From what I've heard on the radio, it seems a consensus is building that 'non-nationals', particularly eastern Europeans, are a big problem on the roads, that they are responsible for a disproportionate number of road deaths. Maybe they are and maybe they aren't. I haven't seen a whole lot of data.
Yesterday's Irish Examiner provided some numbers regarding the number of road accdents and deaths involving non-nationals. 800 serious accidents last year involved non-nationals and 15 of the 63 deaths this year have been non-nationals. Of course, 5 of those were thanks to that one horrific crash over the weekend.
Had the Examiner told us how many "serious accidents" there were in total for all of 2005 it would have been possible to evaluate whether non-nationals were involved in a greater number of serious accidents than their numbers would lead us to expect.
Given the age profile and numbers of non-nationals here, I'm not sure that there is a statistically significant figure here.
