Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Galway County Council, on my request, recently carried out a traffic speed survey of cars entering a 60 km/h zone in Craughwell village, County Galway. They measured the speed of 45,000 vehicles over a week. Some 84% of those vehicles exceeded the speed limit. The average speed recorded was 88 km/h, with one car travelling at 159 km/h. Craughwell is not alone in experiencing an extraordinary pandemic, one might call it, of speed and carelessness on the part of motorists. The number of pedestrians dying in incidents on Irish roads doubled last year; we lost 155 people. So far this year we have lost 92. I ask the Taoiseach to engage directly with the Garda, the Road Safety Authority and the Minister for Transport to ensure we have far greater enforcement of our speed limits, that we work collectively and actively with local authorities in putting in place traffic-calming measures and that Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, rather than obstructing the development of traffic-calming measures, actively supports them.

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