Global Road Safety Week – Impact for safer cycling in Dublin

By

12 May, 2017

The week of March 8^th to 14^th all around the world, communities organised events around the theme for UN Global Road Safety Week - ‘Save Lives #SlowDown.’

Here in Ireland, already in 2017, 54 people have been killed on our roads, of whom 21 were vulnerable road users, which included 6 cyclists. Approximately one-third of these road traffic collisions are speed related.

This week here in Ireland, we saw support from politicians across the political spectrum for the UN’s Global Road Safety Week, coordinated by campaign group Love 30. The politicians’ willingness to support the call to ‘Save Lives #SlowDown’ was a welcome gesture; we are hopeful that this core group of supporting TDs (Members of Parliament) and Senators will continue to grow, recognising the needs of local communities and young children to have a safe environment in which to grow up.

Throughout the week, we have been asking drivers to take the pledge and act to Save Lives #SlowDown. Together with our Garda Traffic Corps, we are carrying out extra speed checks right through the week in locations where cyclists have reported excessive speeding. Local communities have welcomed this initiative and indicated how happy they are to see these actions being taken to make their neighbourhoods safer.

We also got schoolchildren involved, asking pupils from a number of schools on Dublin’s northside to support the pledge to get drivers to slow down.

Love 30 is a coalition of cycling, pedestrian, children’s and community groups here in Ireland campaigning for lower speed limits to make our towns and cities safer and more pleasant places to live, work and play. Dublin Cycling Campaign members are active in this coalition. Both Love30 and Dublin Cycling Campaign welcomed the support of the Garda Traffic Corps in highlighting the effects of excessive speed.

Dublin City has recently introduced widespread 30kph speed limits, and this week’s campaign highlighted the need to remind drivers to protect vulnerable road users, particularly older and younger people, by adhering to posted speed limits.

ECF road Safety Policy Officer Ceri Woolsgrove said “Reducing speed is a great theme for WHO’s Global Road Safety Week speeding is one of, if not the major, factor in motor vehicle crashes with cyclists. ECF has been working to make vehicles safer and to help them comply with speed limits by lobbying to have Intelligent Speed Assistance fitted as standard in all vehicles and we know that many of our members such as Dublin Cycling Campaign and Ireland.ie have been active like in attempting to reduce speed through campaigns for 30 km/h zones and traffic calming infrastructure. These are some great examples of what Dublin is doing with a range of stakeholders contributing. Please do sign the pledge at the UN Road Safety Week website and you can also write what you have been doing to get motor vehicles to #SlowDown”