Fifty-five people died last year on the roads in Northern Ireland.
During 2019 the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service attended 755 collisions and rescued 544 people from their vehicles.
The NIFRS has echoed road safety pleas to encourage road users to ‘Share the Road to Zero’ following the release of the statistics.
Gerry Lennon, Group Commander, Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service it is tragic that 55 people died on the roads in 2019 (these are provisional PSNI road death statistics).
“Throughout 2019 we worked hard with the community and our road safety partners; Department for Infrastructure, the police and Ambulance Service to improve road user behaviour to help reduce the number of road traffic collisions and the number of people killed and seriously injured as a result.
‘We have made a real effort to reach younger drivers especially with our ‘Your Choice’ virtual reality programme that highlights to young drivers the dangers on our roads and what can happen if things go wrong,” he said.
Mr Lennon said unfortunately firefighters, along with colleagues in the other emergency services, saw too often the harrowing impact of irresponsible road behaviour on people’s lives.
“Road traffic collisions bring misery, pain and grief to individuals, families and communities. It is important that we recognise that we are all responsible for road safety – we all have a responsibility to ‘Share the Road to Zero’ and we simply must do everything we possibly can to ensure Zero road deaths in the year ahead,” he added.