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MOTORWAY DRIVING COULD become part of the driving test curriculum within three years, the head of testing and licensing at the Road Safety Authority has said.
The curriculum must also be updated to take account of new technology such as automatic braking systems in modern vehicles, according to Brendan Walsh, chief operations officer at the RSA.
Walsh told The Journal he lived in Germany for many years and road behaviour on the country’s autobahn network was “far better” than Irish motorway driving “because they are taught how to drive on a motorway”.
“I believe motorway driving should be part of the curriculum,” he said.
He said that if motorway driving did not become part of the legislative curriculum to acquire a driving licence, a structure needed to be put in place whereby people who would need to drive on motorways could learn to do so and could gain an understanding of proper motorway etiquette.
Work on the issue is already underway within the RSA.
“Over the next couple of years we will ask for new legislation to be brought in. I would like to see meaningful change made in how we learn to drive, how we interact with young drivers, within three years,” Walsh said.
Learner drivers cannot legally drive on the Irish motorway network, which expanded significantly in the early 2000s.
Walsh added that the RSA’s recent recruitment drive will allow it to engage more with already licensed drivers.
This could mean using a driving simulator to see if there are any driving behaviours that could be improved, he suggested.
This could help older drivers, given cars and roads will have changed since they learned to drive decades ago, he said.
“As we get older, all our reactions slow down. Maybe we’ve had a heart attack, maybe you’ve had a stroke, and you get a medical certificate saying you’re competent to drive. What we want to do is to introduce a mechanism to support people to see and assess what areas of their driving need to be developed as they’ve got older,” Walsh said.
Asked about the fact that younger drivers, rather than older drivers, are far more likely to cause a serious road accident, Walsh said he wasn’t “targeting” older drivers but simply proposing “a facility we could make available to them”.
“It’s to give the opportunity to people who [already] have tests to maybe do a recalibration of how they drive,” Walsh said.
He added that he recently used a driving simulator to check his driving and was “delighted” with the feedback he received, which drew his attention to some habits he had developed that he needed to work on.
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Yes!! Stop hogging the middle lane!!!!!!
@big john:
Yes. Absolute möröns and zero inforcement of the law. All should be given points and a fine.
@big john: Most motorways only have 2 lanes. No middle one.
@Me Me: oh great. Thanks for letting me know. Phew….
@big john: Unfortunately John, Irish people crave being in the way.
@big john: not forgetting those in the right lane because there’s a lorry 5k ahead.
@big john: A lot of drivers are members of C.L.O.G. – the Centre Lane Owners Group.
@Me Me: if it has two lanes it’s a dual carriageway, not a motorway.
@big john: long line of cars today on m50 doing 80-85 in the middle lane, pass on the left well below speed limit, was even faster than the overtaking lane. I will never understand why people switch to the middle lane instead of staying left if they only drive a lttle faster or slower than trucks
@Fergus O’Donnell: Stop making stuff up. The number of lanes has nothing to do with motorway status, which is based on traffic types allowed, minimum speeds, sight-line distances, slip-road length and curve-radius. Around half of the rural inter-city Autobahns in Germany are two-lane, and much of it is de-restricted too (advisory speed limit only).
Three years. Should have been added 30 years ago. Come on, it is only paperwork. You would think they were building a new hospital or prison complex.
@Mark R: You think they’d be embarrassed tbh
@Mark R: 50 layers of committees, meetings to set agendas for actual meetings, this approval, that approval. How do you think the pen pushers make their living.
The standard of driving on Irish motorways is atrocious.
@Pat Corr: Agreed, other countries have specified requirements for the minimum number of driving lessons, i.e. 2 lessons each for city, country, motorway, night time, bad weather driving, and navigating, and that’s going back at least 40 years.
@Pat Corr: the standard of driving is atrocious regardless on all roads , most
Novice drivers shouldn’t have passed , and without being racist the Indians and the African drivers are the worst I have seen , no regard for Irish law it’s like there giving out licences for nothing to clear the backlog but no safety consciousness
@Bren: How do you know the nationality of a person driving a car?
@Bren: if you say “without being racist” then anything you say subsequently cannot be racist.
@Me Me: can u imagine that
@Me Me: they have these amazing things in cars called windows which lets you see the drivers shocker isn’t it
@Kevin Daly: so the colour of a drivers skin advertises their nationality lol. On a more serious note, parking could be added to the list. As for indicating, it seems a thing of the past
@Alan: it mostly does, let’s be honest
@Me Me: because you can see them
@Kevin Daly: well said that man must be living in cuckoo land we could see into cars lol
There should be multiple overhead signs saying DRIVE IN THE LEFT LANE, there should be cameras and fines issued for those driving along in the middle lane.
This is actually part of the traffic problem around Dublin…..people hogging the middle lane effectively reduces a 3-lane motorway to 2- lanes and the traffic cannot disperse as fast as it should be able to
@DJ Points:
Absolutely. Utter möröns. Turning 3 lane motorways into 2. Really can’t understand the stupīdity of drivers that do this.
@Regular John: as for trucks and busses hogging the middle lane…..guys who drive for a living!!!! They should be taken off the road immediately!!!
Well given the busiest motorway has a speed of 100kph why would it make a difference. The other ones with the speed of 120kph, what’s the big difference. Safer than most other roads as there are less junctions. Concentration is the biggest concern.
