Local Roads - New Speed Limits

magicbastarder

are you saying that an occasional eyeball of your speedo makes you a worse driver?

if you can't tell the difference between 60 and 80 by the way the car feels and revs anyway, maybe that's something you should pay more heed to.

No_Hope_Club

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123182480#Comment_123182480

I can't comment on your personal driving habits but driving at a lower speed will increase your chances of not killing yourself or others in a collision.

FishOnABike

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123182566#Comment_123182566

I'm saying an occasional eyeball of your speedo is an occasional eyeball not on the road.

The difference between 60 and 80 is obvious.

It's the much smaller difference between doing a little under 60 and a little over 60 with varying load, uphill or downhill, steeper or shallower gradients that means an occasional eyeball of your speedo to make sure you stay the right side of 60.

FishOnABike

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123182614#Comment_123182614

I have no doubt driving at under 60kmh on L roads will both reduce the incidence and severity of collisons and their effects but also that this reduction will be tempered somewhat by an occasional eyeball on the speedo rather than on the road and, human nature being human nature, drivers being more inclined succumb to distractions when driving more slowly.

elperello

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123182480#Comment_123182480

No it's not a good thing to be taking your eyes off the road.

You will have to get used to how to judge your speed without looking at the speedometer.

It can be a bit difficult if driving different vehicles but if you concentrate on it you'll get there.

Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Kaisr Sose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123182615#Comment_123182615

Aim for 50kmph, then and you will always be under 60kmph?

No matter what speed you are doing, a driver should only be taking their eye off the road on a clear sterch of road, and be satisfied it is safe to do so.

If road is narrow, has poor surface, not straight/bends ahead, bad weather or people about, no driver should be looking anywhere other than the road with full focus on driving. Slowing down in these situations would also be easy to do, and not require taking eyes off the road.

The limit is not a target, it's the max speed permitted, and a speed that may not always be safe for the conditions or traffic.

FishOnABike

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123182690#Comment_123182690

17% below a speed limit might be considered failure to make progress, a speed limit which itself is 25% below what was legal and safe a few days ago.

Kaisr Sose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123182774#Comment_123182774

This is getting silly. There would be no such charge brought against any driver doing 50 in a 60. This is not failing to make progress, it's safe, responsible driving. Benchmarking to the old limit has no legal bearing. It's not relevant.

You just need to curb your desire to treat a speed limit as a target. .

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123182774#Comment_123182774

You may have missed the point that on many, many, many L roads, until recently 80km(h was legal and far from safe.

FishOnABike

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123182816#Comment_123182816

I can assure you I haven't missed the point. There are many, many, many L roads I would only have driven at less than the current 60kmh limit even though up to recently 80kmh was legal on them.

It is always the driver's responsibility to drive at a speed that is both safe and legal, irrespective of the posted limit.

There are also L roads that are safe to drive at 80kmh, Councils have actively considered some L roads and designated them with a special speed limit of 80kmh.

No_Hope_Club

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123182660#Comment_123182660

There's no evidence to suggest that when driving slower people are more distracted leading to higher instances of collisions resulting in deaths and serious injuries.

Human nature, as you put it, sounds like humans can't be trusted to drive in a safe manner..…

FishOnABike

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123182953#Comment_123182953

Risk compensation is a well known principle.

Human nature, as you put it, sounds like humans can't be trusted to drive in a safe manner..…

The number of rere end collisions (especially involving multiple vehicles) in slow moving rush hour tailbacks would srm to indicate so. Q.E.D.

KrisW1001

Rear-end collisions are caused by cars driving too fast for the prevailing conditions: the very thing we've been assured won't happen if speed limits were left high. And anyone who thinks "Inattention" only happens in traffic hasn't looked at drivers on rural roads. Plenty of texting going on there, but sure there's "nobody else on the road"... until that morning when there is.

Limits are tough for new drivers who haven't really got much experience of controlling a car, but if an experienced driver cannot tell what 60 km/h is without "constantly" looking at their speedo, then they are clearly someone who rarely controls their speed at all. If you drive to the limits, you just know what these speeds feel like, especially in your own car.

hans aus dtschl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123182556#Comment_123182556

I don't think it even needs gardai posted on it, there's cameras for large stretches of it that they could use

Chris_5339762

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123182556#Comment_123182556

Back when there were roundabouts on the south ring and a bigger proportion of traffic went through town, there was one gentleman in the Tivoli queue who always used to read the full sheet version of the Irish Times whilst crawling in traffic.

There was also the CIE bus driver who would do an up-and-over at the Tivoli junction to get a bit further ahead.

No_Hope_Club

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123183021#Comment_123183021

Compares apples with oranges.

Your argument that higher speeds are safer (as there is less "distractions" for humans) is nonsense.

hans aus dtschl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123183275#Comment_123183275

I've seen people reading the full sheet version of the newspaper on the M8. I suspect the same people these days just use screens. Again, no amount of speed limits or road design can solve for people's bad judgement!

