Traffic chaos on M1 after biker is killed in crash with truck
A MAN was killed when the motorbike he was riding was involved in a collision with a truck on the M1 motorway.
The accident happened at about 12.30am yesterday between Junction 4 and Junction 5 of the motorway.
The motorcyclist was pronounced dead at the scene and his body removed to the City Morgue. The driver of the truck was uninjured.
Commuters travelling along the M1 southbound near Balbriggan yesterday morning were met with tailbacks of around 20km following the collision several hours earlier.
Some of the 200,000 people who commute into the city every day poured off the motorway onto nearby smaller roads not capable of handling such large volumes.
Gardaí sealed off the scene for several hours to carry out an examination.
The incident brought the total number of deaths on Irish roads to 97 this year, a marginally smaller figure than the 103 people killed in the same period last year.
Heavy traffic was later reported when the Port Tunnel, which redirects large vehicles around Dublin’s city centre, closed at around 1pm because of an unsecured load on a heavy goods vehicle.
Long delays were reported for several hours on both the M1 and the M50 as a result, causing mayhem for drivers travelling in and out of the city.
Experts have warned Irish roads are now struggling with capacity.
“Between now and Christmas, when the traffic is at its worst and as the evenings go in, I’m certain there will be at least three or four more mornings when massive traffic congestion occurs and we wind up having these conversations,” AA Roadwatch’s Conor Faughnan said.
Mr Faughnan said Ireland was in a “uniquely vulnerable situation” as “events that are shrugged away in cities like Copenhagen or Amsterdam and places like that” cause chaos on Irish roads.
“Sometimes it will be a crash, sometimes it will be traffic, often it will be weather,” he added.
Chair of Fingal County Council’s strategic planning and infrastructure committee, Councillor David Healy, said the committee have not looked at ways to alleviate congestions when incidents such as these occur.
Meanwhile a spokesperson for Transport Infrastructure Ireland said the only option in crash situations is to wait it out while gardaí carry out examinations and clear the scene.