Road Safety: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2023-10-26
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Ciarán Cannon (FG), Galway East

I will finish on this and I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for her support. I am working with a community in a small village in south Galway called Kilcolgan. This is essentially a village divided by a national secondary route. TII, incidentally, should also reflect on its role in road safety. I asked our local roads engineer to consider the installation of a pedestrian crossing in a village that has approximately 1,000 people living in it, where it is not safe to cross over and back on the road that divides their village. This is the response I got. I will finish with this and not say another word. I was advised in the correspondence that a TII document, Pedestrian Crossing - Specification and Guidance, makes the following important point:
The provision of a controlled crossing will not necessarily reduce collisions and may even lead to an increase in collisions. Where a controlled crossing is present some pedestrians assume that the appearance of the green man display, or the act of stepping onto a zebra crossing, gives an assured safe crossing opportunity and do not keep alert for approaching vehicles.
That is the culture we need to eliminate, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, and we need to do it very soon or this carnage will continue.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-10-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:21+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-10-26