30k speed limits for all urban areas on the way

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122059948#Comment_122059948

To be crystal clear. I'd quite like it if the frequency of road deaths began to steadily decrease as the year goes on. I don't want more and more people to die in order to be able to bang the same drum. I really don't want to be banging this drum at all.

I'd have thought that was fairly obvious tbh.

blade1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122059989#Comment_122059989

30kph is less than 19mph

loco_scolo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122058702#Comment_122058702

In fairness there's only 1 smoking related death for every 200,000,000 mm of cigarette smoked in Ireland per year. To think of it another way, 199,999,999 mm length of cigarettes can be smoked completely safely. Obviously our smoking laws are blown completely out of proportion given this extremely low death rate per mm length of cigarette smoked.

FishOnABike

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122060146#Comment_122060146

and allowing for speedometer accuracy, 30kmh indicated speed could be between 15 and 16mph.

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122059948#Comment_122059948

it's not just about reducing deaths, it's about making urban areas more pleasant and safer places to be.

as someone mentioned above (or maybe it was in another thread), you don't actually have to have an actual incident for a road to be dangerous. if people don't walk on a hypothetical road because motorists drive too fast on it, you're probably not going to see pedestrian fatalities or injuries. but the lack (or low number) of pedestrian incidents woud thus not be an indicator that the road is safe for pedestrians. we're back to the shark filled pool analogy.

Elmer Blooker

100% in favour of 30km limits and road safety but it’s only a gimmick, a publicity stunt. My area has been a 30km limit area for some years now yet cars are tearing through the area at whatever speed they like with impunity.
The so called ‘speed bumps’ are designed to have no effect whatsoever as they are as flat as pancakes, this is Ireland after all.
Still, it makes politicians look ‘concerned’ about road safety and that’s all that matters.

Uncle Pierre

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122060372#Comment_122060372

I happen to agree with you on those points.

I just don't think it's unreasonable to question the narrative that "a 30km/h limit will save lives", which was the main focus of this proposal when it was first put forward, and which appears to have been the main focus of justification for the lower limits in Wales ahead of them being introduced last year too. By far the majority of road deaths occur in areas that won't be affected by a drop from 50 to 30. I'd suggest the narrative around the 30km/h limit should focus on those other things instead. In fairness, the "30K town" advert attempts to do it, but public reaction to that one hasn't been great.

Furthermore, I note that you specify urban areas yourself. It's a constant feature of this and other threads on Boards in the whole area of road safety that discussion is very Dublin-centric, or at least focused on Dublin and our cities too, with little consideration of rural Ireland.

So whatever about a 30 km/h limit in genuinely urban areas (i.e. city and large town centres), which have significant levels of pedestrian and cyclist traffic, I don't think it's unreasonable either to question the need for it in quiet rural villages, which might only see a handful of cyclists all day long, and where there may be no more than one or two pedestrians out at a time, walking safely on a footpath.

I know Local Authorities will have the discretion to instead maintain 50km/h limits in such areas, but realistically, that will involve every Local Authority having to make a whole raft of bye-laws, which would be a lengthy process if they ever even start it at all.

Seth Brundle

So whatever about a 30 km/h limit in genuinely urban areas (i.e. city and large town centres), which have significant levels of pedestrian and cyclist traffic, I don't think it's unreasonable either to question the need for it in quiet rural villages, which might only see a handful of cyclists all day long, and where there may be no more than one or two pedestrians out at a time, walking safely on a footpath.

I know Local Authorities will have the discretion to instead maintain 50km/h limits in such areas, but realistically, that will involve every Local Authority having to make a whole raft of bye-laws, which would be a lengthy process if they ever even start it at all.

It appears that you're not actually understanding the proposal.
It is for default limits of 30km/h but those limits, like all speed limits, can be changed. The change from 30km/h to 50km/h would need to be justified but given what you are claiming, then this change is quite possible

magicbastarder

yeah, i specified urban areas as that's where the plan is for these changes.

but i think 30km/h limits in all towns and villages makes sense; it's not going to cost the motorist much time and should make the villages more pleasant.

say a small village - dropping a 0.5km stretch from 50km/h to 30km/h would cost a motorist at most 24 seconds.

Tenzor07

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122061005#Comment_122061005

I have seen people in their cars queue for ages to get to a pump at a service station and fill their cars, yet they loose their sh** over a speed limit that costs seconds..

Uncle Pierre

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122060983#Comment_122060983

I understand it perfectly, as shown by my last paragraph, which you've even quoted.

Maybe I should have used the word "restore" rather than "maintain", but yes, I understand that Local Authorities will have the discretion to change the default 30km/h limit back to 50km/h where appropriate.

I'm also realistic enough to understand how Local Authorities work, and I know that this would be a "long finger" job in most cases, if it ever got done at all.

Lord Baron Lane 8

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122060146#Comment_122060146

19mph so what happens if you doing 21 miles per hour you will be done ?

blade1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122061456#Comment_122061456

Sent to hell straightaway

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122060127#Comment_122060127

The poster I was replying to uses deaths as a stick to collectively bash Irish motorists with. And I've seen others use the simplistic "motorists kill" or "drivers kill" narrative. So this point would be best directed at them.

But for that posters 67 fatalities, according to the latest information we have, there were 3,257,621 drivers licenses in Ireland as of 2021. Assuming simply/quickly 1 Irish driver involved per fatality, that means that (doing some simple maths) that 99.9979% of Irish drivers had nothing to do with these incidents.

Do the other 3,257,621 get to question any of this?

