Meanwhile on the Roads...

zell12

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121944519#Comment_121944519

There was on/off rain but nothing spectacular

Paddigol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121945964#Comment_121945964

I've started to see mention of 'accident black spot'...

zell12

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121946783#Comment_121946783

'killer road' & 'bad stretch'

dahat

At what point do people discuss the actual cause of certain accidents/ tragedies?

90% if not more are caused by reckless driving relative to conditions at the time or careless/dangerous driving but let’s not talk about it just blame everything else in play.

07Lapierre

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121945964#Comment_121945964

Probably enough for Aquaplaning to take place if the vehicles are travelling fast enough.

07Lapierre

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121946783#Comment_121946783

Usually a bad bend on a narrow road with poor road surface where a few cars have crashed. The solution? upgrade the road by straightening it and widening it. The result is a "better" road which allows people to drive faster!.. then when it rains, they continue to drive at the same speed they would do if it was dry. Result is a crash on a "safe" stretch of road with fatal consequences

Paddigol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121947216#Comment_121947216

It's a difficult one, because you can't lose sight of the very real human tragedies and suffering that are involved and you don't want to be insensitive when the loss is raw. But at the same time, we clearly have issues of cognitive dissonance around driving and the responsibilities and risks that are associated with it. Driving is sold by the automotive industry as 'sexy'. Cars are playthings. Driving is intrinsic to a successful life. It's a right. A necessity. And nearly all of us who drive are guilty, to varying degrees, at various points, of indulging in at least some of the behaviours that statistics will show are responsible for most accidents. So we turn our heads away from the problem, which never gets solved.

Paddigol

This is madness… yet more carnage.

https://www.independent.ie/regionals/wexford/wexford-district/crash-at-busy-wexford-junction-sees-four-adults-and-two-children-rushed-to-hospital/a1467482475.html

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/man-20s-killed-in-roscommon-crash-while-woman-50s-dies-days-after-being-hit-by-van-in-dublin/a591525202.html#:~:text=A%20man%20aged%20in%20his,van%20in%20Ringsend%20last%20week.

These are the roads we share, the roads we're deliberately intimidated on by aggro drivers, impatient 'professional drivers' and cyclist-hating cranks. It's not the roads that are the real problem here, despite what councillor Ger Carthy might lead you to believe.

Cabaal

Road deaths are basically now Ireland's eqivalant to the gun death problem in the USA.

The avg motorist is outraged at the idea of speed limits being lowered and giving priority to vulnerable road users (and they'll ignore speed limitsi anyway without enforcement), but when a truly awful road situation happens on our roads all people do is give thoughts and prayers.

Its enraging.

We look at the USA and shake our heads about how they refuse to address gun deaths (now the number one killer of children), but we're basically doing the same with road deaths. Urging people to obey the law isn't working, the reality is people need to actually fear exceeding speed limits or holding a mobile phone.

Every N and M road in the country should have sections with avg speed cameras, Gardai need to copy UK by doing mobile phone stings.

No road in Ireland is lethal…provided you drive the correct speed for the conditions.

07Lapierre

swap Charlton Heston for Conor Faughnan and the rifle for a set of car keys and you have Irish peoples attitude towards cars…

https://youtu.be/ORYVCML8xeE?si=0xnzteQaRRWrbOlu

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121950933#Comment_121950933

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121950995#Comment_121950995

The responses on this thread pretty much confirm your point.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058343933/clean-air-congestion-charging-set-to-be-introduced-by-2030

Richmond Ultra

They got a budget for more average speed limit cameras but it hasn't been spent yet.

Few more traffic core would possibly help it.

mykrodot

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121947339#Comment_121947339

I drove on that road, past the exact spot of the accident just 24 hours earlier and the conditions were appalling….. I had to pull off the road. The rain, spray and flooding so bad it was impossible to see. I'd say 24 hours later conditions were still bad, lots of floods and road verges like wet sponges.

Cabaal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121951191#Comment_121951191

and were people slowing down to drive to the conditions?

I'm guessing they were not.

mykrodot

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121952082#Comment_121952082

well to be fair I didn't see any speeding, it was mostly huge articulated trucks and lorries on the road creating so much spray it was blinding. So I took a break. I didn't see any speeding, the rain was appalling. Bear in mind this was the day before the accident.

You can't insinuate that speed was a factor in the crash, it could have been weather conditions, a phone being checked, a distraction in the car or the truck involved, an obstruction on the road. Same in all crashes. Personally I think phones are lethal in cars.

Cabaal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121952105#Comment_121952105

Indeed it could have been weather conditions, but if weather was that bad people in general should go slower.
You see it on motorways especially, rain gets seriously heavily and still people maintain the same speeds, I've seen two cars loose control in those conditions on the M9 over the years in seperate instances.

Speed may not have been a factor in Mayo, but it is certainly a factor in a large amount of incidents.

As for phones, people don't fear using them. Points should be higher and fine should be min of 1k or better yet a percentage of income. People really need to fear picking up that phone.

Until that happens you can stand out beside any road for even 10min and you'll always spot a couple of people using phones in cars, trucks or HGV's and its bloody scary!

07Lapierre

3 people died so speed was definitely a factor! I’m not suggesting anyone was exceeding the speed limit, but if you have a car with 2mm or less tread on the tyres, almost any speed above 50 or 60kph could be fatal if aquaplaning occurs. Besides , aquaplaning only occurs at speed anyway.

Large bottle small glass

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121953287#Comment_121953287

Do you have the actual tread depth of vehicles? What was the width of the tyres? Have you details of road surface texture?

Standing water or flowing? how deep? On a straight section or bend?

That kind of post is exactly why we should not speculate on new accidents; squeezing in a half assed theory with close to zero factual information.

