Signs in Polish

Did I hear correctly that some council in Laois is proposing that we have signs erected in the Polish Language ?

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And? They are probably more useful than signs in Irish at this stage.

I can't see this remaining in this forum for long.

And ? I agree that Irish signs are absolutely useless too.

Perhaps more signs in English might help us dubs when driving through the Midlands on anything that is not a motorway or National road.

Laois Co Council has also plans to introduce signage in other languages such as Czech and Latvian. This is basically going to be a pilot scheme to measure the effect on road deaths.

These translated signs will not be regualtory such as STOP and YIELD or direction pointing. They will only display general road safety messages such as "wear your seatbelt" etc.

Is this any different to the sign the galway side of kinnegad in french and german that tells you to drive on the left ? AFAIK that sign was erected (with permission from coco ) by the parents of someone who was killed by a foreigner driving on the wrong side (right) of the road.

Yeah,there's loads of 'Wilkommen' 'Auf Wiedersehen' and 'Fahren Sie rechts bitte' in the West of ireland. These signs may prevent road deaths and that can only be applauded. However, I hope the rest of us aren't too distracted trying to read the newer more 'exotic' ones that may be erected.

There's one of those signs as you climb out of Carrick-on-Suir on the road leading to the N25 at Lemybrien. I guess it's when you're leaving Co. Tipperary for Co. Waterford.

It always struck me as being superfluous - if a foreign driver had made it that far, why remind them ?

#paul# said:

Laois Co Council has also plans to introduce signage in other languages such as Czech and Latvian. This is basically going to be a pilot scheme to measure the effect on road deaths.

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Shouldn't it be Donegal Co. Council that do this rather than Laois? Act where the problem is!

Has anybody checked the road death statistics for the past year or more to check what the breakdown by nationality was? I would be surprised if the majority were not English speaking Irish people.

Maybe then the authorities should ignore the phenomenon of fatal road accidents involving non-English speakers until and unless a stage is reached where the majority of road fatalities are in this category?

Out of 39 road deaths in January, 9 were Eastern European.

clubman: get of the horse. the numbers are way out of proportion. I stated in an earlier post that on the M1 motorway between dundalk and port tunnel the majority of cars I noticed doing over the 125 were either northern ireland or lt and lv regs. and I stick by that.and don't ask how do I know they were doing over 125. Stevie Wonder could see that.

Get of (off?) what horse? I simply asked a question. I certainly did not say:

ubiquitous said:

Maybe then the authorities should ignore the phenomenon of fatal road accidents involving non-English speakers until and unless a stage is reached where the majority of road fatalities are in this category?

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Pity some people can't discuss issues and read others' posts without jumping to conclusions as to what the intent is.

delgirl - thanks for those facts. Any idea where the stats for previous years can be found?

ubiquitous said:

Maybe then the authorities should ignore the phenomenon of fatal road accidents involving non-English speakers until and unless a stage is reached where the majority of road fatalities are in this category?

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What's the point on focusing efforts, and unneccessary costs in my opinion, on addressing this kind of issue.

Maybe the authorities should concentrate the phenomonen that are causing the majority of deaths (or so we're told) by addressing speed and drink-driving, which we're told is prevalent amongst both English and non-English speaking. Wouldn't it be much more worthwhile to have efforts expended here, rather than on a minority - as I highlighted before, how many non-English speakers have been killed on Laois roads?

Moreover, I don't think I've heard anyone mention anywhere that the reason for non-english speaking drivers being killed on the roads is because they don't understand the road signs.

cuchulainn said:

clubman: get of the horse. the numbers are way out of proportion. I stated in an earlier post that on the M1 motorway between dundalk and port tunnel the majority of cars I noticed doing over the 125 were either northern ireland or lt and lv regs. and I stick by that.and don't ask how do I know they were doing over 125. Stevie Wonder could see that.

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And Stevie Wonder could also see that there are almost no difference between the road signs in Ireland, and the road signs in Poland. So, unless Polish people are dying because they're getting lost (what's the Polish for Portarlington?), I don't see that this kind of proposal has any merit whatsoever.

ClubMan said:

delgirl - thanks for those facts. Any idea where the stats for previous years can be found?

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I got those from the 6 O'Clock news one evening in early February.

It would be interesting to see stats for a year, perhaps January was just a particularly bad month for foreign deaths on the roads?

Perhaps signs in Polish and Russian, which would cover all the Balkan states, would be a lot more useful than the 'Links Fahren' etc. aimed at a few tourists.

