Driving in Ireland

Halfway through the trip I learned that an estimated 40% of Irish drivers don't have a full license. They have a provisional license that can be renewed indefinitely.  Testing and retesting is required - though not a driving test - but if people fail, they just walk out and resume driving anyway.

We took some video of our own, but I knew someone would have something better on YouTube. I can't tell what kind of vehicle this guy is driving but in general this captures the experience - except it doesn't convey the feeling of the guy behind you tailgating, there's no fog or rain, and the oncoming traffic was pretty light, with no trucks or buses.  See below.

 

80kph is 50mph, and it is baffling how they can assign such high limits to some roads. The designation are Motorway, National, Regional, and Local roads.  The local roads come in two categories, with either four or five digits after them. Four is essentially a driveway, sometimes with grass growing down the middle and depressed tire lanes. These are nonetheless two-way roads. L roads with five digits are bad driveways.

This article About Irish Roads expands on the experience. 

It is not so much that the roads are narrow, though they often are, but that there is little or no hard shoulder and the verges, hedges and walls encroach onto the road far more than they do elsewhere.

The excellent video at the link captures my wife's experience, with hedges and even stone walls right up against the side of the car. I had less swearing, but made unusual sounds instead. "What's that sound you keep making?" She asked.  I said something about a sharp horrified intake of breath. Then in a few moments corrected saying it was sometimes a sharp horrified expulsion of breath, depending. After a few minutes I allowed that there were a variety of yeeps, gaks, and rrgggs as well - all sounds that I learned young from my father, who was a master of appropriate effects. It was nostalgic in my own ears. Tracy was not charmed by it, being too distracted by sticks and stones encroaching on windshield space.

On the other hand, the people are very nice and quite polite on the roads even if they are a bit impatient about speed. It makes for an interesting question of libertarian sentiments - is it better that the drivers know the driving rules and demonstrate competence, or better that they be nice people?  I think it's about even up.

Our rental had a feature that beeped when you strayed over the line on the right or over the edge on the left, but this was only partly useful.  On one occasion I could not for the life of me tell which side the car was yelling at me about.

For added fun, the numbers of the R roads are assigned regionally, so R345, R346, and R376 are all close together. County Mayo, I think. Maybe Galway. Given that the towns are all Bally-, Lis-, Kil-, Dun-, -more, or -bridge it's hard to tell where you are going without the GPS. That was mostly pretty good, though it occasionally took us to where it looked like there had been an entrance a few years ago, but had only a closed gate now. Many intersections are roundabouts, especially on the faster roads.  You get pretty used to sorting out which lane to get in, or at least what direction to lean in, depending on whether you were going to first, second, or third exit off the circle.

It is a great relief to hit a Motorway, with multiple lanes and wider.  If you have the problem, as I did when young and still do somewhat, of wanting to cut across the back roads because it looks so much shorter on the map, Ireland will cure you of that.

Fun to talk about later.  Not fun at the time.