COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

South Dublin County Council Crest

MEETING OF LAND USE PLANNING AND TRANSPORTATION SPC

Thursday, February 24, 2022

HEADED ITEM NO.

Road Safety Strategy 2022 - 2026 : Progress UpdateGovernment Road Safety Strategy

The Government's Road Safety Strategy was launched by the RSA in December 2021 and covers the period 2021 – 2030. It will be delivered in three phases and Phase One will run from 2021 to 2024 incl.

This new strategy is titled ‘Our Journey Towards Vision Zero’ and aims to have zero road deaths and injuries, on Irish roads, by 2050. The strategy is using the Safe System approach which is based on the following four principles:

  1. People make mistakes when using the road, whuch can lead to collisions
  2. The human body has limited ability to tolerate collisions,
  3. There is a shared responsibility among those who design, build, manage, and use the roads and vehicles to reduce collision impacts, and those who provide post-crash response to mitigate injury,
  4. All parts of the traffic system need to be strengthened to multiply their effects nd to ensure road users are protectedif one part of the system fails.

The RSA RSS was developed adopting a series of Best Practice approaches such as conducting a road safety management capacity review (RSMCR) and an in-depth public and stakeholder consultation process.

There are seven Safe System priority intervention areas (all of which are NOT specifically the responsibility of each key partner to the RSS):

  1. Safe roads and roadsides,
  2. Safe speeds,
  3. Safe vehicles,
  4. Safe road use,
  5. Post-crash response
  6. Safe and healthy modes of travel,
  7. Safe work-related road use.

There are 50 high impact and 136 supporting actions within the priority areas listed above that will be in place for phase one of the strategy.

South Dublin County Council – progress to date

The SDCC Road Safety Strategy (and all other Local Authority RSSs) is expected to mirror that of the RSA RSS but will be tailored to be appropriate at local level.

An information session on the RSA RSS was delivered to Road Safety Officers by the Road Safety Authority (RSA) on 1st February 2022, and the RSA is currently working on a template which is to be used by Local Authorities to develop our strategies, and enable them to run alongside phase one of the RSA RSS. This is expected to be delivered by March 2022.

While the SDCC RSS will be a non-statutory strategy, not requiring public consultation (as per RSA given the extent to the consultation already undertaken), it will be brought to the Council for NOTING as soon as it is developed.  

The SDCC RSS will be supported by an annual road safety action plan, which will aid delivery of the individual objectives of the strategy.

A similar update on development of the SDCC RSS is also being provided to the Council’s Road Safety Working Together Group (RSWTG) today, Thursday 24th February 2022.