Irish drivers ‘not used to motorways’
The NRA were speaking after a jury at the inquest into the death of 24-year-old Kate Moyles ruled earlier this week that the mother of one had died accidentally.
Her car collided with a fire engine on the M7 during thick fog. No skid marks were found at the scene which, gardaí said, meant she was not aware that the fire engine was ahead.
About 22 more collisions occurred on the same stretch of road on the same day last March. Gardaí said that excessive speed and dense fog contributed to the tragedy.
The NRA came under strong attack from the Moyles family at the inquest for its failure to put overhead weather warning signs on the N7 urging drivers to slow down due to foggy conditions ahead.
Yesterday, NRA spokesman Seán O’Neill said a pilot Vehicle Messaging System was in place on the M1 en route to the airport and at other points such as the entrance to the Port Tunnel and the M1 near Bewley’s Hotel on the outskirts of Dublin.
Speaking on RTÉ radio yesterday, Kate’s sister Evelyn Sheedy called for systems that would alert drivers to heavy fog. However, NRA engineering sources said that while weather indentation systems were in place in Britain, their accuracy was still in question. Under such systems, road authority weather stations measure fog and rainfall and automatically send warnings to vehicle messaging systems.
Mr O’ Neill said: “Motorways are just starting here. They are in their infancy and people have to realise that they can’t drive at 100 miles an hour without taking regard of weather conditions.
“Like on secondary roads, drivers must act in accordance with weather conditions. We are just about to begin a campaign of driver education on motorways.”
Ms Sheedy told the Gerry Ryan Show that the driver of the fire engine, into which Kate crashed, had been unable to pull out of the slow lane into the fast lane as the cars in the fast lane were travelling up to 100mph. The driver told the inquest that for nearly two miles, he tried unsuccessfully to change lanes.
Kate’s daughter is aged six and her aunt spoke of how she still misses her mother terribly and could not understand how this could have happened.
“Regularly if we’re in the car with Ella she’ll tell us how she could have saved her if she had been with her. She will say: ‘I could have held back her head’.
“It’s heartbreaking to hear that she believes that she could have saved her,” said Evelyn Sheedy.
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