30k speed limits for all urban areas on the way

There's plenty of incidents not documented in the stats of collisions involving two vehicles, a vehicle and a pedestrian/cyclist and in all cases if the motor vehicle is travelling under 30kph at time of incident then the chances of serious injury/damage is reduced, so don't rely solely on published stats, low level incidents may not be included! Besides, do you really need stats to tell you that less serious injuries occur when a motorist hits a pedestrian or cyclists, surely not!?

Also you seem to mix up fuel efficiency and levels of pollution, while a car may get "better gas miles" it doesn't mean there's less pollution. If Dublin city council area had a blanket 30kph limit then there's less pollution due to reduced acceleration/braking, dust and particulates from braking and tyres isn't dispersed as far with lower speeds.. Where do you know in Dublin on any day of the week where a constant 50kph required to meet this efficiency can be maintained? None...

As always, the details are a little more complex. Firstly, the article was dated April 2022 - so out of 45,000 vehicle movements per week, you had to go back over a year to find one maniac who actually caused a problem. Suffice it to say that one video doesn't disprove the general narrative that Irish drivers are generally safe. Every rule has its exceptions. Secondly, the video looks like it was taken in the village itself, not the approach to the periphery, as per Mr. Cannon's survey.

When I look at that, I see green fields, stone hedges, a wide straight road, and a 60kph speed sign. Clearly, this area could best be described as the approach to the periphery of the village, not "in" the village per-se.

@Tenzor07 even if you include serious injuries, the picture doesn't change very much. As to "when a motorist hits a pedestrian or a cyclist" ... if a motorist drives in such a reckless manner as to cause an injury/death to another road user (as in, their reckless/grossly negligent actions were the causal factor) then they should be punished. I don't favour "Minority Report" style justice where we penalise people for things that might, theoretically (but usually don't) happen.

As to where in Dublin you can average 50kph, the topic of this thread is "30kph speed limits for all urban areas on the way" so the better question is where in any urban area in Ireland could you average 50kph and let's just say, it's a lot of places. But even limiting it to your specific remit of Dublin, it's not that difficult in the off-peak. I used to regularly do so late at night, and 30kph would just mean a lot of time wasted crawling for no reason.

Need I remind you that there are over 300,000,000 vehicle-kilometres between fatalities of any cause? That's a lot. And that most such incidents occur in rural areas? The "safety" argument is overstated.

Ok so if there was variable speed zones so in areas, so during school hours for instance the limits were reduced to 20/30kph and in off peak times back to 50kph with automatic speed camera monitoring would you be in favour of that approach?

Done.

School (symbolised by the mortar board) to the main road: just over 200m as the crow flies. Slightly more by road, owing to the bend on it.

School to the approximate location of the 60km/h signs in my earlier screengrab: some 500m.

Maybe you can throw a stone further than I can. But 500m is still five times greater than the 100m you claimed.

Ok so, that's progress I suppose that you're open to 30kph speed limits.. The 30 minute windows are of course ridiculous, the 30 limit would be during school hours so from 8am to 5pm as this includes senior schools too...

Have pointed out distance from school to main road is approx 200m. The limit on the main road is 60km/h at the point where the school road meets it.

Then for added info, pointed out how you'd have to go 300m further out to get to where an 80km/h limit applies.

Anyway, main point here remains the apparent location for the speed survey carried out. Just inside 80km/h signs on a straight stretch of good road with no buildings either side and not even a junction for a further 300m is fairly obviously going to suit your agenda if you want a result showing high percentage of vehicles over the limit and a relatively high average speed.

Do the same survey by the Parish Hall a further kilometer up the road, just before where the 60km/h zone ends and the 50km/h one begins, and you'll get a different result even though you're still in the same zone. Might still be a majority of vehicles slightly over 60km/h, but average speed will certainly have dropped a bit from 84.

And Craughwell is not typical of most rural villages in the first place, given that it sits on a heavily-trafficked and good condition main road. Strong suspicion it was very deliberately chosen for this survey in order to meet a certain agenda.

It was the TD who requested the survey, do you know why he chose the area, was there a campaign or such?

Yes, looks like he very deliberately chose an area and specific point where he could be sure as possible that a survey would give the results he wanted, to suit his agenda.

If somebody wanted a survey to show the opposite, in order to suit a different agenda, they could for example ask Cork County Council to do a speed survey in the 50km/h zone in Castlemartyr, say between the hours of 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Chances are there'd only be a small percentage of vehicles breaking that limit, and an average speed way below 50km/h, because of how traffic can so often only crawl through the village.

But again, it wouldn't be typical of the overall situation. Would have been very deliberately chosen to suit a certain agenda.

For example...

"....Traffic surveys carried out at the areas have shown that a large percentage of passing traffic will regularly break the speed limit which is set at 50km/h...."

Forcing 2.8 million people to waste time and fuel isn't a significant downside? I guess in your world view, peoples time and fuel are both unlimited.

Think about what you're saying

You tried to selectively pick a place (and time) at random as a place with no speeding, and failed.

The other poster tried to imply Craughwell was similar and we find a video of car being flipped in the village.

I'm reminded of this

I'd prefer if you thought about what I'm saying.

Wasn't using Castlemartyr as a example of a place to give a result of no speeding. Was simply using it as an example of a place where results would be far different from the results of that study in Craughwell.

As for that video, one absolute eejit hammering down the street at that speed in the dead of night and flipping his car, more than a year ago, is a different issue altogether. It's hardly representative of the usual traffic flow through the village.

Anyway, this is all gone a long way from the point of the thread, which is supposed to be whether or not default 30km/h limits in urban areas would be a good idea or not. Maybe time to get back on point.