Local Roads - New Speed Limits

I live on an L road and nobody respects the 80kph limit so nothing will change.

I can't see mobile or static speed cameras policing every L road in the country so it's a waste of time.

At the bottom of our L road the local (rural) petrol heads do their doughnuts before drag racing along the R road at night, often under the influence. I'd say rounding that lot up would do more for road safety. As rural guard stations are mostly closed and guards are rare as hen's teeth, that is going to happen.

Also there are delivery drivers using our road as a shortcut and who are under pressure to deliver within time limits, they are never going to slow down for fear of losing their jobs.

I like gaming the Eco score on my Yaris hybrid so I drive smoothly and within limits. Everyday, I am overtaken by people driving over the limit who like to game their overtaking skills.

The only way to police Irish roads is to have car computers obey Speed Limit Indicator beacons and arrest those who tamper with such systems.

Yes and i am not looking forward to it . I may have to consider quitting my job .

I am not the only one pissed with people speeding . The road out Infront of my house is 50KM . Its a bloody race track with people overtaking in the village at a school . I haven't seen the guards here in 5 years enforcing speed limits . Not even a speed van . We have a policing problem .

However i wouldnt agree with your idea of fitting a device to the ecu of a car to fix the problem . That would have to be able to connect to a database somewhere in order for it to work . I am not ok with been treated like a criminal and tracked every time i get into my car . Bidirectional programming ecu scanners are cheap and ecu tuning software is easy to get . All you would do is open up a new customer base for shady ecu programming market to wipe that out of a cars system .

We need to change the culture around driving . That wont happen as long as you punish everyone . In Fact it will have the opposite effect .

As for who will know as far as speed signs are concerned . Well the government have told us what's happening and given a warning . Ignorance wont be taken an excuse for braking the law .

Ignorance of the law isnt a useable defence in irish courts . That said it would all depend on the judges over what's posted as a speed limit and what law says . There maybe some leeway but i highly doubt as if they let one go . Then precedent has been set to let everyone off .

Information is out there . LOCAL roads will be hit first . SO roads with L as a prefix will be 60km max speed limit . That said a few news outlets said regional roads with 80Km speed limit will be effected too . so its hard to say . I guess we have to wait and see .

It’s not ignorance of the law. It’s incorrect sign posting. And you still haven’t answered me on how motorists should know if an L road has had its speed limit lowered or whether it has maintained its 80kph limit by Council intervention.

Do you expect motorists to rote learn the listing of L roads by county which are to maintain an 80kph limit?

Reporting on this has been awful, and I think a wave of lazy reports in the press are to blame for the confusion: Even a couple of the recent commenters here have made the mistake of thinking that R-roads are being limited, or that all local roads are being limited. The new limits will apply only to roads classified as "L-xxxx", and not even to all of them. That L does stand for "Local", but L roads are almost all what a people refer to as "back roads".

Most of the roads being limited to 60 are barely wide enough for two lanes, or are dangerous rat-runs on the approach to large towns and cities, where the "main" route is already under a 60 limit.

There are normally no signposted speed limits on back roads, except the relatively new "end of limit, drive slowly" signs where they meet N and R roads. In this country, the absence of speed limit signage implies an 80 km/h limit outside of built up areas. That's been the case since 2005.

If a road is re-limited to 60, but a sign is present that says 80, no court will convict you for driving between 60 and 80 km/h: as a driver, you rely on the signs to tell you what limit is in effect.

There are these things called Speed Signs. You'll meet one when you go from one speed limit to another. They're already in place on all L roads, with the 60 km/h obscured until 7th February. It's not rocket science and standard practice for many years to have signage displaying the speed limit. Do you not drive much???

Personally I just drive with the Sat Nav on. When driving on unfamiliar roads.

Most people do not speed in the sense of driving at an inappropriate speed, although some may sometimes exceed these half-baked speed limits.

However, a small proportion people do speed routinely and set out to drive at speeds well beyond what most drivers consider appropriate. We need some attempt at policing to detect these. When a person has several speed offences noted then perhaps these vehicles should be required to carry a insurance company type black box which records their speed at all locations. Then these repeat offenders could then be monitored and that would address a large part of the problem.

I answered you saying….

And you still haven’t answered me on how motorists should know if an L road has had its speed limit lowered or whether it has maintained its 80kph limit by Council intervention.

So maybe try to keep up and read what's written.

People do that "slow down to 75 passing the van" thing in national routes too, where there's clearly a 100 limit. It's really annoying in busy traffic, because it can easily create a kilometre long go-slow platoon.

I think it's the mark of someone who drives around without ever checking what speed they're actually doing...

That's actually not true. And these been lots of studies and surveys show it's become normal to speed for many people.

You just don't see enforcement like you used.

https://www.rte.ie/news/regional/2025/0203/1494392-cork-village-speeding/

An absolute load of shite to be honest. this "problem" we have of speeding, is it really as endemic as its made out to be? I'm driving 20 + hours a week to & from work & the usual shops bits & bobs etc. How many people did they catch speeding over the bank holiday weekend? what is the percentage of people caught speeding in relation to total current & active licensees ? what is the percentage of collisions compared to nationwide journeys undertaken over 12 months? percentage of people being caught speeding in comparison to licensed drivers / journeys taken ? can we compare these figures for 2024 as a whole to for example 2019? 2018 /2016? let's skip 2020 - > 2022 due to covid. There's no form of transport is inherently safe, there's risks involved in every part of life. Is driver behaviour really as bad as its made out to be? is there any need to have a blanket reduction in speed limits?

Are you a bit slow? Cornholio is the one who claimed this. I was asking him how his assertion could make sense.

It's a pile of nonsense, basically what the reductions imply is that fatalities have occurred because 80kph is too high a speed limit for these roads, that the people involved were only driving at that speed.

Everyone knows that the vast majority of drivers could navigate these roads safely at an 80 limit, as above those who couldn't weren't adhering to it and won't if it lowers either. Enforcement is and was the answer to begin with. Now we're all being punished for the actions of a few who aren't being caught.