“Engineering and Enforcement need to be addressed in road safety” – O’Donovan
Added October 17th, 2011
Fine Gael Deputy Patrick O’Donovan has said that, as a representative of a County that has been “ravaged by road carnage”, he feels the engineering element of road safety has been neglected in Limerick.
Speaking in the Dáil during a debate on the Road Traffic Bill 2011, O’Donovan said there is no doubt that the country has a very good interurban road network but that most of the lives that were lost tragically on our roads were beyond the motorway and national road network.
“Most of them died on our secondary, regional, tertiary and local roads. I represent a community that has been ravaged by road carnage in recent years,” O’Donovan told the Dáil.
“In the part of the country I represent, there have been multiple fatalities on a particular stretch of the N21, which is the road between Limerick and Tralee. Over the past eight years, a life a year has been lost, on average, on a stretch of road that is less than three miles long. That is a frightening statistic for those who use the road. Most of those who died were young people from the locality.”
He put it to the Minister for Transport Tourism and Sport that the engineering element of road safety can sometimes “be lost in the haze and the noise for budgetary and administrative reasons.”
“I am not trying to dilute the fact that alcohol plays a huge part in such accidents. The same is probably true of drugs. The reality is that the condition of many roads has been allowed to deteriorate. Nobody maintains the roads or the drains. The surfaces of our roads are being destroyed by the water that is allowed to flow along them. One has to engage in a ‘dodge the pothole’ exercise in some instances,” he continued.
Speaking this Tuesday, Deputy O’Donovan said that he could cite many examples of dangerous road conditions throughout County Limerick.
“I cover a huge share of Limerick’s roads on any given week, whether it’s driving from my home to the Dáil or going to one of my clinics in different parts of the County. Much of my driving is done on secondary, rural roads,” he said.
“There are many times when I have to take evasive action because of the conditions of the roads in certain patches and that’s not because I am a fast driver. It’s because of the deterioration that has been allowed take place.
“The priority is on the local council, be it in Limerick or elsewhere, to deliver a safe road infrastructure and that is why I have asked the Transport Minister to not just consider road safety in terms of enforcement but also in terms of engineering.”