Lowering speeds doesn’t prevent crashes entirely

Dropping the kids to school, running to the shops or making it to the mart on time, so many of us are busy, rushing and racing. It’s been one week since new speed limits were introduced on rural roads, and let me ask you, has it made you late for anything? The likelihood is it hasn’t, and if it did, you were probably going to be late anyway.

There’s been a lot of grumblings about speed limits being reduced from 80km/h to 60km/h on rural roads but I’m in favour of them.

I’ve been a passenger in three road collisions. Thankfully, I walked away from all of them without any long-term injuries but that might not have been the case if speeds were higher.

One of these was a side collision. The other driver went straight into the back passenger side of our car, and the force caused us to circle around and crash back into them – a double impact.

Looking back now, it was a dark night at rush hour, there was a lot of traffic so the other car couldn’t have been going too fast and we had just moved from a stationery position. However, I sometimes think that the same collision in the same place just a few hours later when the roads were less busy and speeds were higher, could have meant a different result. Because the statistics are stark. In side collisions at 80km/h, there is a 90% chance of a fatality. However, this drops to 30% at 60km/h.

Lowering speeds doesn’t prevent crashes entirely, but it significantly reduces their severity. Last week, I was listening to RTÉ Radio One in which they were discussing the impact that lowering speed limits had in other countries.

In 2018, when speed limits were reduced by 10km/h in France, it led to 13% less fatalities. In Belgium, when they reduced the speed limit from 90km/h to 70km/h, they saw 33% fewer fatalities, and in Wales, a reduction of 20mph, resulted in 100 fewer deaths within 12 months, compared to statistics from the previous year.

That is not to say that reducing speed limits is the perfect solution. The number of guards monitoring the roads needs to increase. There has been no significant increase in the number of guards working within road traffic units in the past 10 years. However, it is estimated that in the last 15 years, there has been a 40% increase in the number of cars on Irish roads.

What has also risen significantly is phone usage, with people scrolling on their phones when driving. According to the RSA, distracted driving accounts for between 20% and 30% of accidents, and phone usage is a significant contributory factor.

There are also roads where there are re-occurring (or regular) accidents. On the N17, for example, there were eight road deaths in nine months last year. And just two weeks ago, on 31 January, two young men lost their lives in a car crash in Carlow.

The crash happened at a spot known as the ‘Leagh Bends’. On that same day last year, in the very same spot, three other young people died in a road collision.

Areas like this need to be given priority to ensure that lives are saved and no other families have to experience this horrendous heartache.