Sir, – After a series of tragic accidents on rural roads this summer, the Department of Transport is proposing a 40 per cent reduction on speed limits on urban roads from 50km/h to 30km/h, among a suite of speed reduction measures; 50km/h happens to be the speed limit in urban areas across the vast majority of countries in the world for many good reasons.
Most drivers find it very difficult to drive below a 30km/h speed limit when traffic is flowing freely so the measure will no doubt encourage increased largely unintentional law breaking.
If a 30km/h limit is actually adhered to it would be highly inefficient from a time and fuel consumption perspective, with knock-on negative implications for our well-being and carbon emissions.
After the summer it seems clear we have an issue with rural road safety. There is nothing to suggest we have such an issue on urban roads.
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Our Government should not use the recent rural road tragedies as a trojan horse to impose measures that are irrelevant to tackling the issue at hand (rural road safety) and seem to be simply part of an anti-car ideology that pervades our Department of Transport. – Yours, etc,
PHILIP WHEATLEY,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.