Or perhaps we could just allow the gardai to randomly stop and check drivers for alcohol (as is being proposed) which might get the message across to all sectors of the community. As with speeding, when the penalty points first came in, if people think they are likely to get caught they will stop. Of course we'd need enough gardai to do this but its something that would actually work rather than pc crap about putting multi-lingual signs all over the country. The only places that should have these signs are the exits at airports, ferries and car-hire depots like hertz, avis etc.
Also if 30 out of 39 deaths were Irish people then out of a population of 3-4 million that is surely a lower percentage than 9 out of 100,000. It's amazing how the "dogs in street" were considered sufficient sources for inner city scum rioting but when these same dogs refer to the problem of drink, substandard or uninsured driving among immigrants the pc brigade go spare. If this percentage of the overall population were being killed on our roads we'd be doing something about it, I hope the pc brigade aren't stupid enough to think that playing down or denying the problem is actually helping these people, talk about killing with kindness.

I heard something on the news during the week where Dermot Ahern was going to ask the Latvian authorities to try and inform Latvian citizens coming to this country of need to be careful while driving on our roads. Latvia is a small country with a small population so I have no doubt that Donegal accident caused great grief in their homeland.As all road deaths do . might only be a statistic on the news but its always heartbreak for someone. Problem is detection. If you speed and get caught you know you get 2 points and €80. Non national gets caught and he knows that theres no points, changes address so the fine cant be delivered anyway ( ask the gardai about that one) and much the same with drunk driving. the statistics tell us that more people were caught drink driving over Christmas last year than the previous year, despite all the advertising. Could it be that getting caught meant nothing to some of them? Road deaths are terrible in every form and if it means we have to stamp down hard on everyone who breaks the law then I am all for it. no exceptions.

delgirl said:

Perhaps signs in Polish and Russian, which would cover all the Balkan states, would be a lot more useful than the 'Links Fahren' etc. aimed at a few tourists.

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Let's get a few things straight here. Since when were Poland and Russia in the 'Balkan states'? When I went to school, the Balkans were confined to southern Europe, in particular Bulgarian regions - I assume you mean Baltic states - if so then both Poland and Russia are not in the Baltics. The Baltics consist of Latvia , Lithuania and Estonia. They have their own language, culture and attitudes quite distinct from Russia and Poland.

My Polish friends will admit that the Latvians in particular do have a gung-ho attitude when it comes to driving in Ireland - back home they have an excellent road testing system and are probably better trained at driving than people in Ireland.
The problem arises when they come here to Ireland - the drivers are predominantly male and have aggressive attitudes because - they regard Ireland as a 'holiday experience ' with no Guards on the roads unlike their own country.They tend to think that they have a free reign when it comes to driving at speed, and why not? no cops,no licence,no road tax, no insurance, no ncts no nothing.
What would young Irish males be like if they found some island where they could drive around virtually unrestricted?
Does anyone think that they would slow down even if they understood (and they do )the road signs.
We don't even slow down ourselves, granted we do not all drive at 125kph, so why should they.
All the time we hear of the Victoria experience and the New Zealand experience on the radio and ministers going out their to study restraints but yet the bodies still pile up. Smart lawyers can get anybody off a speeding rap in our clumsy court systems. Gardai can refuse to operate speed equipment and hand written tickets can go astray in an antiquated recording system!

delgirl said:

Perhaps signs in Polish and Russian, which would cover all the Balkan states, would be a lot more useful than the 'Links Fahren' etc. aimed at a few tourists.

Click to expand...

Let's get a few things straight here. Since when were Poland and Russia in the 'Balkan states'? When I went to school, the Balkans were confined to southern Europe, in particular Bulgarian regions - I assume you mean Baltic states - if so then both Poland and Russia are not in the Baltics. The Baltics consist of Latvia , Lithuania and Estonia. They have their own individual language, culture and attitudes quite distinct from each other and Russia and Poland.

My Polish friends will admit that the Latvians in particular do have a gung-ho attitude when it comes to driving in Ireland - back home they have an excellent road testing system and are probably better trained at driving than people in Ireland.
The problem arises when they come here to Ireland - the drivers are predominantly male and have aggressive attitudes because - they regard Ireland as a 'holiday experience ' with no Guards on the roads unlike their own country.They tend to think that they have a free reign when it comes to driving at speed, and why not? no cops,no licence,no road tax, no insurance, no ncts no nothing.
What would young Irish males be like if they found some island where they could drive around virtually unrestricted?
Does anyone think that they would slow down even if they understood (and they do )the road signs.
We don't even slow down ourselves, granted we do not all drive at 125kph, so why should they.
All the time we hear of the Victoria experience and the New Zealand experience on the radio and ministers going out their to study restraints but yet the bodies still pile up. Smart lawyers can get anybody off a speeding rap in our clumsy court systems. Gardai can refuse to operate speed equipment and hand written tickets can go astray in an antiquated recording system!
For all our economic advancement in Ireland we fail miserably when it comes to building, maintaining and running safe transport systems.