A 40% increase in drug-driving’s been detected across Carlow and Kilkenny, almost four times the jump of the national average.
Gardaí across the country noted an 11% rise in such detections in the first three months of this year and are ready to catch more as they carry out their Bank Holiday campaign over the next few days.
Local Divisional Roads Policing Inspector Paul Donohoe says they have special equipment and technology that’s proving effective and has helped to date this year.
He’s told KCLR News “We’re very well up with drug-driving, above 40% increase in drug-driving this year and I suppose we have new technology and new equipment to detect drug-driving as well as driving, our mandatory intoxicant testing at checkpoints has seen a big rise in drug-driving and I suppose the equipment we have now detects drugs in the driver’s system for some time so this is where we’re seeing the big increase now with people when we test them in the mandatory roadside testing”.
Inspector Donohoe add “We will be really enforcing drink-driving and drug-driving as well as our other operation life-saver offences which is speeding, seat belts and driving while holding mobile phones, so we would just ask people to slow down and the most important thing is to never ever drink and drive or take drugs and drive which happens and bank holiday weekends we want to try keep our road users as safe as we can over the period for Kilkenny and Carlow so we will have a strong presence out over the weekend so please be safe on our roads”.
