Slow Drivers....

jd

From the Indo

A JUDGE who branded slow drivers "idiots" was supported last night by road safety experts. Judge William Harnett said such drivers were a menace and could cause accidents.


Although they stopped short of endorsing his language, Eddie Shaw of the National Safety Council and Conor Faughnan of the AA both agreed that excessively slow driving may be dangerous.


Mr Shaw said it frustrated other drivers and could lead to dangerous overtaking. Mr Faughnan said: "The judge is absolutely correct."


The District Court judge said that any motorist caught in a tailback behind a slow driver should assume the culprit was an idiot, who should be targeted by gardai.


Judge Harnett said he knew of only one garda prosecution for "loitering". However, such drivers were a menace and could cause serious accidents.


He said that either slow drivers enjoy holding up other people, or they are incompetent, or their cars are in poor condition. "Anyone caught behind them should assume the worst. They should assume that the person is an idiot," he said.


His comments were made at Thomastown District Court earlier this week, during a case involving a driver who overtook a slow-moving car on the hard shoulder after being caught in a tailback for a number of miles.


Judge Harnett said that while the driver's actions were wrong, he was caught behind a person whose driving was enough to merit a charge of driving without reasonable consideration.


"I am very familiar with this syndrome, people who loiter on national roads and hold up traffic. That is the sort of behaviour that causes accidents and serious accidents," said Judge Harnett.


Accepting the judge's comments, Supt Aiden Roche said slow drivers could cause accidents, as their behaviour encouraged people to overtake at the wrong time.


Judge Harnett said he felt bound to impose bans in cases of dangerous driving. He disqualified the driver for a year, with an endorsement and fined him €300.


Commenting on the judge's remarks, Mr Shaw said excessively slow driving can cause crashes because other drivers get frustrated in a resulting tailback and overtake dangerously.


But Mr Shaw stressed that that was no excuse for reckless overtaking and drivers should report the person to gardai, using the Garda Traffic Watch scheme at 1890-20 58 05 and only pass them when it was safe to do so.


Mr Shaw said: "There is no doubt that there are incidents when inappropriate slow driving on particular roads has created circumstances when it can cause a crash.


"Drivers need to exercise even greater caution in these circumstances and should not do anything to put themselves in danger. It does not justify the risk of overtaking recklessly."


The road safety chief stressed, however, that the primary cause of the high incidence of accidents continued to be speeding, drink-driving and the non-wearing of seat belts. There was a lesser incidence related to inappropriate slow driving.


Mr Shaw also stressed that there were times when it was appropriate to drive slowly, such as in fog or in icy or wet conditions. And it was possible that elderly drivers may feel it is appropriate to drive at speeds below the speed limit.


Backing Judge Harnett's comments, Mr Faughnan said there was an issue over slow drivers who had no regard for other road users and encouraged reckless overtaking manoeuvres.


But he stressed that the overtaking drivers were at fault and ones responsible for accidents.


He emphasised also that it was most important to stop drivers speeding, as they were the ones who were killing people.

mike65

In Germany (and other countries) driving too slow is a criminal offence under road-traffic acts, mainly on the autobahn I suspect.

I'm all for fining those who dawdle dangerously but then I drive a van!

Mike.

Dave

Slow drivers piss me off the most. I don't mind slow drivers if i'm a passenger but when i'm driving i get really frustrated.

sceptre

I've long been a fan of the idea that there should be a minimum speed limit on motorways (unless for traffic or other reasons it's impossible to drive at any speed)

On the other hand, we don't have minimum speed limit anywhere in the country. That means that if little Johnny wants to drive his tractor down the N20 at five miles an hour he's free to do so.

TBH what bothers me more is people driving in the fast lane when there's a car behind them and no cars in the left lane There's a design fault with many of our fast lanes anyway - by guiding the traffic naturally into the right land, motorists have to make the decision to pull over. A few places have it right - such as the fast lane outside Nenagh and outsire Mallow on the Limerick side - guiding cars into the left lane so that they have to make the decision to overtake (rather than the decision to allow themselves to be overtaken)

A sixty mile an hour limit doesn't mean that everyone has to travel at sixty miles an hour (or seventy:rolleyes: ). it means that the maximum speed allowed is sixty.

If minimum speeds for motorways and some other major roads are introduced, fine. Until then, judges have better things to do than complain about it in court. Let them complain about it in their private capacity like everyone else (or in their public capacity in private)

There are circumatances where driving slowly can cause an accident. Many of those circumstances involve people coming out of minor roads slowly or driving very slowly in winding roads (where people behind don't have enough time to react). This was clearly not the case here if the guy managed to overtake on the hard shoulder. Fine/ban/endorsement deserved imho.

jd

Originally posted by sceptre
This was clearly not the case here if the guy managed to overtake on the hard shoulder. Fine/ban/endorsement deserved imho.

IMHO both drivers should have been convicted, if possible.
The fact there was a hard shoulder implies there was room for the slow dirver to pull over and make room for traffic behind him. It doesn't excuse the other guys actions...The slow driver couldpossibly have been done with driving without due care and consideration.
The other guy was rightly convicted of dangeous driving..

ando

Originally posted by sceptre
On the other hand, we don't have minimum speed limit anywhere in the country

Isn't there a 30mph limit on the m50?

Blitzkrieger

Vehicles under 30mph aren't allowed on a motorway, which implies a 30mph minimum speed limit. IMO anything under 55 on a dual-carrigway or motorway is too slow.

A minimum speed limit would be impracticle to enforce : "But I was still accelerating Garda", but it would be nice. The amount of times I've been stuck behind some slow-ass bollox on roads too dangerous to overtake on.......

Stephen

Finally some sense. The judge is right. Slow drivers are dangerous.

irishguy

what they should do is make some of the new roads that they are building e.g. limerick to dublin,galway to dublin and cork to dublin they should be like the german autoban with 8 lanes [4 each way] with 4 different limits the fastest lane should have a very high speed limit or no speed limit,but cars that use this lane should be certified i.e u dont want a 87' suped up feista doing over 80.i saw this system in the netherlands and belgium works great.they also have a road system for the city center [in amsterdam] theyre is a footpath then a bikelane then 2 lanes of trafic then 2 lanes for trams/emergency vichels/taxies then another 2 lanes of trafic,a bike land and foot path.that is just a brief outline because it is a very complicated system but it works VERY well i was there for a week and i didnt see one trafic jam,but everything moves so fast so i think alot of irish drivers woulnt be able to cope with it.

Blitzkrieger

You'd have to bomb every city flat to build a system like that. And if we 8-lane roads connecting all the citys, there'd be nowhere for us to live

Makaveli

Originally posted by irishguy
.i saw this system in the netherlands and belgium works great.they also have a road system for the city center [in amsterdam] theyre is a footpath then a bikelane then 2 lanes of trafic then 2 lanes for trams/emergency vichels/taxies then another 2 lanes of trafic,a bike land and foot path.that is just a brief outline because it is a very complicated system but it works VERY well i was there for a week and i didnt see one trafic jam,but everything moves so fast so i think alot of irish drivers woulnt be able to cope with it.

Our streets are too narrow though.

irishguy

ya i know it will never happen even if we did have the space we wouldnt have the foresite.Putting down lanes would still use nearly the same amount of space as alot of current mainroads as there is infficent use of space.i know the street system is inpractial but it could be employed on a few streets around the country and on new streets,also there were talks at one stage of builting a new city/town in the west of ireland,if this goes ahead we should look carefully at rhe european system