And to the increase in fatalities, we know that speed limits did not go up by 25-30% since last year either, so that too is blameless.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122060136#Comment_122060136

That's not the sense I get, tbh, and I doubt I'm alone.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122062898#Comment_122062898

You're certainly alone in your experience of being terrorised by marauding cyclists every time you step onto the footpath, so you may well be alone in this too.

magicbastarder

here's the funny thing - if my sister was to let my teenage nephew out on public roads on his bike, she would not be thinking 'sure there's over 3 million licenced drivers in ireland and less than one fatality a day, be graaaand'.

because that way of looking at things - how many fatalities there are per million or per billion km driven - is a steering wheel eye view of the situation. it's a measure of how often the driver will be involved in a fatal collision.

if you're a pedestrian or cyclist or other form of road user, you simply don't care what the rate of collisions per km travelled for drivers is. you care about how safe cycling or walking is. and that's a completely separate measurement.

Uncle Pierre

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122063498#Comment_122063498

I think you're probably straddling the line between perception of "safe" and any measurement of it, and it's difficult to reconcile the two.

A simple exercise to illustrate the point:

• Let's say 200 road deaths in a year, from a population of five million. That's just 0.004% of the population. In other words, 99.996% of the population won't die in a road crash that year.
• And let's say an average lifespan of 70 years (average lifespan being different from life expectancy). 70 x 0.004 means just 0.28% of those five million will ever die in a road crash. In other words, 99.72% of the population won't ever become a road fatality statistic.
• The perception might therefore be that the roads are "safe" in terms of fatalities, since the chances of any one person ever being killed in a road crash are so small.

But now look at things in a different way:

• 0.004% is one in 25,000.
• Picture yourself at a full house match or concert in the Aviva Stadium - approx. 50,000 people.
• You look around, and it occurs to you - "wow. Two of these people seated within a short distance of me right now will die on the roads this year. That's shocking."
• The perception is now very different, despite it being exactly the same measure.

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122063434#Comment_122063434

Who said anything about cyclists? BTW I'm certainly not the only pedestrian who has noticed lawbreaking by cyclists being rather commonplace.

magicbastarder

oh, i'd wholeheartedly agree that the perception of danger and actual danger are often hard to disentangle; by a clear academic measure, my several years of commuting 40km two or three days a week, on my bike was safe, because i did not come to harm. but how do you measure the close passes by fullen laden dump trucks on strand road? or the adrenaline shot you get when some dozy fucker in an SUV pulls out in front of you without looking on newtownpark avenue?

or, amusingly in hindsight, the coked up asshole on a bike who challenged me to fisticuffs in the middle of the rock road after he nearly came a cropper after having run a red, and me telling him it was his own fault…

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122063921#Comment_122063921

my rough estimate this evening - approx 50%-60% of motorists who were first in line at traffic lights did not stop at their stop line, they stopped in the advance stop box; which means they broke the law.

it's kinda astounding the sheer number of motorists who are unaware of this concept which has existed for many years.

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122063972#Comment_122063972

I would offer the radical suggestion that we should punish the drivers responsible for these actions, not the other 3.3 million that had nothing to do with them.

Obviously, doing something like starting a road rage incident is completely indefensible. Edit: I just re-read the post and saw the last incident involved a cyclist. Point still stands though.

loco_scolo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122063890#Comment_122063890

Great post. 2 people killed and 2 entire families devastated by each fatality, plus anyone else involved but not killed. Including drivers who may be (or feel) responsible.

On top of all of that, you have 5 times as many serious injuries for each fatality on the roads.

So in that stadium crowd, 2 will be dead within 12mths, another 5 seriously injured, and how many other lives destroyed or horribly impacted?

@SeanW your dismissive attitude to this matter is disgusting, frankly.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122063921#Comment_122063921

Who said anything about cyclists?

Well, you did. Quite frequently.

BTW I'm certainly not the only pedestrian who has noticed lawbreaking by cyclists being rather commonplace.

You're right, lawbreaking by cyclists is indeed commonplace, as is lawbreaking by motorists and lawbreaking by pedestrians. You frequently go to extensive lengths to excuse lawbreaking by motorists, which suggests that lawbreaking isn't really a big issue.

Cookie_Monster

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122060337#Comment_122060337

what does the unused antiquated measurement have to do with anything exactly?

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122064477#Comment_122064477

I'm equally disgusted by the attitude that the small number of victims in these cases can be used as cudgels against millions of people who have nothing whatsoever to do with these incidents. That is, not even being involved, let alone culpable in any of them. At least that's what it looks like some are doing.

All I'm looking for is proportionality. Wallpapering the country with 30kph speed limits is like using a wrecking ball to drive a nail.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122072249#Comment_122072249

What's different about the driving of the people involved our growing (30% year on year increase) road deaths, the serious injuries that happen on our road every day, and your 'millions of people who have nothing whatsoever to do with these incidents'?

loco_scolo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122072249#Comment_122072249

They're not wallpapering the country with 30kph limits - it's urban areas. These places should be more friendly and safe for pedestrians, cyclists, kids, the elderly and everyone else in between.

You seem to miss a key point in all of this - lower speed limits in urban areas makes streets safer, quieter, less polluted and nicer places to live, play in, eat in, socialise in.... build a proper community.

In dense urban areas, average speeds are low anyway due to a high level of junctions. In small urban areas (a village or town), the lower limits will add a minute or less to driving times.

blade1

If safety is a priority they should get everyone to slow down.

30kph for cars and 10kph for bicycles and scooters.

magicbastarder

Not sure if serious?

migrant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122072995#Comment_122072995

I don't understand your question.