‘Shocking’ rate of speeding violations on two Laois roads

A traffic survey on a busy Laois road has revealed ‘shocking’ findings which show that over 85% of cars travelling on it are speeding.

In July, Laois County Council stated that they had no room in the roads budget to install traffic calming measures on St Patrick’s Terrace in Borris-in-Ossory following requests made by Cllr James Kelly.

Road safety issues on the stretch of road heading towards Ballybrophy had been raised by Cllr Kelly many times before and traffic surveys were carried out. However, nothing was done.

Now, the issues have been further highlighted by a recent traffic survey conducted by Laois County Council.

The Senior Executive Engineer for the Borris-in-Ossory / Mountmellick MD, Rory O’Callaghan, revealed that the study found that around 85% of vehicles travelling on the road were violating the speed limit.

Speaking at the September meeting of the MD, Mr O’Callaghan noted that the stretch of road goes from a 60km/h zone to a 50km/h zone. Yet, the highest speed recorded on the road was 133km/h.

With such a high rate of speed violations on the road, Cllr Kelly said the results of the survey were “shocking.”

The Senior Executive Engineer informed Cllr Kelly that an assessment of the road will be filled out and given to the Road Design section of Laois County Council for traffic calming measures.

Another traffic survey was carried out on the Cork Road in Durrow, which found that there was a 49% rate of speed violations coming in from the Cullohill side of the town. The fastest car there was recorded travelling 102km/h.

Mr O’Callaghan agreed that traffic calming measures are also needed on this road.

Commenting on the findings, Cllr Kelly acknowledged that speed ramps were the least preferred option for traffic calming in the view of Laois County Council, although he said that given the statistics one is needed “straight away” on St Patrick’s Terrace.

Cllr Conor Bergin agreed that speed ramps are one way of enforcement, “but driver behaviour is also an issue.”

Adding to this, Cllr Paddy Bracken said: “The problem is who enforces it? The drivers are not obeying the signage and we see it everywhere in the county. In Mountmellick it’s the same.

“To be honest, there’s no gardaí around to monitor these particular issues. We can put down the ramps but they’re jumping them or going around them then speeding off again. They’re even driving on footpaths to bypass the ramp. There’s no regard for any speed regulation.”

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme