Gardaí appeal to drivers to slow down as speed limit cuts announced 

Eamon Ryan and Jack Chambers announced speed limit cuts on Irish roads. Picture: Dan Linehan

On a day when the Government confirmed it is considering  some of the most radical changes to the country's speed limits in a generation, gardaí had a simple message: “Slow down – because no one thinks it can happen to them.”

Speaking at a multi-agency checkpoint in Co Westmeath on Thursday, An Garda Síochána’s assistant commissioner for roads policing Paula Hilman said drivers need to “slow down and look out for one another, and get to your destination safely, because that’s where your family wants you to be”.

Ms Hilman said gardaí will take “every opportunity we have” to educate motorists on the perils of speeding and dangerous driving because the experience of a road traffic accident “never leaves” those who have been involved in one.

The checkpoint, which ran from 10am to 6pm, was conducted in conjunction with numerous other State bodies, including the Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Social Protection, with the gardaí coordinating those who were stopped.

Drivers were checked for various types of infraction, from drug and drink-driving and lack of insurance/tax to people on the live register operating a commercial vehicle.

Garda Assistant Commissioner for Roads Policing Paula Hilman said drivers need to “slow down and look out for one another".  Picture: Dominic McGrath/PA

In Dublin, at the same time, Transport Minister Eamon Ryan and junior minister Jack Chambers officially confirmed proposed cut in Ireland’s default speed limits on national, local, and urban roads.

Those changes had been well flagged given the shocking year Ireland has had to date in terms of road fatalities. Ms Hilman noted that “over 70% of fatal traffic collisions occur on rural roads, which are the ones with 80 and 100km/h speed limits”.

“Our perspective is that we will enforce the legislation that the Government puts in place and we will be working internally to ensure that we have the structures in place to be able to enforce it,” she said.

“Certainly anything that we can do to reduce death and serious injury on our roads I would welcome,” she said, adding, however, that “there are other things that we also need to look at as well” in terms of a “holistic” approach to road-traffic reform.

How do we look nationally at engineering and road design, how do we look at education, and how do we look at technology and how we can use increased technology to improve road safety? I think that combined approach is required.

Asked what key message she would like to be delivered by the day-long checkpoint, Ms Hilman said she hoped people would take the opportunity to “check that their vehicle is safe on the road”.

“It’s a very natural thing for Garda members to do, to have that type of conversation with the drivers that they have stopped,” she said.

In terms of how policing road-traffic tragedies can affect the gardaí in question, Ms Hilman said it is necessary for gardaí to have “extra resilience because they will see things that thankfully many members of the public will never see in their lifetime”.

However, it is “important that we support our members” who have experienced such harrowing circumstances, she said.

“It is our job to go and deal with some of the most tragic circumstances, but we are human as well. We wear the uniform, we do the job, but undoubtedly when you see that tragedy you’ll think of your own family, of how they would feel in those circumstances. And of course that impacts members.”