[Article] Dublin city speed limit needs to protect lives

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

paulm17781

I agree with everything in that article. The only problem is there are no alternatives. If we had tunnels crossing the city, this speed limit would be great but the fact is, people often need to drive though the city centre.

lucernarian

I think the article missed out on some basic tenets of democracy. Surely, the pedestrianisation of a street in Sligo is not purely a matter of safety and that there are also other issues at play? Streets can almost always be made safe without having to ban motorists travelling down them. If over 2000 people feel strongly about such an issue, then surely they have an entitlement to voice that view?

The article also goes off on a wide number of other tangents, such as the bus corridor which was not looked upon as a matter of safety in the first instance or taxi drivers breaking red lights - not exactly the result of speed limits at that particular junction.

The article as a whole is written with a clear-cut agenda and with facts selectively discussed, even if some of them are valid. Traffic dynamics (especially in an urban environment with traffic lights etc) are much more complicated than "journeys are 48 seconds longer per kilometre". I'm not saying he's wrong, but he could very well be and it would be regular motorists, the Garda Traffic Corps and the City Council who would know the extent of delays caused by the new measures.

I am not really affected by the speed limit changes (which are still quite limited within the city centre) so I have few feelings on the matter. For pedestrian safety, there are lower hanging fruit to be "plucked" or dealt with.

SeanW

The article had a clearly distinguishable bias, i.e. a nice round of motorist bashing. The only thing missing was a cartoon of huge, nasty evil looking car with a skull and crossbones grinding some poor little girl pedestrian into the dirt. It's the standard of reporting I'd expect from the Sun.

gurramok

This has been debated to death already. Nothing wrong with the Dame st limit, the most vocal opposition to the new limit is at the quays and on Winetavern st(its a steep hill downwards!)

The author kindly omits that part which is on the agenda by councillors to be changed, NOT Dame st, hence he is biased or just ignorant of facts.

Del2005

SeanW wrote: »

The article had a clearly distinguishable bias, i.e. a nice round of motorist bashing. The only thing missing was a cartoon of huge, nasty evil looking car with a skull and crossbones grinding some poor little girl pedestrian into the dirt. It's the standard of reporting I'd expect from the Sun.

+1. They go on about cars breaking red lights but no mention of the thousands of pedestrians who jaywalk without looking.

They also mention 25 deaths in the last 12 years. While any death is terrible, have they ever broken that down to deaths/km or deaths/ x amount of the population since they love using stats? I'm sure out of a population of over 1 million people that statistically some will die as a result of road accidents regardless of how "safe" the roads are. How many of these deaths can be directly linked to speeding and how many are due to inattention when turning, which seem to the most I've read about?