'He could have killed us and our kids'- Louth driving instructor on horrifying incident

Nine people lost their lives on the roads in Louth in 2025, with the number of deaths on Irish roads increasing every year.

A driving instructor based in Dundalk, has explained what needs to be done to make the Louth area more safe for drivers after experiencing a terrifying incident with her family.

Claire McEaney, from Claire's School of Motoring, is very passionate about the "heartbreaking topic" of road safety as she and her family were nearly struck by a reckless driver themselves in Dundalk during Christmas in a horrifying near-accident.

Claire has been an instructor for the last four and a half years and has her own road safety workshops where she visits schools to teach young people about the dangers of our roads.

She also works with a charity organisation called Road Victims Support Northern Ireland-Donegal which is based in Donegal.

She has spoken to some of the people to have lost a family member in a road collision and said: "I think more stories like that should be made more public so that people realise there is a human story behind every statistic....not to bring that devastation to your front door and not to bring that phone call or that knock on the door to your parents."

Claire said there are areas in Louth that need work to improve road safety.

"I would definitely encourage the council to invest more into the roads, even though I know budgets are restrained. You can see throughout the town where road markings are totally faded, and when road markings are faded, people can't see the correct lane to be in.

"Therefore they're changing lanes last minute and that's dangerous. I think if road markings were clearer, it would make the roads slightly safer."

Claire also said that there are areas in Dundalk where people "really don't know what to do."

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She calls for educational campaigns to be set up in a couple of areas in town to help people understand the roads better.

"There's the roundabout down in the retail park, which has a pedestrian crossing very close to the roundabout, which is quite unusual. So if the lights go red, the pedestrian lights go red, you can't enter the roundabout.

"And every day I see people going through those red lights, whether they don't understand how to use it or they just don't take it seriously."

She said that last year, the guards went down there for a couple of hours, policed it and issued penalty points to some drivers.

Claire said she sees reckless driving very frequently in Dundalk.

"There's an awful lot of people still using their mobile phones while driving. A mobile phone is one of the biggest distractions when people are driving. So it is illegal to use your mobile phone while driving and distractions like this put your life and the lives of other people in danger.

"That's the biggest problem I see at the minute. I see it right across the board. People driving cars, vans and lorries using a mobile phone. It's a huge distraction."

Claire described a horrifying incident that occurred to her and her family over the Christmas when a van nearly crashed into them.

"Over Christmas, my husband and I and our two young kids were in the car. We were driving on the main road towards Dundalk and a car overtook the oncoming traffic when it wasn't safe to do so.

"He was coming towards the bend. We came around the bend and we were right there and he was overtaking two cars together.

"They were beeping, beeping, beeping because they could see us coming. He couldn't see us coming. They were beeping at him to pull in or to stop.

"They were beeping maybe to alert us as well. My husband was driving at the time. We just had to slam on the brakes and direct the car towards the ditch.

"The van just sped on. He could have killed us and our two kids. He could have killed the person in one of the vehicles that he was overtaking.

"He never stopped to see where we are. He never stopped to see if we did hit the ditch. He just sped on."

Claire said that we need to educate everybody in our community, from teenagers right up, that the way to reduce road deaths is to be safer on roads.

"Driving is one of the most dangerous things that we do on a daily basis. We must always strive to be safe and socially responsible drivers, and that's what I try to encourage people in the workshops.

"There's a devastating impact of driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs. There really is, and it's up to us to work collectively together. We can't just blame the guards or blame the RSA.

"We must do it at home. We need to talk to our young people and encourage them to know their self worth, to never put themselves at danger, never get into a car with somebody who's driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, never get into the car with someone who you know speeds regularly, or have the courage within you to ask somebody to slow down."