Speed limit guidance delayed

THE DEPARTMENT of Transport is four months late with critical road-safety guidance on the setting of speed limits. The guidance was due in the third quarter of 2008, and is a key element of the Government’s Road Safety Strategy, with responsibility assigned at principal-officer level in the department.

News of the four-month delay came as the Road Safety Authority chief executive Noel Brett told the Oireachtas Committee on Transport that he believes the number of deaths on the roads due to engineering issues – which was to be a key aspect of the guidance – are under reported in official statistics

Under the Road Safety Strategy, the department was to prepare the guidelines, which would assist local authorities in assessing specific locations for speed limits. Speed is the single largest contributing factor in determining whether a crash is fatal or not, according to the Road Safety Authority.

The Road Safety Strategy also charges the department with preparing an audit on the “appropriateness and consistency of speed limits”, which is to be published in the first quarter of 2009. The audit, which is to be repeated every two years, arises out of criticism that speed limits that are inappropriate encourage motorists to ignore speed limits generally. AA spokesman Conor Faughnan has been a constant critic of default speed limits. While limits of 80km/h are enforced on country lanes, newer dual carriageways have low limits.

Mr Faughnan said the AA had been calling for the audit for many years, especially since the changeover to kilometre limits. “If the authorities want the speed limits to have credibility, the least that motorists demand is that the authorities show credibility in setting the limits.” Mr Faughnan warned that in the past there was a tendency among the gardaí to “hide behind a bush” with speed-detection equipment at places where the limit was plainly too low, “in a bid to hand out fines and penalty points”.

The AA is setting up a campaign to identify inappropriate limits. “Now that speed cameras are to be installed on the roads the AA is again collecting examples of bad speed limits countrywide in the hope of getting them corrected,” he said.

Consultant road engineer Séamus Mac Gearailt has defended the Department of Transport, adding that local authority road engineers simply did not have the time to survey each stretch of every road in their areas.

The Department of Transport said the delayed guidance was “in hand” and would be “delivered shortly”.