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DRINK-DRIVING detections were down slightly in the January to May of this year compared to the same period in 2017 and most of these are in urban parts of the Kerry, according to the latest statistics revealed by gardaí at the Joint Policing Committee meeting in Kerry County Council on Friday.
There were 119 detections to the end of May compared to 121 last year, however there has already been 22 incidents of drink-driving already detected in June and that was the total for all of June last year, according to Garda Inspector Tony Sugrue.
There were also five drug-driving detections and gardaí are planning to run out more testings during the summer.
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There were 1,212 Mandatory Intoxicant (MIT) Checkpoints in 2016 with 26 arrests resulting between January and May. For the same period last year there were 1,576 resulting in 23 arrests.
Garda Insp Sugrue said it was disappointing that the numbers of people drink-driving was still so high. He said that despite the fact Kerry is a rural county, the largest amount of detections are coming from the larger urban centres like Tralee, Killarney, Listowel, Kenmare and Cahersiveen.
They also had 1,076 other checkpoints in the period to May. There has also been a rise in mobile phone offence detections which was up around 120 on the same period last year and safety belt offence detections were also up this year.
Serious injury accidents on the roads rose by one from six in 2017 to seven this year so far. However, non-serious road accidents rose by 20 from 47 to 67, while material damage accidents also rose by around 20 in that time.
