This is old (February) news:
Minister Varadkar announces nationwide audit of speed limits.

Which is fun, given it wasn't long ago they changed the whole lot of them...

Apart from the usual low limits on modernised roads which people complain about, some of this was actually caused by the Km change. For some people a 100Kmh or 80Kmh is less acceptable on a road not capable of these speeds than the old NSL, even though the 80 is lower. This arises because the NSL didn't spell out the speed allowed. Go figure.

I can believe this and it shows, to me, two things.

Firstly many don't know the NSL or many unmarked speed limits and more frighteningly, many think that a number on a post is the safe/ideal speed to drive at, regardless.

Maybe, instead of numbers, we should grade roads by colours, like ski runs, from green to black...now that would be fun...

Yes, we've discussed this before, but there's a subtle psychological difference between the two. basically means "it's not realistic to assess a suitable specific limit for this road, so subject to the overall maximum national limit it's up to you to choose a safe speed", whereas a specific numerical 80 km/h sign conveys the meaning that, "if traffic and weather conditions permit, it's broadly speaking safe to do up to that speed along here". We have a thread on the smallest road beginning with NSL signs, but tiny lanes beginning with 80 km/h signs in Ireland would look even dafter. Maybe that should have been thought through better. Per head of population, Ireland must have an even greater mileage of small country lanes than the UK and it's not going to be feasible to assess local limits for anything like all of them.

Incidentally, the French system of striking out the village name when the 90 km/h limit resumes avoids the problem of stating a number on a sign.

People have also posted on here examples of modern dual carriageways with no property frontages on the fringes of urban areas with 60 km/h limits that surely should be at least 80.

This kind of thing.
Councils were ordered to remove some of these signs, as they gave ammunition to the speed limit as a recommended speed brigade.

Spelling out a speed definitely has disadvantages, tourists often comment on these signs in the ROI while they haven't clue what the speed limits in NI are. For this type of route some sort of "rural road" sign would be better.

It is a similar thing to what our speed limits were years ago, 30 in built up areas, NSL everywhere else (I have seen pictures of an old NSL sign on a similar road to bothar's picture). Over the years different limits have been introduced for some types of road, or some parts of the same road.
When Ireland went metric with their speed limits, all types of road were treated the same, Motorways 120, National Roads 100, Regional & Local roads 80, Built up areas 50.
Now they appear to be looking at changing the 'blanket' speed limits to more realistic ones - certainly near where I am at the moment, the N85 has a limit of 100, but that is only realistic for the new strech off the M18, you can't or (shouldn't!) get anywhere near that on the rest.

You are correct indeed in your supposition that Ireland has a much higher amount of country lanes per head of population than the UK - indeed Ireland is supposed to have one of the highest mileages of road per head of population in the world. Pity much of it is of rather dire quality!

I think that we need to completely revisit the way speed limits are imposed on roads here. There are clearly many country lanes and even sections of regional roads where 80km/h is too high and then you have urban/suburban DC where there limits are set too low and are a gold mine for the Gardai and their speed traps.

Each section of road should have speed limits set according to its actual quality (width, sightlines, bendiness, amount of accesses off the road etc.) Perhaps the reintroduction of a national speed limit merits examination.

Local authorities should also have the discretion to post speed limits of 70 and 90kph as these make more sense in certain situations than the standard 80 and 100kph.

it's not the limits that are daft, it's the majority of motorists who have been brainwashed into thinking that the ever changing field of lollipops on our roads are a dot to dot guide of what speed you should be doing for that particular few hundred yards of road until the next lollipop springs up to shout a different order to you.

what Raykay doesn't mention is that 30 years ago or even ealrier, people weren't obsessed with staring at a speedo and matching the number on there to a number on the side of the road for fear of being criminalised at the drop of a hat. When I first started driving 90% or more of roads outside towns were 70MPH BUT very few people drove at 70MPH or maintained that speed for anytime...people actually matched their speed to their capabilities, their vehicles capabilities and suprise, suprise the road in question.
With all the traffic lights and speed lollipops springing up, the motorist has become victims of the control freak and is not encouraged to think for themselves and if you find this hard to believe , look at this.....

http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2012 ... t-telford/

Comment 18 is from a local councillor. I was told something similar about 6 years ago, when I queeried why all limits were being dropped to 40MPH regardless...the answer .."to save motorists becoming confused"..in other words to stop us thinking for ourselves.

Instead of traffic lights they need to resurrect the original plan and put the North-South flyover in then change all the round signs back to this

I couldn't agree less.
Any country with an "organic" road network will have roads which vary in width, alignment, curvature etc and most of this network will not be substantially modernised, not should it be.

