Towns allowing 50km/h speeds ‘will never be child friendly’

A city that permits driving speeds of 50km/h on residential roads will never be child friendly, a road safety conference has heard.

Rod King, founder and campaign director of the UK's '20's plenty for us' campaign, addressed the Road Safety Authority's international conference on children and road safety in Dublin. The voluntary organisation campaigns for the introduction of a default 20mph (30km/h) speed limit on residential and urban streets.

Mr King said the UK cities that had successfully introduced such limits included Sheffield, Birmingham, Nottingham and Coventry.

In some cases, 90 per cent of the roads in towns had set a 20mph speed limit, he said. Over 12 million people in the UK lived in areas which had adopted, or had committed to adopting, such a limit as the default in residential areas.

“There really is a change in the UK. It’s not a case of where you should put 20mph limits, but where you should not put them.”

Inappropriate vehicle speeds violated public spaces and created fear, apprehension and conflict, he said. There needed to be a “child-centric” view of the roads network and the system needed to recognise the rights of children, the elderly and pedestrians.

But Mr King said it was not about “putting signs on sticks and expecting the police to sort the resulting mess out”.

It required multi-agency cooperation, including local authorities, the police, health services and educators. Such a system could be rolled out in Ireland but would take time. Mr King said some places in the UK with populations of around 200,000 had taken between two and three years to introduce the reduced speed limits.

Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan told the conference there had been a significant increase in child road fatalities in 2014, with 14 young lives lost on Irish roads compared to six the previous year.

“In addition, two children have already tragically died in road collisions on Irish roads in 2015. Many more suffered serious injuries,” she said.

Of the 22 young lives lost since 2013, 14 were front or rear seat passengers and eight were pedestrians, the commissioner added.

“It’s incumbent upon us all to make every possible effort to reduce any potential risk our children face while living their life and finding out about the world around them.”

She said it was “unbelievable” to think that, since March 2013, over 3,500 fixed charge notices had been issued to adults for not properly restraining children in vehicles.

“That’s a pretty big figure. In fact, I’d argue it’s 3,500 too many fines. Each of these incidents exposed a child to extreme danger,” the commissioner said.

Four out of every five child seats in cars were not properly installed and one in 10 was not compatible with the car in which it was installed, the conference heard.

The Road Safety Authority operates a free "check it fits" initiative in car parks and shopping centres around the country. Many parents were "shocked" when they realised they had been putting their children in danger by failing to install the seats properly, the conference heard.

Figures:

From 1997 to 2012, some 262 children aged 14 and under were killed on the State’s roads

1,115 children were seriously injured

Pedestrians accounted for 44 per cent of all those killed on the roads between 1997 and 2012

Car passengers represented 37 per cent of all those killed from 1997 to 2012

Cyclists were 13 per cent of the total number killed

A total of 30 per cent of children killed as passengers were not wearing a seatbelt or were not in a child restraint

Friday was the most dangerious day of the week for crashes and injuries

Over half (51 per cent) of children killed on the roads died in the months from April through to August

More than a quarter of those who died (27 per cent) died in the hours from 4pm to 6pm