30k speed limits for all urban areas on the way

Apart from all the 'exceptions' in blue you mean?!

Dublin City Council have been thwarted on multiple occasions now, trying to make those 50 km/h main routes into 30. They have failed because the people's elected representatives would not pass a bye-law to enact them, having seen mass resistance to them in the public consultations.

There is no problem with 30 km/h limits in laneways and residential cul-de-sacs and all that noble stuff, but as I said, the mass rollout of blanket 30 km/h limits will not be accepted. Not on those main routes that the Council have already been seen off from trying.

When the drunk driving laws were proposed, said there was no need, it wasn’t a problem, people were driving carefully, it would kill both the pub trade and rural Ireland and cause terrible isolation for old people. There was violent opposition to it and the introduction took several years of gradual changes.

When the smoking ban was proposed, people said there was no need, it wasn’t causing any harm, there was a non-smoking section for non-smokers, it would kill the pub trade (again). There was so much opposition that the government had to create a department with a team to visit workplaces and check for compliance. Numerous pubs were served with enforcement orders until they started to toe the line.

It’s easy to look back now and assume these were popular or obvious changes but they absolutely were not.

The because the RSA have to continuously scaremonger about our roads in order to justify their existence. Any nuance be damned.

It doesn’t matter that we already have some of the safest roads in Europe (and by extension the world) - when you’re dealing with ideologues reality is irrelevant

Drink driving and the smoking ban have helped kill the pub trade though.

Not the only factors but certainly contributing.

Over 20% of pubs gone since 2005.

I know of countless small villages which are now just a collection of houses, pubs, shops, butchers, post offices all gone.

Is there a need for 30 kph speed limits around schools at 11PM on a Sunday night?

It's interesting that you think those are the only two reasons kids are driven to school given what we know about abnormally high number of short journeys being completed by car in Ireland and the data about the deterrent effect of car dominance on walking and cycling.

My local primary school has kids driven to school from 500-800m away, by parents who themselves walked to school along the same roads, purely because they don't feel the roads are safe for their kids to walk or cycle on. It becomes self-perpetuating. Because they are driving they increase the traffic volumes and more parents feel compelled to drive.

Family life was alot different back then, we were poorer and both parents didnt always work.

Funnily enough it was a thing for families to hire a mini bus to the beach and over crow it, how dangerous it was but great Craic.

But how many of our road deaths were in a urban area?

Percentages dont count, its actual numbers we need

Many good and not-so-good points raised, a lot to unpack:

@cnocbui the rate has actually fallen to 3.3 fatalities per billion kilometres driven, which is over 303 million km between fatalities. And the data showing this only covered 2016-2018, things have improved even since.

https://etsc.eu/14th-annual-road-safety-performance-index-pin-report/

@Unrealistic as someone who grew up using school buses, I consider it frankly to be normal. So when I hear someone complaining about someone else driving their children to school, my first thought is always "why are they not taking the school bus" but that's partly because I spent some time in places where education is a municipal matter and planned more thoroughly, where as such school transport is simply not a problem. As to your locality, obviously I don't know it but the only reason someone should not walk a short distance is if there are no footpaths on the roads. In that case, the route was never suitable for walking in the first instance and you should be looking for your local authority to put a footpath if you are unduly concerned about the matter.

@Seth Brundle anyone claiming that Ireland in the 1980s was some kind of lost garden of Eden is not to be taken seriously. That includes both you and the two tweeters you referenced. Back then most people were broke and poor, anyone who had any "get up and go" got up and left. It's understandable that there were fewer cars when Ireland was a priest-ridden third world hellhole with fewer people and nobody had any money or anywhere to go. Yet in spite of all of this there were still 387 fatalities in 1986 and 478 in 1990 (your sources' reference years) as opposed to 155 last year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_road_traffic_accidents_deaths_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland_by_year

@[Deleted User] your own data indicate that there were only 30 fatalities across urban areas in Ireland in 2021 - and that this was less than 1/4th of the total. That puts the kybosh on the whole "road safety" argument, don't you think?

These fatalities are not the responsibility of Irelands' 2.8 million motorists, the vast majority of whom will never even be involved in such an incident, let alone the cause of one. The only people responsible for those incidents are those who cause them. No-one else.

I do not consider it appropriate to punish 2.8 million people for the actions of 30. If you do, it is you who has the moral issue.

Firstly how do either of you know that only motorists will cause fatal incidents? According to RSA research, up to 70% of pedestrian-motorist collisions are caused by pedestrians, not motorists. https://www.rsa.ie/docs/default-source/about/pedestrian-fatalities-on-irish-roads-2008-2015.pdf?Status=Master&sfvrsn=cb71b3df_3

You obviously believe in collectively punishing 2.8 million people for the actions of a trivial number so the moral issue is yours.

As to your nonsense about the economic situation in Ireland having nothing to do with the lack of car ownership in Ireland in the 1980s, that is just so far at variance with reality that it beggars belief. Simply put, people tend not to own cars when they live in a third world country and are unemployed (or working for very low wages), broke and poor. And Ireland was exactly that.

Claiming that people bought cars post 1990 because of "car centric planning" is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who has even the most cursory understanding of Irish history, but it does correlate well with the generally fact-free basis for demands for time and fuel wasting lunacy like 30kph limits.

It's really simple: any comparison between Ireland in 1986/1990 and Ireland in for example the 2010s is an "apples to oranges" comparison because it's effectively a comparison between a third world backwater and a modern, developed country. People were broke and poor in the 1980s so they had to plan their lives around having limited access to cars, and they did so. Your own tweeter, Adam Connaughton made the point clear: "This directly correlates to the increase in car ownership." ... and the proceeded to show a chart showing that Irish people bought more cars in the years after 1990, which he regards as supposedly only down to "car centric planning". This makes no sense.

As to my supposed moral issue with 30 people losing their lives per year in built up areas, could someone please explain how 50kph limits caused this crash? Because when you look at serious accidents in this country, you find that they are caused by individuals doing dumb stuff, and a very small number at that. As to the supposed "issue for you to resolve with your own morals" I sleep very well knowing that I don't support people doing things like this, and that like 99.7%+ other motorists in this country, have not and will likely never be involved in, let alone the cause of a fatal incident of any description.

As to 30kph limits being like speed bumps or pedestrian traffic lights this is also BS. The last two measures are local measures put in place to deal with a specific local issue, and are in most cases easy to understand in rationale. Advocates of 30 kph limits want to blanket entire regions with them like DCC wanted to do with its "Love 30" consultation. And the only rationale for such ridiculously broad applications can be punitive, since the fuel efficiency and road safety data for blanket 30kph limits do not exist.