Full investigations take time to gather all the evidence before analysis and then if possible providing a sound opinion.

Cabaal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121953651#Comment_121953651

Whatever about the exact details, its is very safe to say speed was a factor. Even if there was a mechanical defect or driver unattention by somebody speed would still have been a factor in the deaths.

How can I say this? Because had everyone been traveling at 10km/hour its extremely unlikely they'd have been deaths in the event of a collision even with a HGV. But as the speed increases the risks greatly increase. If both partys were doing 70km it still would have been a collission at a combined speed of 140km….thats harder to walk away from sadly 😐️

In many instances like this we'll never know the full details or if we do know it'll be years to know. I can think of one tragic incident last summer where lack of seatbelts was the big factor, but that is not common knowledge beyond the locality.

This is why I refer to road deaths as our gun problem, its always too soon to talk about it and the line is often rolled out that we shouldn't do anything without knowing the full details. The end result is nothing changes and all we see are more deaths.

Large bottle small glass

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121953696#Comment_121953696

I'd wager there is nothing new in any recent fatal collision that we don't already know.

The need to know everything straight away is primarily a ghoulish curiosity similar to my recent interest in supertanker propulsion/steering and 9 months ago submarine design.

Basic respect and decency would allow for evidence gathering before keyboard opinions being announced to the world.

Kaisr Sose

Road deaths or incidents resulting in life changing injuries should and need to be addressed with the same foresight and urgency that led to the introduction of the legislation banning smoking in the workplace.

The time for silly ads urging people to do the right thing (slow down, not use phone, not drinking/drug driving) and most hilarious of all, national no speeding and go slow days is long past.

The only thing that will address and change deadly driver behaviour is an absolute shift away from consent based compliance to robust detection and enforcement. The technology to do this exists and needs to be adopted as soon as possible

As posted above by @Cabaal , people.need to be afraid to use a phone for fear of what it will cost them (financial). This is probably the hardest of all offences to detect so the fine/penalty for any detection needs to be high. The current situation where drivers are permitted to have multiple devices on their windscreen without it being an offence needs to be addressed. Apart from driver visibility being impaired or restricted, the presence of these devices in line of sight does nothing but distract drivers attention, which in most cases is why they are placed in their field of vision.

It would also help greatly if road markings such as continuous white lines were not let get to such a state such as to be non-existent, and left that way for years. All roads should have the correct and visible road markings to give any driver unfamiliar.with a roas the key information they need about the road ahead. So many roads, especially secondary roads where lots of serious incidents are occurring, just do not have this basic information. Some don't have any road markings at all.

07Lapierre

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121953651#Comment_121953651

Fair enough. Its just my view is that if more people simply slowed down, all other factors that contribute to RTA's are also greatly reduced.

Large bottle small glass

What we need is a more robust and standardized method of data collection. Given me solid data rather than quick data every day of the week

Once we have that data we can figure out what the biggest risk factors/causes are fatal and serious collision.

We went from 640 deaths per year and hoovered around 3—400 until things substantially improved a trend which has sadly reversed.

Its a problem with needs political will to fund better and more comprehensive policing, along with increased use of technology, continued education etc etc. We know what works, we have just stopped doing it.

Our road legislation needs a complete overhaul; if you name a circuit I'll find you a barrister who will get you off drink driving, speeding whatever. Once you have money justice is just a game, which erodes confidence in the justice system.

A recalibration on prosecution for serious road incidents in terms of charges is long overdue. You kill someone with a car, especially vulnerable road users prison should be an almost certainty.

A certain amount of road deaths are unavoidable, be in suicide by car, wreckless young lads in stolen cars, heart attacks in otherwise healthy people etc. There's a lot of low hanging fruit though and we should certainly be able to reduce to 100 and under should be easily achievable

Daroxtar

I've said it before, phone usage needs to be punished the same as drink driving. 6 months off the road, €1000 fine. Unmarked squad cars patrolling the roads constantly.

We also need assumed liability like in many other countries. If a motorist hits a vulnerable road user, they're automatically presumed to be in the wrong unless proven otherwise in court, as they were unable to control their vehicle to avoid the cyclist/pedestrians etc.

And audi drivers should have to resit their test every 2 months

mvt

Just to comment on the incident mentioned about the family being destroyed.

Obviously I dont know anything about the circumstances but I wondered about the significance in the photo in the newspaper of the truck ending up on the opposite side of the road.

Also was curious about the significance of the difference between the mindset of a mother driving her two little girls & a person with a commercial incentive.

I say person because the details of whoever is driving a vehicle that results that results in such a horrific outcome are never made clear immediately while the victims are.

I don't have words to explain how bad I felt for the Dad having to make that plane journey home on his own.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121953651#Comment_121953651

The irony of course is that by referring to them as 'accidents', you are speculating yourself on the cause of the incident, with close to zero factual information.

AndrewJRenko

While you're probably right in practical terms about the inevitability of a certain amount of road deaths, the causes you listed aren't ones that are inevitable and unavoidable.

If many of those late night single vehicle crashes are actually death by suicide, then maybe we should be requiring mental health assessments and sign off for drivers.

If heart attacks by drivers are causing road crashes, then maybe we should require periodic cardiac health assessments by drivers.

These things aren't inevitable. It's just a question of how much effort we're prepared to put in to avoid them. The answer today unfortunately, is that we're not prepared to put in any effort that would inconvenience drivers, because, you know, we're all drivers.

zell12

Jack Chambers talking about motorists "killer behaviour" again on Radio1

Large bottle small glass

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121955561#Comment_121955561

You might underline my speculation because I can't see it.

I've offered zero in terms of speculation

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121956355#Comment_121956355

You referred to the incidents as accidents. That is speculation.