Mr. Michael Rowland:

On black spots, to clarify, we in the Road Safety Authority are not engineers but Transport Infrastructure Ireland, under the European road infrastructure safety management, RISM, directive downloads data from the Garda on collisions that occur. It has high-collision locations, which were formerly known as black spots, and analyses data based on three years of analysis of collision data on the national-road network. Once the HCLs have been identified, the road safety engineers review the data on each collision location. If they determine there is a potential engineering issue, they share the raw data on collisions at that location with the local authority. This analysis is carried out every two years by Transport Infrastructure Ireland and approximately 160 black spots, or high-collision locations, are identified in each round and relate to 1 km stretches of road.

Simultaneously, and this is important, Transport Infrastructure Ireland conducts road safety inspections based on its analysis of primary collision types and the collision data. That inspection involves driving on the route. Its engineers drive on the routes, tag the hazards observed on the route and decide which ones to remove or protect, based on the relative risk of being killed or seriously injured on the road. This is a proactive approach adopted by TII on the national-road network and it shares this analysis with the local authorities as well. I acknowledge that people will say the national-road network constitutes only 5% of the road network, but it carries 48% of the traffic, 30% of cases of those killed or seriously injured occur on those roads and it carries 90% of the freight. TII also provides local authorities with collision data for major road projects and safety schemes on an ad hoc basis. Moreover, where a fatal collision has occurred, there is a form called the LA16, whereby the local roads engineer will go out with the Garda to carry out an assessment of the location and see whether any remedial engineering actions are required.