Sir, - I am not satisfied that the Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council has taken adequate measures to minimise the frequency of accidents on the Rock Road. The evidence is obvious and repeated: whenever rain follows a dry spell, Dublin bound motorists tend to lose control as they pass the gates of Willow Park School. The County Council has replaced lampposts and erected chevrons at and after the bend, only to see them demolished again by similar accidents. In failing to deal with the exceptionally slippery and dangerous conditions that develop in rain at the bend, and by not providing any advance warning of these proven dangers, the County Council is a contributor to the repeated serious injury and damage caused by these accidents.
What has become a routine pattern of events on Rock Road was repeated on Friday evening last. In rain that followed the recent dry spell, a Dublin bound car skidded and jumped the central reservation of the dualway, had a frontal crash with an oncoming car, and four youths managed to escape, one of them seriously injured, as it became engulfed in flames. It took over 40 minutes to free the trapped legs of the driver of the other car and he was fortunate not to have been incinerated.
The County Council may assume that the only skids are the reported ones, but most are unreported because they have not resulted in a crash. Two hours after the Friday crash, for example, another motorist lost control in the same way and ended up astride the central reservation, but he was able to drive away as no damage occurred. Nor are these just careless drivers - mature experienced drivers, tourists and even a garda car have crashed or skidded here.
Surely it would be possible to warn motorists that this is one of our worst accident blackspots with advance signs, rumbles and road markings? Surely the road engineers of Dun Laoghaire could devise more effective solutions than rearranging lampposts and repainting the white lines after this lethal bend? - Yours, etc.,
Rock Road, Blackrock, Co Dublin.