Irish motorists warned that driving too slow can be dangerous

A new campaign aims to get Irish motorists to wise up and pull over, as statistics show driving too slowly can be dangerous.

Have you even been stuck behind an old banger of a car doing 30kmh in a 80kmh zone? Apart from being infuriating it can also be quite dangerous. That’s why a new campaign aims to get people to wise up and to move over if they’re blocking traffic.

Now, the campaign doesn’t want us all tearing around at 140kmh everywhere we go. Instead, it want’s people who prefer to take it handy to move over if there’s a car behind trying to overtake.

Mayo County Council launched the campaign after it emerged that almost 7 per cent of accidents in the county were caused by improper overtaking. Some of the accidents were caused by reckless overtaking but in other cases the accident resulted from a driver trying to pass a particularly slow vehicle.

Mayo Road Safety Officer Noel Gibbons said, “Motorists can experience increased stress levels and heightened irritability when faced with a vehicle driving slower than the rest of the traffic.

"What they [slow drivers] should endeavour to do is drive at the speed appropriate to the conditions. If they're not comfortable in doing that, we're not asking them to speed up, we're asking them to give way to following vehicles.”

However, that doesn’t mean you can go intimidating someone off the road by getting right up their a*se or by flashing your lights at them.

"The drivers of faster moving vehicles don't have the 'right' to intimidate slower drivers off the road,” said Gibbons.

"We are just asking that drivers, whether slow or fast, to appreciate they are not alone on the road network and that they have obligations to all other drivers.”