Query over speed signage in Cavan town

Clarity was provided to the elected members of Cavan-Belturbet Municipal District meeting in respect of the rules governing the pedestrian crossing at the Johnston Library on Farnham Street in Cavan Town.

“The onus is on both the motorists and the pedestrian,” said Senior Area Engineer, Paul Mulligan, of the crossing point, which is not a controlled junction.

He gave the example of people crossing roads in the middle of Paris, where he suggested “you’d be taking your life in your hands stepping out before looking”.

Mr Mulligan gave the frank explanation in response to a question tabled at the meeting by Fine Gael’s Madeleine Argue, who requested that additional signage be put up on the street to inform drivers both of the speed and the proximity of the crossing position.

“It’s a cause for concern,” she said, highlighting issues on the county town’s Main Street also.

There are, she claimed, no speed signs in the town environs. “What can be done?”

But Mr Mulligan suggested that signage only worked up to a point, and what local authorities had tried to do in recent years was “de-clutter” urban environments from such furniture.

He said that signage has a “certain impact” but that eventually it becomes a case where it is simply ignored, as was the case in one example given by him where a car passed up to seven warning signs before almost colliding with workmen on a roadway.

Mr Mulligan added too that raised ramps can “annoy” people, and there was a push to employ such methods only as a last resort.

He also stated that he did not think erecting signage would “change driver behaviour”.

Separately, the same meeting received an update from Mr Mulligan regarding the provision and remarking of the zebra crossing at Tesco in Cavan Town.

The crossing point was resurfaced and marked recently.