SPEEDING and holding a mobile phone while driving were the most common reasons why drivers in Donegal attracted penalty points last year.
A total of 14,302 penalty points were issued in the county in 2020 which is up 4.7 per cent, according to the Central Statistics Office’s Transport Omnibus report published on Thursday.
There were 4,697 penalty point endorsement notices issued and the majority of these were sent to male drivers (3,056).
Speeding was by far the top reason with 3,301 notices issued and male drivers accounted for 63 per cent of these (2,094). There were 513 notices issued for holding a mobile phone while driving, 176 for driving without reasonable consideration and 85 for driving without an NCT cert.
Other top reasons for penalty point notices included failing to obey traffic lights, not wearing a seatbelt, not displaying an L Plate and a learner driver driving unaccompanied.
One Donegal driver received 12 penalty points last year and was put off the road, five received ten points, nine drivers received nine points and 12 drivers received eight points.
By the end of last year Donegal drivers had a culmination of 12,103 penalty points on their licences and more than 200 were nearing disqualification with nine or more points.
The report from the CSO also provides an insight into the number of people on the roads last year. In Donegal there were 108,101 driving licences held in the county in 2020 which is up from 106,774 the year before. There was an 11 per cent rise in the number of learner permit holders, up from 6,891 to 7,661.
The highest number of drivers with a full licence were in the 40 to 49 age bracket (21,236) followed by 30 to 39 (19,238). There was a drop in the number of 17 to 20 year olds on the county’s roads, down from 2,013 in 2019 to 1,702 last year. The number of drivers aged 80 and over with a full licence increased by seven per cent to 3,084.
A further 44 people over the age of 70 in Donegal had a learner permit last year.
There were a total of 95,830 licensed vehicles in Donegal in 2020. The number of vehicles licensed for the first time fell from 2,889 to 2,777. There were 44 tractors licensed for the first time during 2020, down from 55 the previous year.