Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach for letting me in again. I wish to raise another few issues relating to road safety. I concur with Deputy Leddin concerning the prevalence of red-light running we see. I have this rule for my children when we are crossing the road that when we see the green man, we look twice as hard and should not assume that seeing the green man means that cars are going to stop. I have this rule drilled into them. It is unfortunate that we have to do this.

Deputy Martin Kenny raised an issue in respect of it not being necessary to have very long roads. I have a particular road in mind, which is just over 1 km long, that is quite straight and with clear lines of sight as well. When I was trying to propose that we have 30 km/h zones in Bray, I drove on these types of roads to see what the experience would be like. I found it difficult and came under pressure when the cars were building up behind me. One of the strongest indicators that can be given to drivers to let them know they are in a slower or 30 km/h zone may not necessarily be the 30 km/h signs around them. We can have engineering interventions or road layouts that indicate much more strongly to drivers that they should be driving slowly in an area. Does the legislation allow for this? The design manual for urban roads and streets, DMURS, is a little restrictive in respect of allowing engineers to do things like that, but we could consider how we could signal to drivers that they should drive more slowly on a road rather than just putting a 30 km/h sign on it.

Incidentally, a very good roads engineer whom I worked with before told me about a road layout that had been worked on. Before there was a chance to reline the road and provide all the users with the channels they should have been in, and in which they felt safe, people drove more slowly when all the road markings were missing. This was because they did not know where they were meant to be on the road. It was counterintuitive. We would tend to think it would have been the opposite. Yet people did drive more slowly when they did not know where they should have been. Working on these types of measures, therefore, can be counterintuitive sometimes.

In my constituency of Wicklow, 30 km/h zones have been introduced at schools. Solar-powered, light-emitting diode, LED, flashers are going to be erected to indicate to drivers that they are coming to these zones, and I think this has been done out of the county council's own budget. These mechanisms will only operate during school hours, but a very simple layout is required to install four of these flashers, two on either side of the road, outside a school. Equally, other simple interventions include, for example, changing the road colouring, using some material that will not wear off quickly, just to indicate to drivers they are at a school. I refer to the different coloured road markings we see and that cause us to realise when we enter them that we are approaching something different. These types of subtle interventions would be good.

Another aspect I raised with the Garda Commissioner previously was the ability for people to be able to submit photographs or footage from dash cameras or the cameras people wear on their cycle helmets, although not necessarily for use in prosecutions. I understand that could be difficult and that it would be necessary to look at such images and decide how valid they were. This type of material, however, could be well used to indicate a location that could be problematic. If many incident reports were received, and not necessarily accident reports, because that would mean something had gone wrong, while an incident is a situation where something could have gone wrong, such a build-up of submissions could be helpful as evidence to demonstrate the necessity of an intervention in an area. I do not know if the ability to undertake this type of submission was ever brought in or contained in the miscellaneous provisions in the Road Traffic and Roads Act 2023. The Garda Commissioner was concerned that the force would be deluged with loads of videos and photographs, which we can understand. I refer, however, to allowing such submissions to be made not for the purposes of prosecution but to determine what areas might be pinch points or locations of concern. I hope these aspects could be considered as well.