Anyway the point is, we create speed limits to stop people from having to only rely on their judgement, because humans are flawed. In an ideal world, we'd either engineer out the main artery L-roads with bad camber or bad sightlines, but the "quick fix" is blanketing them with 60kmh and forcing the councils to "upgrade" them back to 80kmh.

I'd be of the opinion that a council that "upgrades" roads to 80 (like here in Cork) has a subsequent responsibility to invest in making that road suitable for 80. Rather than the current situation of "shur everyone knows that's a bad bend" and regular crashes.

FishOnABike

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123183290#Comment_123183290

You are misrepresenting what I said. I never said higher speeds are safer, merely that reducing speed limits on a road that was safe at a higher speed might not have the as great an effect on road safety as might be expected for a number of reasons

1. The difference between the higher and lower limits might not be as significant a safety factor as might be thought. On poor roads drivers may already have been driving well below the limit (old or new). On good roads driving within the speed limit (old or new) might not be a significant safety factor.
2. Risk compensation / Peltzman effect

Rosahane

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123183077#Comment_123183077

Interesting! Are you an instructor or do you have advanced driving qualifications?

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123183434#Comment_123183434

reducing speed limits on a road that was safe at a higher speed

this is the rub; if the default is 80, how many roads have what we'll call an excessively high limit; and if the default is 60, how many roads have too low a limit?

if the outcome of this is the amount of work to deal with the exceptions (engineer inspections to re-grade the lmiit), i suspect there's a hell of a lot more work with a default 80 limit than there is with a default 60. for every L road that's capable of sustaining 80, there are probably 10 which couldn't even justify 60.

creedp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123183562#Comment_123183562

For me (and before a certain poster sleep is disrupted obviously it's only my humble opinion so ignore at will) if a scientific approach was been taken to applying appropriate speed limits we see limits other than the tired old arbitrary defaults of 40mph, 50mph and 60mph being used when apparently implementing a new appropriate speed limit regime on Irish roads. That would take effort though so instead just continue to use the same tired old arbitrary limits dressed up in shiny new dresses and how could anyone have an issue with it

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123183434#Comment_123183434

…merely that reducing speed limits on a road that was safe at a higher speed might not have the as great an effect on road safety as might be expected for a number of reasons…

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "a road that was safe at a higher speed" and who that definition applies to?

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123183627#Comment_123183627

what scientific approach do you envisage? one that would scale to our greater than 50,000km of L roads.

almostover

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123183275#Comment_123183275

Not surprised really. There's zero to be achieved by making rules if they're not enforced. Human nature takes over and people do what they know they'll get away with. There's very little active policing on that road and driver behaviour reflects that. Only policing will chnave it.

Charles Babbage

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123182556#Comment_123182556

Brushing your teeth is not as dangerous as smoking, and many drivers smoke in cars at all times of the day and not just in the morning rush hour.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123183483#Comment_123183483

No and no. I also wouldn't consider myself to be a better than average driver (however, I do know from expert opinion that I'd be a **** competition driver) , but I'm still able to manage the amazing feat of knowing what speed I'm driving at without needing to constantly check the speedo, so surely it's not beyond those who claim that their superior skills are being hamstrung by bureaucracy and wokeness.

creedp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123183695#Comment_123183695

So no other way in this sophisticated era of setting speed limits than sticking a pin in one of the archaic default 40mph, 50mph or 60mph speed limit classification? What did 70kph do in a previous life to be so horribly ignored?

FishOnABike

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123183647#Comment_123183647

a road e.g. which had a 80kmh speed limit up to recently where traffic speeds were consistent with that limit i.e. slightly under the 80kmh limit and which did not have a poor road safety record i.e. the number of road traffic incidents below a very low threshold or none.

If there's been no road traffic incidents in years with an 80kmh limit, reducing the limit to 60kmh won't reduce the road traffic incidents to less than zero.

KrisW1001

Be careful what you wish for. 50/70/90 is common across Europe, but that mostly means a limit of 90 on roads we'd set 100 on, and 70 where we'd use 80. To finish out the set, divided roads without shoulders are usually limited to 110 and motorways 130.

... but those higher limits are normally reduced by 20 km/h automatically by law when it rains, so with our weather, our limits are already higher most of the time.

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123184065#Comment_123184065

So in your view, the safety and risk rating of a road has nothing to do with anyone who is not driving? The only consideration of whether a road should be considered safe is whether there were road traffic collisions on it.
What about the collisions that weren't reported?
What about the pedestrians and cyclists who will not use that L-road because traffic moves too fast for comfort? Is the road deemed safe because there is now less risk of a driver hitting them?

In short, a roads safety potential must consider all potential users, not just the most protected user sitting in their car!