The major safety change is the reduction of speed limits on minor roads (R-regional and L-Local) to 50 mph (80km/h) (they were 60mph)

They've also done away with a general 60 mph speed limit. i.e. every road will have a set speed limit.

They basically modernised the speed limit legislation to improve safety while converting to metric limits at the same time.

They could have done it years ago with MPH too.. it's partly spin and partly practicality .. i.e. if they're going to be changing all the speed limit signs, they may as well take the opportunity to review the actual limits as well as converting them.

There is absolutely no plan to convert to European style road signs though. All we're doing is replacing signs that clash.

i.e. in Ireland a symbol in a red circle = do it.. red circle crossed out = don't do it (quite logical)

in the rest of Europe red circle = forbidden.
white symbol on blue background = do it / permitted to do it.

So we're keeping our negative system i.e. red circle crossed out = don't do it.
and replacing the positive signs with Euro-style white symbol on blue background.

The yellow diamond warning signs are staying, as are the yellow lines marking hardshoulders and various other unique-to ireland systems as they don't cause any confusion.

--- there's also a few other marking systems that im not sure if they're unique to here or not.

The reflectors on the road on the outside are normally yellow... if a junciton is coming up they change to green for 300 meters before the junction (on the side of the junction) Junctions are also marked out by 3 green bollards thesedays too.

If a sharp bend is approaching, the cats eyes reflectors turn red on the side of the bend.

Actually works quite nicely, but isn't installed on all roads, only newly built / refurbished ones.

----

Also, the National Roads Authority had a VERY odd approach to motorway / dual carriage way design. They didn't like crash barriers in the centre! And instead, built most motorway / dual carriage way with a 20 meter wide centre median... the logic being that if you had the space, it was preferable to have a huge inclined median rather than a crash barrier as it would give you a much softer landing.

However, this logic was based on 1950s US studies! when cars moved a lot slower and we had several very bad accidents where trucks managed to plough across 20meters of sloping grass...

They've now had to retrofit many hundreds of KM of crash barriers to these enormously wide motorways.

They've also discovered that if you build the motorways with narrower medians, and with suitable crash barriers you actually save about 50% of the cost! [Linked Image]

[Linked Image from fantasyjackpalance.com]

There is NO barrier on that motorway! it has had to be retrofitted recently.

sorry for poughing so far off topic... but it just amazes me how these things happen! [Linked Image]

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 01-04-2005).]