Ben Lowry: After one of the safest ever years on Northern Ireland’s roads, here is a plan to make them yet safer

Two of the biggest differences from that era help to explain why the number of people being killed on our roads has plunged.

One of the big changes is the extent to which travellers in cars wear seat belts. It only became compulsory for front seat passengers in the early 1980s, and in rear seat passengers around the time I began to drive.

Rapidly the UK moved from a culture in which most people in cars were not restrained into one in which almost everyone wore a belt.

Deaths and injuries were reduced radically.

The other huge change that I notice since then is adherence to 30 mph speed limits.

I remember well the casual way in which these limits were ignored, albeit with occasional moments when police patrols would be found at the edge of such a 30 mph zone.

Drivers routinely sailed into a 30 mph zone travelling at 40mph or even 50 mph.

I recall the sense of bewilderment that the wide Newtownards Road outside Stormont had such a limit, when a 40 mph or 50 mph limit seemed more appropriate.

Now, like most other drivers, I am well used to travelling at exactly 30 mph along that stretch and it seems a reasonable speed.

In the late 1960s and the 1970s, around 300 people died each year on average on Northern Ireland’s roads. Traffic levels have risen by a multiple of more than 2.5 since then, which means that such a fatality rate applied to current traffic levels would result in perhaps 800 deaths in Northern Ireland each year.

Last year there were 55 deaths, the joint second safest year since records began in 1931. The average number of deaths over the last decade has averaged only 61.

A spate of tragic deaths in recent days shows that, as the authorities keep telling us, one death is one too many. But we should not make that point so forcefully that we lose sight of the stunning — simply stunning — progress that there has been in making our roads far safer.

At least 700 people are alive each year who would otherwise be dead if we had not made such strides in safety.

As well as greater adherence to speed limits and seat belt laws, there are many other reasons for the decline,

Motorists are better trained, better aware of the risks (through ads) and better aware of the penalties for drinking or killing someone.

Cars are much better built and have to be maintained to a safer standard (don’t complain too hard next time you fail an MOT).

Roads are better designed and have better markings.

Even so, I can think of several measures that could help to drive deaths down closer towards zero.

• Dashboard cameras within cars. They are already used to keep down insurance premiums of young folk, but if that was expanded, fewer and fewer people would dare to drive badly.

• A 20 mph speed limit in streets with housing. The 30 mph limit is too high on such residential roads. Some years ago I was discussing this with an old school friend and we both agreed that 30 was too high for streets with lots of parked cars. We were travelling at well below 30 and put our theory to the test and began to increase our speed up towards the 30 limit and then stopped before reaching it, because it was obviously too fast with cars on either side. Yet lots of drivers still tear down such roads at that speed or higher.

• Greater use of average speed cameras in 30 mph zones. Elderly relatives of mine live within such a zone and I often see cars seeming to roar past but in fact they might only be doing 36 or 38 mph. It is still too fast and so the limit needs greater enforcement.

• A 40mph limit in rural roads. The current speed limit on single carriageway roads, denoted by the national speed limit sign in the picture on this page, is 60mph. This is far too high for most rural lanes and even for most B roads.

• A 50mph limit on major single carriageway roads or a 60mph limit on the best of them, but only if they have a 50 sign or 60 sign, to show that they are exempted from the lower 40 mph national speed limit. Also, far greater construction of overtaking lanes on major single carriageways so that motorists do not get struck behind tractors and tempted to overtake against oncoming traffic

• A 60mph limit on dual carriageways that have deadly gap junctions in the central reservation, enforced by average speed cameras. The current A1 road in Co Down would have such a 60 limit until it is upgraded and the gap junctions removed (as is the long term plan).

• A 70mph limt on dual carriageways that have flyover junctions (so the A1 would move up to a 70 mph limit when it is finally upgraded). This would be enforced by average speed cameras.

• An 80mph limit on motorways. This would be to let motorists know that it is not all puritanism, and that drivers would be allowed to go a good pace on our safest roads. It too would be enforced by average speed cameras so that 80 means 80, not 90. It would further be enforced by cameras to ensure motorists keep their distance between vehicles in front, and do not sit in the overtaking lane.

• No new planning permission whatsoever granted for entries directly on A roads. And any existing entrances on to A roads that can be moved to adjoining lanes would be transferred to the quieter, safer road.

Under my plan there would, in summary, be a lot more average speed cameras, which would become cheaper with technology advancements. Average speed cameras remove even the temptation to speed, because they cannot be evaded by suddenly slowing down for a fixed site camera, then speeding up again.

But under the plan there would also be many more roads with 70mph limits (eg all the recently or soon to be upgraded or planned dual carriageways), and some roads with higher limits still — the motorways. So there would be plenty of scope for travelling swiftly when it is safe to do so.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter deputy editor

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