Calls for traffic calming after car overturns on busy road

CALLS have been made for the installation of speed bumps on Ballycullen Road, after a car collided with the front wall of a cottage there on Thursday night.

Causing thousands of euro worth of damage, the incident is adding to fears that someone could be seriously injured or killed as a result of speeding issues.

Amanda O’Farrell said she was alerted to the incident at the front wall of her cottage on Thursday night, after she heard a loud bang and her 13-year-old daughter, Eve, who had been using a trampoline in the back garden, ran in to tell her family.

“We heard a huge bang,” Ms O’Farrell told The Echo. “I was in the back of the house and my daughter ran in and said a car had flipped.

“She was on the trampoline at the back of the house. She’s out on the trampoline a lot and happened to be bouncing up when it happened.”

Ms O’Farrell went outside to see what had happened, and saw an overturned car that had crashed through the top of the front wall of her house and had taken down the pillar.

She initially feared someone was in the car, until a group of young men at the scene admitted that they had been in the vehicle and there was no one in the car by the time she came to the scene.

The stretch of road outside the cottages on Ballycullen Road

Gardai, Dublin Fire Brigade, a South Dublin County Council emergency vehicle and an ambulance attended the scene.

A garda spokesperson told The Echo that gardai attended the scene of the single-vehicle collision and that no injuries were reported, and enquiries are ongoing.

“Both of my kids got an awful shock,” said Ms O’Farrell. “We didn’t sleep until the early hours that morning, because we were so wound up.”

She added: “I think they must’ve hit the wall at speed, because the wall and the pillar are steel reinforced.”

The cost to repair the damage is expected to be within the region of €5,000 to €6,000, according to Ms O’Farrell, and she added that she and her husband, Mick, have been calling for speed bumps and traffic calming measures on that stretch of road for several years.

“You get a lot of traffic coming down from the mountains,” said Ms O’Farrell. “They come from a narrow, country road, and then they see this wide, open road and they have a tendency to speed down it.

“The speeding is constant. It’s not safe.”

Ms O’Farrell doesn’t allow her children, Eve, 13, and Conor, 12, to play in the front garden because of the issues with speeding on that stretch of road, and she has concerns about what could’ve happened if the incident had taken place at a time when there are pedestrians on the footpath.

“It’s the main footpath for estates like Hunterswood, Abbot’s Grove, and Dalriada, so there’s constant pedestrian traffic.

“If this had happened at a different time, there could’ve been people walking there or people with buggies and prams.”

She added: “The railing on top of the wall absorbed some of the impact – those lads could’ve been killed.”

Local Fianna Fáil councillor Emma Murphy said speeding on that stretch of road has been an issue for a number of years.

“That stretch of road has been a problem for a long number of years,” said Cllr Murphy. “There needs to be traffic calming measures there.

“That road is a beacon for picking up speed, and it’s becoming problematic.”

When asked about the single-vehicle collision that occurred in front of Ms O’Farrell’s house on Thursday night, Cllr Murphy said: “Someone could very easily have been killed there if they were out walking.

“And the families in those cottages are very exposed in terms of the speed of the cars going down that road.

“We’re very lucky that it was structural damage, and not to a person or property.”

Cllr Murphy added that the issues with speeding at the stretch of the road will be raised at traffic management and local area committee meetings next month.

A spokeswoman for South Dublin County Council told The Echo the council had “recently become aware of speeding instances in the vicinity of Ballycullen Cottages, having previously been contacted by a local resident in September 2015, and many years earlier when it was advised at that time of loitering/gathering of high-powered vehicles before taking off in the direction of the mountains.

“Being cognizant of the most recent incident which has been brought to the council’s attention, it is proposed to undertake a typical speed count in this area.

“This will entail a 24-hour assessment (over a sample period of c. three days) of the speed of vehicles which traverse this roadway.”

The spokeswoman added that the results of the speed count will determine whether traffic calming measures “are necessary or suitable for the location”.