Gardaí have said they will be on the lookout for dangerous driver behaviour during the Easter Bank Holiday weekend, with a visible enforcement presence throughout the country.
It comes as the latest figures show that 54 people lost their lives on Irish roads so far this year.
Road deaths in the first quarter of the year are now at the highest rate in a decade.
The Road Safety Authority has said that the level of enforcement needs to grow with the increase in population and car use.
The CEO of the Road Safety Authority, Sam Waide, said: "The level of enforcement needs to continue. We cannot let up on enforcement in terms of roads policing.
"The population is growing, the national fleet for cars are increasing and will increase consistently over the next four to five years.
"So, there is a need for not just enforcement but all road safety interventions to actually step up the gear and keep up with those growing trends."
Assistant Garda Commissioner for Roads Policing and Community Engagement, Paula Hillman, said gardaí are committed to tackling the issues that are causing death and serious injuries on the roads.
"We arrest on average one person every hour for drink or drug driving, we issue two tickets every hour for people using their mobile phones.
"We issue at least four tickets to people exceeding the speed limits every hour and then on top of that we have the safety camera vans who are detecting about ten people an hour, so roughly 14 people an hour are being detected speeding."
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
She said gardaí will have a visible presence on roads throughout the country over the Easter weekend and will be on the lookout for dangerous driver behaviour.
"We will be out there, but again, to everyone - we are all road users, look out for one another and slow down.
"If everyone slows down, lower the speed on the road and think of the weather conditions as well, it's cold, it's wet, and drive within what you see, not just the speed limits but the weather conditions you are experiencing."
Launching their bank holiday appeal, the Road Safety Authority is also calling on drivers to give space to cyclists when overtaking and to slow down while doing so.
In 2023, nine cyclists were killed and 216 were seriously injured.
Between 2018 and 2022, over 1,300 cyclists were seriously injured on Irish roads.
The vast majority were men, most serious injuries occurred on urban roads and half of those incidents were recorded in Dublin.
Taking part in the appeal was professional cyclist Imogen Cotter who two years ago was in a head-on collision with a van travelling on the wrong side of the road after the driver overtook another cyclist.
She was severely injured in the incident and said that the impact has been long lasting.
"I completely shattered my patella and ruptured my tendon. I fractured my femur as well," she said.
"And I shattered the bones in my wrist and I never got full range of motion back in my wrist. I had five surgeries in 2022. And that's just the physical impact.
"The mental impact has also been really, really difficult. It has been a lot of trauma, a lot of fear and anxiety. So it's just been a very difficult two years.
"My message to drivers would be to realise that the cyclists who are on the road are so vulnerable.
"We are all just humans who want to get home to our families, who have dreams and goals and we are so vulnerable on the road.
"The 20 seconds that you might save on your journey could change my life. It changed mine."
Additional reporting Eileen Magnier
