Research ranks Ireland as safest tourist driving hotspot – but most expensive too

Ireland is among the safest – and the most expensive – places for tourists to drive in the European Union, according to newly published research. Despite the high cost of car rental, fuel and parking, Ireland ranks in the top 10 best countries in the world for tourists to drive in, thanks largely to road safety and social media popularity, according to a report compiled by car subscription service Finn.

Ireland ranked ninth in the global survey, with Croatia in the top spot followed by Spain, Slovenia, Australia and Japan rounding out the top five. The United Kingdom comes in at 15th overall, with the United States not in the top 20 of the 39 countries from which data was collected.

According to Finn, Ireland has the highest average daily car hire rate of countries in the top 10 at €100. The next most expensive country is Switzerland, ranked 10th overall at €86, with Croatia the cheapest country for car hire at €21 per day.

Ireland is also one of the more expensive countries when it comes to average fuel price per litre, its figure of €1.63 coming in cheaper than only Canada (€1.63) and Switzerland (€1.84) among the other top 10 countries. The average off-street parking fee for a two-hour period (€5.74) places Ireland more in the middle of the pack, with Spain, Sweden, Japan and Australia all coming in as more expensive.

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According to the report, Ireland has the third lowest rate of road deaths in Europe – after Norway and Switzerland – per 100,000 people, and fourth lowest in the world. Despite that positive safety figure, Ireland ranks as the worst of the 20 countries listed by the research for quality of roads, coming in at a figure of 4.4 out of 7.

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With 2.05 road traffic deaths per 100,000 people, Singapore was named the world’s safest country to drive in. The Asian country also scored the best for its quality of roads, with Finn rating them at 6.5 out of 7.

According to the report, the number of attractions available when driving through Ireland is one of the main factors behind its popularity as a tourist destination for drivers. With a figure of 208 attractions per 100,000 people, only Croatia, the world’s best driving hotspot according to the research, matches Ireland in this regard.

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Ireland is also a popular driving spot online, with the number of Instagram posts and internet searches about driving holidays in the country bettering the likes of Germany, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain and Turkey. The most popular tourist-driving hotspot on social media is the US with more than one million Instagram posts and 66,400 road trip searches on Google.

According to the report’s authors, the relevant data was taken from the 39 countries around the world for which it was available for a range of factors. Each country was given a normalised score out of 10 for each of the factors, before an average across all nine factors was taken for the final overall score.