@Paul Conlon: Unfortunately, Paul, having to many junctions is the biggest problem on any motorway. On one junction and off the next.
@Paul Conlon: incompetece is the biggest cpncern …….it doesnt matter what letters they stick on the car ….there are far far far too many motorists who simply cannot drive properly on irish roads ….if i had the time id love to dash cam record a full days driving on irish roads . around Dublin City and up and down the moroways to Cork Galway etc- just to document and show for all to see the evidence that we have not got a functioning system – the trafiic light nonsense they changed during covid around northside and changes they made in city centre pushed the congesion all the way back from the car park that has become drumcondra – the multiple bike lanes in the fairview , quays are completely under utilised – and have caused significant problems for journey times now that is seemingly ignorede by anyone in so called ‘authority’ – Canada has reveresed some of thes einitiatives in recent months – saying data did not show improvements expected or satated when they were gung ho rolling out the cycle lanes – I dont expect us to follow suit at all – but f me the so called decision makers in this country for ‘improving’ trandsport are completely incompetent and unaccountable – it aint changina any time soon either .
About time. Like with everything else our government is 20-30 years late
My bugbear is motorists driving along the entry ramp at 50kph, trying to join a stream of traffic traveling at 100kph!
Raise the limit to 140 then afterwards
@Furious George – The Wasp: The bar is never raised in Ireland, only lowered… ‘this is the way’
@Furious George – The Wasp: Speed limits are a joke, assigned to the whole length of a road based on its class (rather than the actual varying conditions on different stretches), and are based on old MPH limits, so we end up with the farce of 50 & 60km/h limits (only 6.5MPH apart) – actual metric-based limits in other countries are 30, 50, 70, 90, 100, 130 km/h, whereas we have 30, 50, 60 80, 100, 120.
Could be. We’ve had motorways for over 30 years and we’re still debating adding them to a driving test. And there are actually people employed in government departments responsible for this. Shocking shocking incompetence.
Might sort out the lunatics joining the motorway at 60 km.
@Eric Gaffney: Can you blame them tho!… literally the government pays millions in ‘awareness campaigns’ to scream at us, and are designed to implement a certain amount of fear, unfortunate for venerable people who must be terrified on the road.
@Thesaltyurchin: Ironically, entering a motorway (or driving anywhere in general) with a large speed difference than that of the mean flow (ie: either a lot faster or a lot slower) is very dangerous, but Irish driver training/RSA sound bites only emphasise the faster than average aspect, and imply that the slower driving is always safer, when it’s just as dangerous as too-fast driving. PS: If the mean speeds on a stretch of road of 85% of drivers is above the speed limit, then the limit is too low, or the road needs to be redesigned – how many roads in Ireland fall into this category?
I agree.. New drivers should learn the ability to stay stationary on the M50 for 2 hours a day
Trust the RSA to be behind the curve. A bunch of civil servants with protected jobs and no accountability.
3 years.
That soon !!
Be some craic trying to find one in the north West of the country
Only 30 years roo late! Motorway driving in Ireland is the worst in Europe. How are the RSA going to train drivers who already have full licences? Also, what idiot decided it was a good idea to allow agricultural machinery to travel on a motorway, no other country in Europe allows this.
@Michael O’Neill: Easy. Get the traffic corp to target motorways for 6 months. Fines for dangerous speeds, both high and low, and zero tolerance and fines/penalty points for incorrect lane usage. We could also do with overhauling the penalty points system. A simple ’3 strikes and you’re out’ system would be better. 3 motoring offences in a 5 year period and you lose the privilege of driving for a year. And increase all motoring offence fines 10x. An €800 fine for incorrect lane usage, €1600 for speed offences and €1200 for using a mobile might help focus people’s minds.
How will this work fof driving test centres that are far from motorways? Eg Skibbereen in West Cork. Nearest motorway is 75 km away near Cork city. Does this mean no driving tests in places far from the motorway network? Anyway, the problem on motorways is enforcement/signage. Driving on National roads is the real problem.
I wonder in the future at some stage would adding it to school curriculum from say 5th year help with accidents. Replacing pointless religion classes with driving awareness, theory then finally practical.
Good
@Jonathan Hanlon: very very good…. been banging head on a wall for years as to why they don’t include motorway drive testing. Some tubes think of the M50 as a part of their estate to drive around.
What about donkeys and cart Kerry roads ? Especially Dubs should passing they test there
@Mickstawowy: tractors and trailers on motorways
@Mickstawowy: A few years ago, I moved from Dublin to a rural area with a mix of N, R, L and single-track L-roads. The biggest thing I’ve noticed about rural driving is that even life-long locals don’t adhere to the rule that your speed should be such that “you can stop within the distance that you can see to be clear” – younger drivers don’t slow for corners, and often get caught out when there is a pedestrian/cyclist/tractor/horse (or a moron overtaking a pedestrian/cyclist/tractor/horse in the opposite direction) just behind the corner, and older drivers drive slowly around corners, but then continue to drive slowly everywhere else, including on N & R roads.
Ireland, welcome to 2018.
Nobody should get a licence unless they can prove they have commented on a Journal article. Apparently Journal commenters are perfect drivers and everyone else drives as if they got their licence in a Lucky Bag.
3 years…. who’s doing the paperwork, BAM??
Safest place for them
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