N17 - Knock to Collooney [design & planning underway]

They are ok on low volume roads, regional roads and most national secondary routes but as I said before I think we should be aiming to have DC standard for all National primary routes. Safety the priority but even from the point of view of the economy no one should be stuck behind a tractor or other slow moving vehicle on primary routes. It's lost time to businesses.

Its getting ridiculous now, almost every 2 weeks there is an incident of one kind or another…

Some movement on addressing safety concerns on the N17. Whatever they come up with will have to involve eliminating or greatly reducing right hand turns. Otherwise a waste of time. Type 2 DC minimum is really what's needed.

Cheers. Didn't know about that thread. Reposted article to that.

Only at discussion stage it seems but the static speed cameras proposed for the N5 black spot at Swinford might be one good measure to reduce speeding. The junctions are a big problem though.

The roads are also a lot busier than when the Claremorris/Knock bypass opened. If it was being designed now it would have to be a dual carriageway like the new N5.

You have loads of reasons for an increase in accidents. Speed, overtaking, phone use, tiredness/falling asleep, drink/drugs….

I heard there will be further speed restrictions at Achonry between the Muckelty junction and the football pitch

According to TII's logic you should have crashed into the van, increasing the collision stats and improving the case for junction improvement works.

Well done for avoiding that! If you weren't 100% concentrating that could have been very different!

We pass that junction regularly, it is getting increasingly busy. A roundabout is not the answer. The entire road needs to be replaced.

That left-turn slip is the problem. The car turning left there blinded the van driver, but the presence of three lanes here also tricked the van driver into thinking that he would be pulling out ahead of the left-turning car.

Normally where there are three lanes at a left-turn, the arrangement is: 1. Straight through, or left-turners; 2. Right-turn lane for opposing traffic; 3. Through-lane for opposing traffic.

What makes this junction so dangerous is that the order has changed to 1. Left-turners; 2. Straight Through; 3. Straight-through and right turn for opposing traffic: The direction of traffic in the middle lane of the three is reversed compared to normal practice, and this is potentially lethal. If you are used to the normal arrangement of lanes at junctions, drivers approaching N17 here from R293 and wishing to turn left will assume that if the lane closest to them is clear, or has a car making a turn into their side-road, then the way is clear, because the middle and far lanes are travelling in their opposite direction. So, you look right, and wait for that lane to become safe to join, then pull out.

That assumption is dangerously incorrect here, because the nearest lane ends right at the junction (the lane markings are vague too, so it’s unclear that this is the case), and there’s a second through-lane: you can see the van driver realise their mistake as they have to come out further than they thought they would, and are then met with a car coming from a direction they weren’t even looking in.

Yes, the van should have waited until the entire junction was clear, but the road design tricked them into thinking it was safe to emerge here, when it absolutely was not.

If only the world was as simple as you suggest, and everyone gave driving their 100% attention at all times, and they weren’t in a rush, or distracted. These things happen, so why deliberately add to the confusion with a road layout that is the exact opposite of the expected layout?

Safe roads are predictable. You don’t have to think about what’s ahead of you, because it’s the same as any other road. Exceptions to standard designs are dangerous simply because drivers have so much experience of the standard design - surprises take time to adapt to. This isn’t my opinion, it’s one of the basic principles of road design.

The picture below is Carrol’s Cross on N25. It was a notoriously dangerous complex of T-junctions that was re-designed a couple of years ago (although it never had anything as dangerous as that left-turn filter lane on N17). Here’s the equivalent left-turn from that road. The overall width of the road surface is similar to N17.

(Source: N25 - Google Maps - you can see the other two junctions to the west of this point)

This has the “normal” arrangement of lanes at a T junction, and it also uses islands to prevent drivers overtaking left-turners (a particular safety issue here). It wouldn’t cost much to implement something like this at N17/R293 as an interim measure.

It's still a bog standard T junction, albeit on a busy road. Still no excuse to proceed past the Stop sign into oncoming traffic.

What do you think would happen if you did that in your driving test? Or pulled out in front of a Garda car?

On the road every day we see bad drivers acting like idiots. We also see normally good drivers that make mistakes.

Piss poor design, like the Ballymote turn-off, make mistakes more likely to happen, and create situations where bad drivers are even more likely to do something stupid.

The bad design doesn't excuse the idiot van driver who pulled out when he couldn't see that the road was not clear. What a good design would have done is prevented the idiot van driver from making that mistake in the first place.