Gardaí say drug driving is becoming as prevalent as drink driving

A quarter of drivers arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated on Christmas Day were suspected of drug-driving, according to the Garda.

Assistant Commissioner David Sheahan of the Garda Roads Policing Unit said four of the 16 arrests on the day were in relation to suspected drug impairment.

But he said the prevalence of drugs detected in the systems of drivers was normally even more than 25 per cent of all cases.

He warned that while official statistics for the Christmas safe driving campaign will not be available until late January, “anecdotally gardaí are starting to detect more drug-driving incidents than alcohol related offences”.

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Next year, Mr Sheahan said, the Garda Policing Plan would see increased efforts to test more drivers more frequently in line with international best practice.

Over the past month, the Garda have been taking drug testing machines out of Garda stations and putting them in patrol cars where they have been used at mandatory intoxicant check points , he said.

Preliminary results indicate widespread use of cocaine, prescription and over-the-counter drugs and cannabis.

Mr Sheahan said it was important to note that cocaine would remain detectable in drivers for up to two days, while cannabis could be detected over a much longer period of time.

Mr Sheahan acknowledged that gardaí were now finding more cases of drivers on drugs because the testing equipment was not widely available in the past.

Mr Sheahan said there was “no comfort” in the number of people being killed on the State’s roads dropping to historically low levels. This year some 144 people had been killed by early on St Stephen’s Day, compared to 142 for the whole of last year.

“There are four major factors, speed, intoxicated driving seat belts, mobile phone use” around which the Garda need to change driver behaviour, he said.

On a successful note he said the nobody had been killed to date this year by a vehicle driven by the holder of a learner permit. “It used to be about six a year,” he said.

It is an offence for a learner permit holder to drive unless they are accompanied by a fully licenced driver, and the Clancy Amendment, which became law on December 22nd, 2018 aimed to clamp down on the practice.

The amendment allows a vehicle driven by an unaccompanied driver to be seized and also introduced penalties for car owners who knowingly permit their vehicles to be taken by an unaccompanied learner driver.

The amendment was named after Cork man Noel Clancy, who lost his wife and daughter in a crash involving an unaccompanied learner driver in 2015.