KILLARDRY BANK RECORD · 8 SEPTEMBER 2026
What Irish roadworks rules required at Killardry after dark
The night in question is 24 April 2025 after 22:00. Dark. Rain already in the day’s gauges. A live public road. An unfinished cut on the outside of a 90-degree turn. An open pipe in the face. A known drop beyond a broken parapet.
Irish procedure does not treat that as “a cone for when someone is next passing.”
Chapter 8 of the Traffic Signs Manual applies to anyone doing construction or maintenance on a public road. If the cut and pipe were left in place overnight, the site is static. Once it is there more than twelve hours it is Type A. The layout that belongs on a single rural road at a bend is:
advance WK 001 Roadworks Ahead, at the distance that matches the speed
a bend or road-narrows plate, because the hazard is the turn
a taper of cones to a lateral safety zone — not a cone standing in the hole
a barrier if a wheel can enter the slot
lighting if the hazard remains after dark
a competent person with the signing-and-guarding CSCS card, and a drive-through check
extra inspection when it rains and when the site is left overnight
Regulation 97 of the Construction Regulations 2013 is the same duty in statute: adequate guarding and lighting appropriate to the circumstances, signs maintained, competent supervision. “Others” includes the driver coming the other way in the dark.
The May stills — horse chestnuts in flower, memorial already on the parapet — show what was left standing in daylight:
one orange cone and a grey disc in the excavation on the right-hand cut
three cones along the left-hand approach cut, irregular spacing, no taper
no WK 001 in frame on either approach
no lamps on the works
One cone is a marker that someone knew the edge was open. Knowing and marking with a single cone is not the same as protecting the public on a wet night.
If the bank was three weeks old and the pipe ten days old, the deeper point is this: the job should not still have been a worksite. The night-time measure was not more cones. It was a battered, covered face and a backfilled pipe. Chapter 8 is what you use when the works are still live. Series 600 and Series 500 are what you use so they are not still live.
“One cone in a hole is not Chapter 8.”
Internal links: Blog 1, Blog 2, Blog 4, full review.