Ireland’s Path to Vision Zero

The Government Road Safety Strategy 2021-2030 has the ambition of guiding Ireland towards “Vision Zero”, the long-term goal of eradicating road traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2050. It is international best practice and has been adopted by the European Commission in its Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030. A milestone objective on the path to Vision Zero by 2050 is to reduce fatalities and serious injuries by 50% by 2030 (compared to a baseline of the average for 2017-2019).

Figure from page 9

Safe Roads and

Roadsides

Safe Work-related

Road Use

Ireland’s 2030 and 2050 targets are also aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals Objective 3.6 to halve the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents by 2030.

Post-crash

Response

To be on course to achieve Vision Zero by 2050, Ireland would need to reduce fatalities by 2030 to 72 annually. The chart below shows the pathway to this 2030 target compared to the number of fatalities recorded in each year of the Strategy so far. The trends of recent years makes achieving this target challenging. While fatalities increased in 2022 and 2023, 2024 showed some stabilisation and then improvement. These figures are still too high, but the increasing trend has been stopped. This shows that improvements can be made and the importance of progress being sustained. The Phase 2 Action Plan needs to be delivered to continue this progress.

	180 Number of
	172 Vision Zer 154 152 140 141 134 132 122

Year

Number of Fatalities and Fatality Targets on Irish Roads, 2017-2030