectly clear what should be done...

The full facts of this horrific accident need to be published and not swept under the carpet like has happened so often in the past.

It might dissuade others from trying to cram too many people into a single vehicle.

It might make people think twice about speeding.

It might just make people take a little bit more care on the roads.

I was driving a Toyota Corolla last night. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time can happen to anybody.

amacachi

If the driver survives I trust he'll have the full force of the law brought upon him.

FlutterinBantam

Christina2010 wrote: »

Robbie you have obviously never made a mistake in your life otherwise you would not be so critical today. its an absolute shame that you have made a comment like that on such a tragic day in our country.
8 families have been left absolutely devestated and all you can complain about is the cost of your insurance. im sure the families involved would pay any amount of money just to have their loved ones back for just one minute. you should be ashamed of yourself.

Sorry Christina, no he shouldn't.

People need to tackle this stuff head on, and not beat around the bush.

Of course everyone has tremendous sympathy for those bereaved, but trying to say that something is not is not a problem, when to everybody else, it patently is, is assinine in the extreme.

Instead of wringing their hands and ollogoning ,people up there need to get together and sort out this shit.

There is a culture of madman driving on the Fanad!!!


That's fact, spend some time trying to sort it out rather than blaming others for it ok?

homer simpson

foggy_lad wrote: »

a tragedy but as already posted all of Donegal has to answer for this due attitudes to guards and traffic laws which are not seen as real laws.

Right! enough is enough, i have heard since i got up this morning across various forums with people talking about how the its because of donegal people disregarding the law ect....what a load of bull!

We follow the same laws as everyone else who lives in the republic of ireland, that includes traffic laws, i can also assure you that i have come across more gardai checkpoints / speedchecks in donegal than in any other part of ireland (i do about 40000 - 50000 miles per year in my car), some people seem to think that native donegal folk are a law onto themselves, all i will say to this is go away and cop on! :rolleyes:

Slunk

Jus on RTE news now. You can see the renault that the passsat "clipped" .Judging by the damage it more than clipped it. Why did they not stop at this scene?

I think they should show whats left of the passat too and maybe it might get the point across to some people.

Calina

Mod note.

I'm not sure this thread properly belongs here and will consult with Motors about possibly sending it over to them.

Meanwhile, it would be nice if you all tried to find a balance that didn't result in me getting a bunch of reported posts. Certain matters are worthy of discussion here but if you could do it in a constructive manner that would help immensely.

Regards,

Calina.

FlutterinBantam

homer_simpson wrote: »

Right! enough is enough, i have heard since i got up this morning across various forums with people talking about how the its because of donegal people disregarding the law ect....what a load of bull!

We follow the same laws as everyone else who lives in the republic of ireland, that includes traffic laws, i can also assure you that i have come across more gardai checkpoints / speedchecks in donegal than in any other part of ireland (i do about 40000 - 50000 miles per year in my car), some people seem to think that native donegal folk are a law onto themselves, all i will say to this is go away and cop on! :rolleyes:

So you totally ignore past accidents and history and say everything in the garden is rosy.

Check out the stats. horse.

It's there in black and white.

lilgirl24

agree with slunk the photos of the cars should be made available to the media,i realise this may be hard for the families but people need to see the type of damage that is caused in crashes like these

rip to all

K-9

FlutterinBantam wrote: »

Sorry Christina, no he shouldn't.

People need to tackle this stuff head on, and not beat around the bush.

Of course everyone has tremendous sympathy for those bereaved, but trying to say that something is not is not a problem, when to everybody else, it patently is, is assinine in the extreme.

Instead of wringing their hands and ollogoning ,people up there need to get together and sort out this shit.

There is a culture of madman driving on the Fanad!!!


That's fact, spend some time trying to sort it out rather than blaming others for it ok?

I'm sure everybody is aware of the problems involved and Donegal or Inishowen has a high fatality rate, like some other blackspot counties.

FlutterinBantam

K-9 wrote: »

I'm sure everybody is aware of the problems involved and Donegal or Inishowen has a high fatality rate, like some other blackspot counties.

The issue is: what are they doing about it.

homer simpson

FlutterinBantam wrote: »

So you totally ignore past accidents and history and say everything in the garden is rosy.

Check out the stats. horse.

It's there in black and white.

Stop your spamming!!!! most of your posts concist of one liners (3 - 10 words) in an attempt to get a rise out of people....

And stop taking what im sayong out of context, i wasnt commenting on accidents i was commenting on peole saying things like "all donegal people are responsable for the accident", " No donegal people follow the law and the traffic laws", " all donegal drivers are boy racers and motorsport fans" do you agree with all of the above statements??? thats what im refearing to here...and answer the question, do you agree with the above statements, as i've noticed in another thread you have a good way of avoiding questions, lol, you'd make a good policition (or however you spell it)


On accidents yes the majority of them are avoidable but its not isolated to Donegal this applies to almost all accidents! Something does need to be done but if your all getting on high horses calling for thing to be done, look at the stats for the rest of europe, you'll find we are up to the 7th safest in the EU, go complain to the EU and look for something to be done, cos i agree something has to be done, but singling out all donegal people is wrong is it not?

