19 May 2003: A local councillor who turned up to yet another incident involving a huge dump truck in Naas over the weekend heard much anger from passersby who felt Naas Town Council is not doing enough to ban such large vehicles from passing through the town.
Cllr Charlie Byrne is to attempt to have standing orders put aside at Naas Town Council’s monthly meeting tomorrow, Tuesday, in order to highlight the incident and the amount of public anger there is out there over the situation.
In recent years there have been a number of fatalities and other accidents in the town involving trucks, resulting in a march from the Fair Green to the Town Hall demanding that they be prohibited from the town’s Main Street.
On Saturday morning the rear door of a 40 ft refuse truck swung open while in transit, smashing into a van parked along the Kilcullen road. The van driver, from Carlow, was not in the vehicle at the time.
The incident sparked fury among passersby who said that councillors are not doing enough to ban them from the town.
“The driver of the truck that caused the incident told me he can drive through Naas but isn’t allowed drive through Kilcullen. There was a deal done in Kilcullen to stop them going through ... and there will be a deal done here too! This is people anger,” Cllr Byrne said. He is pictured below pointing out to the dump truck driver that his number plate is practically indecipherable.
Following the incident, he counted up to 15 trucks pass along the Kilcullen Road in a 10 minute interval; most were refuse, cement or sand trucks. Many, he claimed, exceeded the 30mph speed limit in place.
His views were backed by Paddy Kelly who works in Swan’s Supermarket on the Fair Green who said trucks speed past every day. He believes there aren’t enough big 30mph speed limit signs in and around the town and said a traffic survey would show there are now more lorries than cars on the Kilcullen Road, most going to and from the three landfills near Kilcullen.
Paul Connolly who also works in Swan’s Supermarket heard the bang on Saturday morning. “The truck was going by Goulding’s and we saw the back door of the lorry closing itself,” he said, adding: “If that happened down the town there would be chaos!” He too said speeding is a regular occurance with trucks speeding down the Kilcullen Road.
The dangers from huge trucks going through Naas has been raised by a number of councillors in recent years.
