There have been fewer fatal accidents on Donegal's roads in recent years, thanks to greater enforcement of the law. More resources for road safety measures and better public education have also contributed. As a result, fatalities in the county have halved from 28 in 1997 - the worst year - to 14 last year.
There is little doubt the decline is partly due to the Operation Lifesaver programme, introduced by the Garda in 1997, and the setting up of a road safety working group.
The year before Operation Lifesaver started, 742 people were prosecuted for speeding in the county. Now the annual figure for fixed penalty speeding tickets is around 7,000, while more than 1,800 on-the-spot fines for seat belts are issued each year.
Donegal has also benefited from a range of low-cost road safety remedial measures and more emphasis on education.
However, during this period there has also been a sharp rise in the number of minor accidents and also ones involving material damage.
"There is no room for complacency," Sgt Brendan Roache of the Garda Traffic Corps in Letterkenny said, and noted that certain trends have remained the same.
The high-risk areas continue to be towns at night, particularly between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. at weekends. Those most likely to be involved in an accident are men aged between 18 and 30. Indeed, in three of the years between 1994 and 2001, all the drivers killed in road accidents were male.
Addressing the launch in Letterkenny of the latest Garda initiative to try to reduce the carnage on our roads - the Collision Prevention Programme (CPP) - Sgt Roache cited speed as being the primary factor in 63 of 147 fatal accidents during the period.
He also said that 26 of the 41 pedestrians killed on Donegal's roads between 1994-2001 were over 50.
As part of the CPP, the days of the accident black spot could soon be a thing of the past. Zones where there are frequent accidents will be known as Collision Prone Locations, or CPLs.