Weather Conditions and Road Accidents in Ireland

Weather events have the ability to cause disruption to the road networks, both by making roads impassable, and by leading to a deterioration in safe driving conditions. Heavy snows in the winters of 2009 and 2010, as well as extreme flooding in 2011 and 2015, have demonstrated the ability of weather events to impact transport services and mobility. Within an Irish context there is very little research into the specific impacts of different weather conditions upon road safety. Utilising the Road Safety Authority’s road accident dataset of over sixty thousand reported incidents for the years 1996 to 2010, this research presents the results of an examination of the role that reported weather can have upon the likelihood of a given accident type occurring. Specific attention is given to accident and road type, as well the severity of the incident and the specifics of the event. This analysis takes account of both reported weather conditions at the scene and the condition of the road surface (dry, wet, ice/frost, snow) The results of this research indicate that the occurrence of fatal incidents as a proportion of overall incident’s increases during fog and mist, as well as during high winds, however, snow and wet road conditions do not produce notable increases. No notable differences were found with respect to road type. As expected evidence of skidding was much more likely to be found during ice/frost and snowy conditions.