THE AA HAS welcomed plans by private companies to build new motorway service plazas along the country’s main routes.

Miriam O’Neill, press officer with the AA, said that the National Roads Authority (NRA) have planning permission for several service stations “but simply don’t have the funds or resources at the moment to build them”. As far back as September 2009, the Sunday Business Post was reporting that the building of nine out of 12 proposed serviced rest stops on our motorways had to be postponed because of budget cuts.

Yesterday, the Irish Independent’s Treacy Hogan said that some private companies would now step in to fund and operate stops along the M6, the M9 and the N11. McDonalds and Topaz will open a station near Cashel (the M8) next month, and another privately-funded project would be created at Birdhill, off the M7.

Last week, fast food chain Supermacs said it would create more than 50 new jobs by building a service plaza at Moneygall, Co Offaly. The €7m service stop won’t be ready in time for President Barack Obama’s visit to the town next month, but there were suggestions that a hotel in his name might be built at the station at a later date.

The AA said that whoever builds these services stops, they are vitally needed. Miriam O’Neill said:

We are warning about driver fatigue in the coming bank holiday weekends. What we would find is that drivers would say they felt they couldn’t stop because there was no convenient service station on the route. Just opening the window is totally ineffective, so for now we would be advising motorists to plan in advance to do a bit of reasearch about what detours will take them near a service area.

Motorists are very valid in making that complaint that there are not enough service areas and we completely support their frustration in that.

A new Road Safety Authority (RSA) booklet has a map of where service stations are currently located within a short detour of the country’s main routes. Click here to have a look.

An AA survey on driver fatigue, released on Sunday, revealed some pretty hair-raising tales about tired motorists. One man described how he nodded off but his wife thankfully managed to grab the steering wheel. Another said he woke up facing the wrong way on the central median on the N7 near Newbridge.

Just 9.5 per cent of drivers in the 17-24 years age group said they would pull over to take a nap when they felt tired driving. A total of 5.9 per cent of men across all age groups, compared to 1.8 per cent of women had said they had almost fallen asleep while driving.

The most common method employed by tired drivers to keep themselves alert was to open a window (42.3 per cent), followed by “making an effort to concentrate more and keep on going”, then by pulling over and getting a coffee (28.7 per cent).

Conor Faughnan of the AA has a terrifying statistic that should make us all sit up a little straighter behind the wheel:

Driver fatigue doesn’t mean that you actually fasll asleep. What happens is that concentration wavers and you drift in and out of full awareness, even with your eyes open. These moments of ‘micro-sleep’ can be lethal.

Take your attention from the road for three seconds and at motorway speeds you will travel blind for 100 metres – the length of a football pitch.

If that doesn’t convince you, maybe the swirly graphics and monotonous voiceover on this 1958 road safety video will do it for you: