Bad driving habits are causing ‘major concern’ for some local councillors.
Issues with recent near misses by motorists texting or those moving at speed while travelling through towns and villages were raised at the Castlecomer Municipal District meeting.
Cllr Denis Hynes called for measures to be taken by the county council to ensure those behind the steering wheel are forced to take heed.
He says he’s seen enough for himself and has had representation from people in a number of areas on the issue, telling KCLR News “Gowran is one example and it’s happening in Paulstown, my own town of Goresbridge, it’s right across North Kilkenny, it’s kindof when you get a straight on the road people pick up speed, it doesn’t matter whether it’s 50km or 60km and we have pedestrian crossings where I make the arguement that we need to have them stop and go you kn ow rather than a flashing amber light, I’m just concerned people are going to be hit”.
The area engineer told the meeting of how measures had been taken in some areas with some of the elected representatives noting the improvements more had to be made in human behaviour.
But Cllr Hynes says while personal responsibility needs to be shown by motorists, extra provisions could be made by the local authority too;”We have to make every steps ourselves as well to try and slow down the traffic to teach people and show them this can’t happen and sometimes if you have a clear view of maybe 200m you’re inclined to drive a little bit faster down the village, we need to dom something to maybe just narrow in the street, do something with the footpaths, and there were some good ideas here about putting in trees and sculptures I would encourage the council to have another look at this”.
