Lower speed limits will help Ireland reduce road deaths
Every week, 10 people are killed or seriously injured while walking, cycling or scooting. Stock picture
Road deaths are rising in Ireland and, despite what you might have heard, this is not a post-covid phenomenon.
Over the last 15 years, there have been, on average, 168 deaths per year on our roads. Some years it has been higher, some years it has been lower, but we haven’t seen any appreciable reduction in fatalities since the last years of the Celtic Tiger. The last two years have been well above the average, and this year’s numbers are sadly heading in the same direction.
However, road fatality figures are a crude and incomplete measure of the damage wrought on our roads.
In 2022, there were 1,424 serious injuries from road traffic incidents, 1,424 lives permanently shattered. This was up from 474 in 2012 — a threefold increase in just 10 years. This represents a colossal failure of our national road safety strategy.
That failure is impacting disproportionately on those who are least responsible for the dangers on our roads.
One in every three road deaths this year has been a person walking, cycling, or scooting.
Half of those killed were over the age of 60. Four were children. Active travel users consistently account for two in five of all serious injuries on our roads over the past decade.
Every week, 10 people are killed or seriously injured in towns, cities, and on rural roads across the country while walking, cycling, or scooting.
If this was happening in any other field of activity, it would be a national scandal.
Last year, the Oireachtas passed the Road Traffic Act 2024. It followed a comprehensive speed limit review, published in 2023, which recognised the pivotal role that speed plays in the frequency and the severity of serious road traffic incidents.
The act legislated to reduce default speed limits on local roads from 80km/h to 60km/h, on national secondary roads from 100km/h to 80km/h, and on roads in built-up urban areas from 50km/h to 30km/h.
A year and a half later, only the first of these default speed limits has been implemented.
The other two speed limits were due to be introduced in June of this year, but the Department of Transport has indicated that this will not now go ahead as planned. Instead, it will be up to local authorities to decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether the roads in its jurisdiction should have lower speed limits.
Even if local authorities share the view that the lower speed limits are necessary and appropriate road safety measures, this will create an enormous amount of additional work for them at a time when resources are already strapped. It will also require the support of a majority of local councillors, many of whom we know have been resistant to these measures in councils across the country. It is almost as if this process is designed to fail.
Communities the length and breadth of the country are crying out for lower speed limits — from the residents of Ballyhooly Rd in Cork, to the parents of school children in Na Forbacha, Co Galway, and the communities along the Crumlin Rd in Dublin.
The evidence that reduced speed limits save lives is incontrovertible.
In July 2022, the Welsh parliament legislated for a default 20mp/h speed limit in urban areas which was introduced in September 2023. Some 12 months later, it recorded a 28% reduction in casualties and fatalities.
In Helsinki, more than half of the streets in the city now have a 30km/h speed limit. In July, the city went a full 12 months without a road fatality. Similar benefits have been seen in cities in Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, Austria, and Germany.
It is beyond all doubt — lower speeds save lives.
This was recognised by the expert group who reviewed speed limits in 2023, along with the previous government who brought through the necessary legislation. It would be unconscionable for the current Government to renege on the promise of that legislation.
Every time there is a death on our roads, we see politicians wringing their hands and offering “thoughts and prayers” to the victims and their families — a phenomenon that is uncannily reminiscent of the response to mass shootings in the US.
Just like in the US, there is no serious attempt at addressing the root cause of the deaths.
Transport minister Darragh O’Brien, along with his ministers of state Jerry Buttimer and Seán Canney, now have an opportunity to show they are serious about road safety.
They can follow through on the promise of the 2024 act and deliver the default speed limits across every local authority, knowing that they will undoubtedly save the lives of many and avoid the needless grief of thousands.
The alternative is unthinkable.
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