There can be no doubt that speed kills. The faster a car is travelling, the more likely it is that anyone it hits will be mortally wounded. That's why Dublin City Council is planning to extend the existing 30km/h speed limit, which applies to a relatively small number of streets, to cover all residential areas in the city. As noted by Green Party councillor Ciarán Cuffe, who chairs its transportation strategic policy committee, an average of 21 per cent of all road deaths every year are caused by excessive speed, with pedestrians accounting for 54 per cent of those fatalities.
London has already introduced 20 mph speed limits across wide areas of the city and Edinburgh has begun to roll out similar measures. “A number of other European cities are progressing to introduce speed limits similar to our 30km/h proposal such as Paris, Lyon, Manchester and many cities and towns in Switzerland and Spain. Lower speed limits save lives and improve the quality of life in our cities,” Mr Cuffe said.
This conclusion has been strongly endorsed by Roseanne Brennan, founder of Jake's Legacy, whose six-year-old son was killed by a speeding motorist in 2014. "Ireland as a nation needs to stand up and accept that speed is a huge problem in road safety," she said.
But AA Ireland spokesman Conor Faughnan begs to disagree. “Putting up poles with ‘30km’ on them will not make roads safer. If you put up a number that compels drivers to drive in a way that would fail the driving test, it undermines confidence in speed limits generally.”
He has a point, but only in the context of European road safety figures showing that Ireland is the least likely EU member state (after Greece) to be penalised for speeding; in 2013, just nine per cent of Irish motorists were fined or given penalty points for speeding, compared to 53 per cent in the Netherlands.
If Dublin City Council proceeds with the imposition of much wider 30km/h zones, it is essential that there is “buy-in” by the Garda Síochána, which has not shown sufficient determination to enforce the lower speed limit where it currently applies.