Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I want to talk about how accidents are reported. For example, if a middle-aged cyclist is knocked down on a road the report will state what the cyclist was doing, and the age and gender of the cyclist. The report would not tell me that the car was making a right-hand turn manoeuvre, passing through a bike lane or passing through a gap of stationary cars. It would not tell me anything about the bumper height of the car. In these reports we learn a lot about the victim and less about the other aspects involved, particularly in the asymmetric situation where it is a collision with a vulnerable road user.

The child casualty report by the RSA, published in October 2023, gives me a report on the gender, age and movement of the child but does not tell me other details such as the engine size of the car, the type of car or the driver's manoeuvre. The real problem with that is that we learn a lot about the victim and far less about the driver's manoeuvre, type of car, height of the bumper, engine size, etc. Are there plans to change the method of reporting?