30k speed limits for all urban areas on the way

So much to unpack here. First: "making our roads safe" is fine provided that the measures are reasonable and proportionate, which broad 30kph limits are not. I'm not sure how expecting rules to make sense makes me a "self entitled" "selfish muppet" driver with a victim complex or whatever other cheap insults you can think of.

As to the climate crisis, forcing everyone to crawl everywhere is going to cause more climate-killing carbon emissions in the short term, because driving at stupidly low speeds for no reason uses more fuel than driving at reasonable speeds. The climate argument is of limited value anyway since the government is going to ban cars with engines in the near future, and anyone who still drives will have to have a car that does not emit CO2. Even if the climate argument were relevant, the fact is that the Western world will not be a significant source in the future. Even now, China emits more CO2 than the United States, Western Europe and Japan combined, and their emissions are only going up as are those of India. Even if forcing motorists to crawl had a positive effect (it won't) it would make no difference in the broader picture.

If you have a problem with the modal share of students commuting to school, I would direct you to look at countries where education is properly planned such that any student who is too far from their designated school to walk is guaranteed a place on a school bus. Ireland's education system is, if I'm being generous, somewhat piecemeal, I did touch on this on other threads. A lot of times families have to find some random school that "has a place" for a child and then they have to make their own travel plans - this is not common in places where education is planned properly.

As to using fatalities as a metric, yes they're useful. Firstly because they are quantifiable and objective, rather than the airy-fairy "perception of safety" type claims in your post. Second, cyclist jihadis here have used fatalities as a metric, one of them hijacked every thread about cyclists behaviour with "but muh motorists kill 2 or 3 people every week" as if it were some kind of collaborative effort between all of Ireland's 2.8 million motorists. So yes, fatalities are a relevant metric because anti-motorist activists have invoked them explicitly.

As to my issue: it's very simple. I want speed limits to be reasonable and not unduly low or lowered without good reason. 30kph limits may be justified in some places, e.g. timed limits for schools around bell time, fixed 30kph limits on town centre main streets, residential estates, side streets. Elsewhere, not so much.

As I understand current rules, the default speed limit is 50kph in any kind of built up area and if there is to be something different, that has to be justified. IMO that seems fair: if you want everyone to crawl on some road, there has to be a reason. The change that is being suggested is that every road in any kind of built up area (even arterial roads far away from urban cores) would have its limit reduced to 30kph because that would be the new default limit. I don't foresee that many exceptions being given (as that would defeat the entire purpose) so yes, I would hold the view that the majority of roads "would not get a fair decision."

In terms of "valid justification" this should offer basically all you need to know

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000145751200276X

Impact risk of severe injury drops from 50% for a car moving 50km/hr, to just 10% for a car moving 30km/hr.

In otherwords 1 in 2 to 1 in 10 people.

Impact risk of death drops from 25% to below 5% from reducing cars moving from 50km/hr to 30km/hr

Many places in Dublin are built up areas. The N11 north of UCD is a "built up" area which routinely has cars flying through it at 80km/hr.

If we have it in our ability to reduce fatalities by motorists to 1/5th of current in Dublin, and serious injury down to 1/10th of current, I have to ask why shouldn't we? For an additional 10/15 minutes on your commute, the lives saved seems far preferable than your personal convenience travelling.

The irony of this poster moaning about "self entitled motorists" when he has openly (and proudly) admitted elsewhere on this site this week that he cycles on the bus lane of a major urban dual carriageway, blocking the progress of buses carrying 50+ people despite what appears in the video he posted to be a perfectly serviceable cycle lane alongside! Of course he's "entitled" to do this......

20 mph = 32.2 km/h

These pernicious limits will not be permitted to expand the money making racket that are many arbitrary and groundless speed limits in Ireland.

The current situation of a 50 km/h urban default limit, with exceptions both upwards and downwards under bye-law is absolutely satisfactory.

Our road accident statistics simply do not demand a generalised and radical lowering of the default urban limit.

How many lives are lost on commute routes at commute times? Given fatalities in a year are only 131 (2021) for the entire country, your few minutes extra commute time on hundreds of thousands of people probably will achieve absolutely nothing, except reduce a lot of peoples useful lifespans when you add up these delays over a working life.

Quick, look over there.

Great distraction tactic. Most road deaths are motorists killing themselves, other motorists and passengers. You’ll find it hard to find a way to blame cyclists or pedestrians for those.

There's people driving unlicensed scramblers around built up area's and the state couldn't give 2fs.

But if paddy goes 35k in his car they'll screw him.

Its not sensible, its pernicious.

30 km/h is absolutely sensible for cul-de-sacs, residential through roads, school zones, access roads to industrial areas with a lot of heavy vehicle movement and traffic calmed streets in central urban areas.

But compared to the overall urban road network, these stretches are exceptional in number and they should remain an exceptional limit, delineated by bye-law from a long standing and reasonable default limit of 50.

I wouldn't trust Dublin City Council or indeed any, to act properly if they were handed a default limit of 30. They should be perfectly capable of achieving what they propose for calmed locations under the current law.