Speed limits aren’t a big issue on our roads - bad driving is

JACK Chambers, Minister of State at the Department of Transport, has a plan to reduce fatalities on our roads.

He wants to lower the speed limits on the national road network, and one of the proposals is to cut the limit to 30kph in our towns.

I was driving home from my morning swim when I heard Minister Chambers announcing this on the radio. I immediately set my speedometer to 30kph to try it out, and I can tell you now, it won’t work.

We may as well return to the days of the man with the red flag walking ahead of cars.

It’s impractical, but Minister Chambers is insistent. He says it will be enforced by gardaí and GoSafe vans, but if he is so confident that his new legislation will be enforced, then why not just enforce the current speed limits?

Maybe it has something to do with resources.

But, if you believe the garda commissioner, Minister Chambers and Minister McEntee, we don’t have a lack of policing resources in this jurisdiction. The ability of An Garda Siochána to carry out its functions has not been compromised due to lack of manpower, allegedly.

The garda representative organisations disagree.

Conor Faughnan, CEO of the Royal Irish Automobile Club, disagrees too. He said garda presence on the roads is not where it needs to be.

“There has to be a physical presence of gardaí. I sympathise with their challenges, but I think that’s a major thing that we need to do.”

He added, “Often, when road safety hits a crisis, the minister of the day brainstorms up a new law or a tougher punishment, but actually, our law is strong.”

I agree with him.

In the aftermath of every serious road traffic accident, there are calls for a reduction in speed limits and tougher legislation, but if we can’t enforce the current legislation, what’s the point in creating more?

Furthermore, poor driving standards are as much of a hazard as speed.

I’ll give you a few examples. While driving into Cobh recently, I approached the Cathedral. A minibus was parked at the main gate delivering a few passengers very close to a sharp bend, so I pulled in behind the minibus.

The car behind me overtook both of us and came face to face with a taxi driver coming against him on the bend. The taxi driver reacted quickly in fairness to him and prevented a collision.

It was a dangerous overtaking and a bad piece of driving that had nothing to do with speed.

Later on, I saw a car on the right-hand side of the road facing me. He was double parked and about to reverse into a parking space. Another car came behind him and, without warning, overtook him, forcing me to stop as we met head on. Again, speed wasn’t the problem.

Last week, I was driving home from Cork on the N25 when I overtook a small Nissan Micra. The driver had the seat reclined with his left arm behind his head and looked like a guy who was going for a snooze. I’m not sure how much of the road he could actually see because his head seemed to be at the same level as the dashboard, but he was well under the speed limit.

Examples of bad and dangerous driving are easy to find, and they’re not always connected with speed.

If you want a cure for constipation, just park near a school any day at finishing time and watch the antics of the drivers, especially if the day is wet.

One commentator suggested that, for all the innovations modern cars boast, like state-of-the-art entertainment systems, there’s still no system for tracking, monitoring and recording the behaviour of motorists that could provide evidence of what happened following a traffic accident.

Well, I beg to differ. That technology does exist, but whether or not we’ll ever see it in general use is another question.

We used it when I served with the United Nations in Cyprus. The 4x4, 3 litre jeeps we used were mostly Toyota or Nissan Hilux models with plenty of power for driving over rough terrain.

On the dirt tracks in the Buffer Zone, the UN vehicles observed a speed limit of around 25kph.

Several UN vehicles had been involved in accidents over the years, so they took the step of fitting them with car log systems.

Every driver was issued with an identity card, and before you could start the car, you had to log in by swiping your card on a little device on the dashboard.

Once you took off, everything that car did was monitored and recorded. Where you went, the times you stopped, the speeds you reached and the times you reached them.

The vehicles were limited to a maximum speed of 90kph, which was no problem while driving in the Buffer Zone, but holding a 3-litre car at that speed while travelling on a motorway took a bit of getting used to.

Once you hit the 90kph mark, a buzzer sounded in the cabin and kept buzzing until the speed was reduced.

In Headquarters, there were people keeping an eye on these things. If you exceeded the speed limit for too long on any one occasion or regularly exceeded it for short periods, you would be called upon to explain why.

A regular offender could be fined or have the card suspended.

We soon learned to hate the sound of that buzzer, but it was effective.

But, here’s the thing. While this system has its merits, that alone won’t rid us of the poor driving standards on our roads.

To achieve, that we will need to use all our resources - training, education, enforcement and technology.