Calina

Moved from Commuting & Transport.

K-9

FlutterinBantam wrote: »

The issue is: what are they doing about it.

Road deaths are down the last couple of years, AFAIK.

As for last night, what would have stopped them getting in the car? They should have more sense but teenagers should have more sense in many things.

rapid speed

Furet wrote: »

I'm not apportioning blame just yet, but the fact that there were so many people in one car 'speaks' to me. To be honest, my greatest fear when driving is not that I will mess up, but that the person coming against me will, and will kill me or my passengers as a result. The old cliché is true: you can be as careful as you like, but you never know what the person coming against you is capable of. And that is a frightening thought.

Totally correct you can drive as safe as you like but it just takes some lunatic to come along & cause havoc.

mikemac

Firstly RIP all

Sorry to say when I say the headline on Aertel I knew this was Donegal before even reading the report

Possibly this was posted already.
I do hope for more information in the media then "the car went out of control" or some other generic statement.

People need to learn from these incidents.
I often thought maybe once a month a national paper could set aside a column detailing serious accidents.

No names, no locations, just list the facts and the contributing factors.
Maybe drink, drugs, bald tyres, speed, whatever it is.
Cold, clinical technical explanation on what happened.

I seem to remember a case of young people being killed in Monaghan. Some said it was a tragic accident, some said they were playing chicken and in the end not much was ever released on it.
I'm not saying lay blame on someone in the national media, just explain what happened so we can learn from it

You make a mistake in work and such a report is done to avoid it happening it again. Do the same here, maybe people can make suggestions too if the road is unsafe, people can have input if they know the area

pablo21

Well I for one have survived to the ripe old of age of 38 but to be honest alot of it was luck. We all did some crazy things when we were that age and there but for the grace of god...
The reality here folks is that none of you know all the facts so please reserve your judgments. Its right that we should feel outraged at a time like this because loss is a terrible thing to deal with even if we didnt know the people involved. But we can all appreciate the immense pain these families must be feeling. There is a culture to be overcome here and I dont envy the people responsible with the job of doing it.
My brother was in a similar acident years ago, it was acutally a passat and a corolla too ironically enough and there were 7 people in the Passat and an older lady in the corolla. My brother was very lucky to be alive and I was very very angry at the driver of the Passat for a long long time but it turned out the lady in the corolla took a Heart attack and it took a long time to find this out. The driver was even pulled out of his bed at 6am in the morning by the longford police because they needed to be seen "doing something". You can work out for yourselves how this helped the situation... i.e. not at all.
My deepest sympathy to all the people involved in this horrible tragedy. I'm sure the driver of the Passat did not not set out last night to kill all his mates but it is what it is and thats life..Sometimes there are no second chances. Lets hope this does not go to waste though and hopefully the shock of what has happened to these people might force some sort of change irrespective of who was to blame....

Drummerboy08

Had there been no innocent fatalities in this accident, I probably would have said "meh, at least 2 of those 7 should have known better, its said but thats life".

However, because someone who was minding his own business, safely has been killed by the ignorance and stupidity of 7 young men, I find it hard to have sympathy.

I dont mean to be cruel, but if they were doing that kind of stuff in their early twenties, maybe the people of Donegal are better off without them. What exactly did they expect when the 7 of them got into a car? To get to their destination comfortably, and to save a few quid by not paying for a taxi? I bet they didnt expect this -

To crash into 1 innocent motorist?
To kill another innocent motorist?
To have their families mourn their deaths?

Sympathies to the innocent involved.

Yakult

Terrible thing to happen to anyone. I feel sorry for the driver, he's gonna have that resting on he's shoulders which for me alone would be too much to bare.

Still, 8 people. Wtf?

mickydoomsux

Drummerboy08 wrote: »

Had there been no innocent fatalities in this accident, I probably would have said "meh, at least 2 of those 7 should have known better, its said but thats life".

However, because someone who was minding his own business, safely has been killed by the ignorance and stupidity of 7 young men, I find it hard to have sympathy.

I dont mean to be cruel, but if they were doing that kind of stuff in their early twenties, maybe the people of Donegal are better off without them.

Sympathies to the innocent involved.

I kind of agree with you. The fact that these 7 idiots killed someone who was unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time is infuriating.

Drummerboy08

R_H_C_P wrote: »

Terrible thing to happen to anyone. I feel sorry for the driver, he's gonna have that resting on he's shoulders which for me alone would be too much to bare.

Still, 8 people. Wtf?

He should have thought of that BEFORE he allowed 6 other people into his car. Clown that he is probably thought he was cool or something.

Slunk

pablo21 wrote: »

hopefully the shock of what has happened to these people might force some sort of change irrespective of who was to blame....

They need to give full details and show the wreckage of the car for full shock effect as it seems this sort of news doesnt last long in peoples memories. Why did they only show the silver car the passat 'clipped'. Thats not really shocking in fairness.