N17 - Knock to Collooney [design & planning underway]

If only the world was as simple as you suggest, and everyone gave driving their 100% attention at all times, and they weren’t in a rush, or distracted. These things happen, so why deliberately add to the confusion with a road layout that is the exact opposite of the expected layout?

Safe roads are predictable. You don’t have to think about what’s ahead of you, because it’s the same as any other road. Exceptions to standard designs are dangerous simply because drivers have so much experience of the standard design - surprises take time to adapt to. This isn’t my opinion, it’s one of the basic principles of road design.

The picture below is Carrol’s Cross on N25. It was a notoriously dangerous complex of T-junctions that was re-designed a couple of years ago (although it never had anything as dangerous as that left-turn filter lane on N17). Here’s the equivalent left-turn from that road. The overall width of the road surface is similar to N17.

(Source: N25 - Google Maps - you can see the other two junctions to the west of this point)

This has the “normal” arrangement of lanes at a T junction, and it also uses islands to prevent drivers overtaking left-turners (a particular safety issue here). It wouldn’t cost much to implement something like this at N17/R293 as an interim measure.

On the road every day we see bad drivers acting like idiots. We also see normally good drivers that make mistakes.

Piss poor design, like the Ballymote turn-off, make mistakes more likely to happen, and create situations where bad drivers are even more likely to do something stupid.

The bad design doesn't excuse the idiot van driver who pulled out when he couldn't see that the road was not clear. What a good design would have done is prevented the idiot van driver from making that mistake in the first place.

See this on many roads. Dive bomb across the lanes and hope for the best. Unfortunately doesn't always have a happy ending.

Have another look at that dashcam footage... In this case, the guy in the van wasn't dashing across the road, he was turning directly into oncoming traffic. It's pretty obvious that he thought that this was his correct lane.

If this wasn't someone just arrived from a country where they drive on the right (and I'll hold my hands up and say that I've made similar mistakes while driving abroad), then you've got to put some of the blame on the junction design here.