A young Westport man has been awarded a Road Safety award for an app he created called “Drive Safe”.

 Andrew Irwin of Knappaghbeg, Westport  - son of Christy and Mairéad Irwin - was presented with his award in Farmleigh House, Dublin recently.

Andrew took home the first ever ‘Judges’ Award for Technology and Innovation in Road Safety’.

Following a conversation with his mother over the Christmas break in 2014, Andrew created a road safety app that would detect when the user is driving and automatically set your phone to ‘drive mode’ as well as issue an auto response to those trying to contact the driver.

 The DriveSafe app was released to the Google Play Store in October 2015, and has since been downloaded nearly 50,000 times by 8,000 people in 123 countries.

Andrew was one of  37 individuals and organisations that were honoured for their commitment and dedication to road safety at the ninth annual ‘Leading Lights in Road Safety’ Awards which were presented by RSA Chairperson Liz O’Donnell and RSA Chief Executive Moyagh Murdock in Farmleigh House.

Awards were presented in a number of categories including media, education, business, emergency services and public sector.