Over five million leaflets have been printed as part of a €2.5 million "Go Metric" campaign to publicise the changeover in speed limits later this month. Gardai have promised no amnesty for speeding drivers come January 20th.
Around 1.6 million households around the State will have information packs delivered by An Post over the coming week, while 16 national and 36 local newspapers will carry the leaflets and stickers.
A further 700,000 leaflets will be available from petrol and Garda stations around the country. The leaflets are being printed in seven languages: Irish, English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Portuguese.
A major television and radio campaign also begins today, while posters are being put up in 248 sites.
Mr Eddie Shaw of the National Safety Council
Speaking at a major launch in Dublin this morning, Mr David Lyle of the Lyle Bailie publicity company said it was hoped the Government campaign would reach around 97 per cent of the population. "You would have to be a recluse not to get the message," he said.
Which is just as well, as gardaí insisted there would be no quarter given when enforcing the new speed limits, which come into effect at 00.01 on Thursday, January 20th.
Deputy Commission Fachtna Murphy said there would be "no softly-softly approach" or amnesty. He said he regretted "any public perception" that the gardaí engaged in entrapment to catch motorists speeding, but said the Garda Traffic Corps would practice "full enforcement".
The changes will see speed limits on motorways rise slightly to 120 kilometres per hour (74 miles per hour) and also on national routes to 100 km/h (61 mph).
Speed limits on secondary roads, described by Mr Eddie Shaw of the National Safety Council as "our most dangerous roads", will drop to 80 km/h (50 mph), while areas that used to be 30 mph zones will now have a speed limit of 50 km/h (31 mph).
Effectively, around 90 per cent of the country's roads will have their limit reduced.
A total of 35,000 old signs will be replaced by new ones, while a further 23,000 signs will be put up. This mammoth task will take place over three days prior to January 20th. The "general speed limit applies" sign - a white sign with a black stripe - will be phased out to be replaced by signs indicating the exact limit on stretches of road.
The Minister for Transport, Mr Cullen, described the changeover as "one of the most important changes to date in Irish motoring history".
Local authorities will, for the first time, be granted powers to set certain speed limits themselves. They will be allowed to introduced the new limit of 30 km/h (19 mph) in certain circumstances, such as schools. These limits will apply for specific periods during a day or on specific days.
Such changes will only be allowed after period of public consultation, which Mr Shaw estimated would last some two months.
Mr Shaw denied that the short campaign of only two weeks would not be enough to educate all motorists. He said research had shown a "high-level, short, sharp campaign" was the most effective way to get the message across.
He said making the conversion "was not a difficult thing to do". A simple rule of thumb for converting kilometres to miles is to take the last zero from a kilometre figure and multiply the result by six. This gives a rough estimate of the speed limit in miles per hour.
Motorists will not be required to have their speedometers altered to predominantly display kilometres. However, nearly all new cars on sale in Ireland from the end of this month will be fitted with kilometre-only or kilometre-dominant speedometers.
There were 379 people killed on Irish roads last year, the highest total for three years. Excessive speed is regarded as the main contributory factor in the majority of crashes.
"All of the evidence worldwide, particularly in urban and suburban areas where you manage and reduce the speed of cars, the incidents of deaths and collisions, deaths and injuries particularly of pedestrians decreases and that is a big part of this message," Mr Shaw said. "The speed limits are only telling you what the maximum legal speed is, that is not the same as saying what is an appropriate or a safe speed."
Deputy Commissioner Murphy also said that "just because a sign says 120 km/h, it doesn't mean you have to travel at 120 km/h."
Fine Gael's Ms Olivia Mitchell warned that the two-week publicity campaign was insufficient to get motorists used to the new system. "It's one thing to inform people within a two-week period of the changeover, but it's another to internalise those speed limits and change driver behaviour," she said.
She also accused the Government of missing the chance to revise some of the "crazy" speed limits around the country. "There was a golden opportunity to use the metrication process to get rid of the crazy situation where cars can race past national schools at full speed, while having to crawl along at low speeds on perfectly safe dual carriageways," she said.
