The Department of the Environment in Northern Ireland will announce a strategy to reduce road deaths in the next two weeks following a spate of fatalities over the Easter weekend.
The department said yesterday it was determined to cut the numbers killed on the roads.
A six-year-old boy became the 40th victim on the North's roads this year. He was named as Rory Hunt from Downpatrick, Co Down. He died after the car in which he was travelling with his parents, was in collision with another vehicle on Monday between the villages of Clough and Castlewellan.
A department spokesman said yesterday: "The PSNI and our advertising agency in the department have been discussing what we can do about the weekend carnage. We have some firm proposals and we aim to make an announcement within two weeks on this."
It was revealed that nearly half of all fatalities occur at weekends and on bank holidays.
Brian Irvine of the Fire and Rescue Service said the collision scene was "very harrowing". "When we arrived on the scene there were two cars which had collided head-on. They were facing each other across the whole road," he said.
"The ambulance paramedics were treating three people on the roadside and two others in a vehicle who were trapped.
"We removed the trapped casualties using hydraulic cutting equipment, working very closely with paramedics." Those injured had been very lucky as they had been wearing seatbelts and there were airbags, he added.
In Co Antrim, a man and woman and a lorry driver were taken to hospital after a crash on the Harbour Highway outside Larne. The couple were reported to be in serious condition, while the driver of the lorry was less seriously hurt.
Over the Easter period, four teenagers died in separate collisions.
East Belfast twins (19), who were passengers in a car driven by their 18-year-old friend, died when their car crashed off the Ballygowan Road outside east Belfast on Saturday morning. The driver also died.
In Co Tyrone, Janeen Black (19) from Pomeroy, Co Tyrone was killed in a collision on Saturday night. In Co Derry, the drivers of two cars suffered serious injuries following a head-on collision near Limavady.