No problems reported with metric system

Speed limits on Ireland’s roads switched from miles to kilometres today, a potentially confusing change that road-safety officials said went smoothly at morning rush hour.

The nationwide change meant taking down 35,000 signs in miles and erecting 58,000 new ones in kilometres.

Speed limits also went up slightly in cities and on the country’s busiest roads, but were cut significantly on the vast majority of narrow country roads – Ireland’s most dangerous and poorly policed.

The new limit on top-quality motorways is 120kph (75mph), up from 70mph (113kph). These are also the roads where gardaí enforce the limit most rigorously. By contrast, the limit on most country roads is now 80kph (50mph), down from 60mph (97kph).

For many drivers, simply finding the new limits on their car speedometers will be difficult. The vast majority of speedometers in Ireland list miles in large print, with smaller numbers for kilometres.

Conor Faughan, a spokesman for AA Roadwatch, said the morning commute was “going very smoothly”.

He said the Government’s information campaign – which involved numerous ads on TV, on radio and in newspapers and included a mass leafleting of 1.6 million homes - “has been so comprehensive as to reach saturation point.

"I doubt there’s a motorist out there who hasn’t heard the message.”

He said people who couldn’t read the small-print kilometre markings on their speedometers would find the transition “slightly awkward. We’ll just have to get used to it.”