Plans to cut speed limits ‘will significantly improve road safety’ – minister

Plans to reduce speed limits on many of Ireland’s roads will have a “significant impact” on improving safety, a minister has said.

Minister of state Jack Chambers, who has responsibility for roads safety, said he will bring proposals to lower several speed limit baselines to Cabinet colleagues later this month.

The speed limit review has been ongoing for two years, but Mr Chambers said work to implement the reductions would be fast-tracked amid concerns around the rising number of road deaths in Ireland.

As of Sunday evening, there had been 127 deaths on Irish roads so far in 2023. That is 23 more than the same period last year and 38 more than the same period in 2019.

A third of all deaths in 2023 have been people under the age of 25 and a quarter have been pedestrians.

There were 25 deaths in August alone.

Proposals set to be brought to Cabinet would see the speed limit on rural and local roads reduced from 80km/h to 60km/h.

In urban, residential and other built-up areas the limit would be cut from 50km/h to 30km/h.

The limit on main arterial routes in towns and cities would be capped at 50km/h.

On national secondary roads, the baseline would fall from 100km/h to 80km/h.

Current limits of 120km/h on motorways, 100km/h on national primary roads and 80km/h on regional roads will stay the same.

Under the proposals, local authorities will have the discretion to increase limits on roads where baselines have been reduced, if engineers deem a higher limit is appropriate to the road design.

Speaking on his way into Cabinet, Minister for Higher and Further Education Simon Harris said: “I think it has been a summer of extraordinary concern for people across the country when it comes to road safety.

“We have seen far too many tragic events right across Ireland and our hearts go out to all those who have lost people.”

He urged people who are travelling on roads that are unfamiliar to them to take care, particularly third-level students travelling to new accommodation ahead of the academic year.

“I don’t think there’s any one thing, quite frankly, that has to be done,” he said, adding that nothing should be taken off the table to address the problem.

Enterprise Minister Simon Coveney said he “strongly supports” plans to reduce speed limits on rural roads, saying there was “inconsistency across the country”.

“This isn’t a short-term response by Government in the context of the awful tragedies that we’ve seen this summer, this is something that’s been in preparation for quite some time.

“This isn’t some kind of blip, this is because road safety isn’t on people’s minds as much as it should be when they’re driving,” he said, adding that increased enforcement was also needed.

Sarah O’Connor of the Road Safety Authority said research indicates there was a “significant” change in drivers’ attitudes and behaviours during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“But now what we’re seeing with the return to norm is those behavioural breaches, attitudes and behaviours that people have brought to bear, they are now really having a very significant impact.

“So, for example, one of the pieces we’re very concerned (about) is we have seen a 10% reduction of the number of people who report that they or their family members and friends consider drink driving to be inappropriate or socially unacceptable.

“A 10% change over the course of the last 10 years, while people might say the alcohol conversation is done and dusted, to us that’s a key behaviour that we need to (double down on).”

She said there was a similar concern with distracted driving, and that their survey indicates that around 30% of people check their notifications or social media status while driving, while a further 24% of people say they take photos or videos while driving.

“So what that says to us is our experience and interaction with mobile phones is broken in Ireland and we need to tackle that.”

She said work needed to be done to make using your phone while driving as socially unacceptable as drink driving.

“We need to do the same thing with mobile phones. We need to eradicate them and each of us needs to make sure it’s in the glove compartment, it’s in our handbag or equivalent, that it’s not out, that it’s not accessible.”

Mr Chambers is to bring a road safety Bill before the Oireachtas this term and he said the timeframe for developing detailed guidance for local authorities would be reduced from one year to around three months.

But he acknowledged that it could be late 2024 and into 2025 before speed limits were reduced, as local authorities had to undertake a significant exercise of assessing all roads affected.

The Government is examining a range of potential legislative moves aimed at changing driving behaviours.

On Monday, Justice Minister Helen McEntee announced a 20% increase in the use of speed cameras on Irish roads in response to what she described as “worrying trends” around increasing road fatalities.

Ms McEntee said an additional 1.2 million euro is to be allocated for GoSafe vans, providing for an extra 1,500 hours of monitoring per month until the end of this year.

One measure would see penalty points handed out for multiple offences committed in one incident, rather than just for the most serious offence.

More than 860 drivers were caught speeding during a Garda “slow down” day initiative this week.

One of the 865 motorists detected driving in excess of the speed limit was travelling at 161km/h in a 100km/h zone in Co Louth.