I do not want to see speed limits every 100m on Irish country roads, with every bend with a different limit. Drivers must read the road and drive appropriately and not require a sign to tell them how to do so.

By all means downgrade the limit on some National Secondary roads that have not been modernised, and examine suburban roads like the N4, or even put the odd advisory limit on a misleading bend. But do not festoon the countryside with signage which gives false confidence to bad drivers.

Agreed - assessing every single mile of road for the appropriate limit would be hugely expensive, would lead to an unsightly explosion of signage clutter in the countryside, and would produce a hopelessly confusing situation for drivers when the limit was regularly changing.

At the end of the day, adhering to a numerical speed limit is about the last factor to consider in safe driving on minor rural roads - the safe and appropriate speed changes every few hundred yards dependent on the conditions and other traffic.

Within the general principles of the current Irish system, I would say your idea of having a non-numerical "rural road" sign for minor turnings off roads with limits either higher or lower than 80 km/h makes a lot of sense. It could even look a bit like this - perhaps just showing a cancellation of the previous limit.

Completely agree with what Peter and bothar have posted above.

However, there is a slight issue at the border. At the moment, the only evidence on many roads that you've crossed it is the speed limit sign (usually NSL going into NI and 80 km/h going into RoI on the kinds of road I'm talking about). If both jurisdictions used the NSL sign but NSL meant 60 mph on one side and 80 km/h on the other, there could be genuine confusion once someone driving from NI into RoI reaches a road on which 60 mph is feasible.

That wasn't so much of a difficulty until the 1990s when the speed limit south of the border was 55...

I'd retain the 80 km/h signs at the border and in any location where the limit goes down from 100 to 80 on the same stretch of road - it's only really the turn-offs where something different might be needed. And I'm sure a design for a "rural lane" sign could and would be produced that was distinctively different from the UK sign - it could even have a picture of a shamrock on it or suchlike.

Green NSL sign?

I'm sure I've seen them used in various probably non-authorised ways in Derbyshire in connection to 'quiet zones' but they're sufficiently uncommon in the UK that I don't think there'd be confusion.

Perhaps the solution to drivers driving too fast for the conditions when encountering RoI's numerical speed limit signs is not to reintroduce the ambiguous (which still represents a numerical limit, after all) but to conduct a public information campaign reinforcing the point that speed limits are speed limits and NOT recommended speeds?

Speed targets or limits are always a problem. The problem previously was the the old international NSL sign or derestriction signs was not understood to well, so it was deceided to instead just post all speed limits. This would seemed like a good idea untill all the limits were posted and showed how many roads had limits that didn't refelect their condition at all.

What they could have done was introduce a non-urban default of 60 km/h with the requirement of a bylaw to change/raise the limit to 80 or 100 km/h.

No, please, no!

That would result in:

(a) a lot of unsightly signage for all the exceptions
(b) a lot of money paid to already overpaid bureaucrats and lawyers to draw up 'essential legal documents' relating to the bylaws you mention, when the same basic safety requirement can be met by having a one-size-fits-all rule with an emphasis on behaving sensibly (i.e. NSL)
(c) a lot of stretches of roads with absurdly low limits -- especially in Ireland, a lot of non-National roads vary considerably from kilometre to kilometre in alignment, width and surface quality, with some stretches that are clearly safe well above 60 km/h
(d) a general degradation and bringing of the law into disrepute as virtually everyone flouts the limits where they are clearly daft, with no additional resources for police enforcement.

Every time the question of micromanagement of all speed limits comes up, whether on here or in the general media, and whether in the UK or Ireland, no-one manages to satisfactorily demonstrate that a remotely significant number of accidents on rural roads have anything to do with the speed limit. In other words, (a) how many are due to people driving at more than whatever the default limit is, (b) how many are caused by speeds between the current limit and the proposed new range of limits, and (c) to what extent reducing the limit without enforcing it will actually affect people's behaviour. Unless there's a clear answer to these (and other) questions, there's really no justification for replacing a system based on common sense with a much more complicated and onerous system of micromanagement.

Totally agreed

Given the general lack of enforcement, I would say that making the default limit on unclassified rural lanes in either the UK or Ireland 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 or totally derestricted would make very little difference to the actual speeds people chose to drive.

It would be interesting to know in a typical year how many people in the UK are convicted of speeding on unclassified roads where NSL applies. It wouldn't surprise me if the total figure was less than 100, and most of those on a handful of roads that are effectively of good A-road standard.

Realistically, I don't think 80 km/h or signs at the beginning of small rural lanes are a significant safety issue, they just put across a ridiculous message that in a subtle way undermines confidence in the speed limit system.