Speed Traps

Ginger83

Hi we have had 399 deaths on our roads this year. The proposal is to bring in private companies to operate speed traps. I drive for a living and was wondering will this reduce the number of accidents on our roads or is it just another money racket?Any thoughts?

MrPudding

Ginger83 wrote:

Hi we have had 399 deaths on our roads this year. The proposal is to bring in private companies to operate speed traps. I drive for a living and was wondering will this reduce the number of accidents on our roads or is it just another money racket?Any thoughts?

It depends on how it was done.

I have mentioned this a couple of times before, I heard a rep from the NSC & the Guards on the radio some time ago. If the privatisation is carried out as they saw it I believe it would make a difference.

Here are the main points as I remember them:

• The company / companies would be paid on the basis of the number of checks carried out, not the number of speed detections. So no quotas.
• The company running the checks would not decide when or where the checks would be carried out. The times and places of speed checks would be decided by the Garda and would be based on times and places where accidents were most likely to happen.

The way they described it was interesting. The private company would be told to carry out a number of checks in certain areas at certain times. Checks carried out outside of these areas or times would not be paid for.

In other words, they could sit on the M50 or N11 all day and catch dozens of people but they would not get paid. Simple. This should mean checks at times and in locations where people are actually killed

I think the main thing is whoever does the checks should be paid for doing the checks not for catching people.

MrP

Our man in Havana

Won't the use of private companies be unconsitutional?

jesus_thats_gre

Not if they make it constitutional...

D'Peoples Voice

Bond-007 wrote:

Won't the use of private companies be unconsitutional?

How ironic is that, the two main forms of reducing carnage on our roads;

random breath testing to reduce drink driving

private companies to carry out speed checks to reduce speeding

are unconstitutional!

And the Anti-Abortion lobbys say our constitution values the right of life of every citizen!

jimbling

I found some intersting stats on road deaths etc.... go take a read of the post in humanities on this. Probably the most interesting is that only 12% of the "carnage" on the road is caused by breaking the speed limit.

Villain

A friend of mine is doing a masters in media studies and she was doing a report on road deaths. Part of that report involved interviewing young drivers. In two interviews I listened to the drivers stated they only speeded on back roads and normally at night as there was no chance of being caught by the Gardai.

Be it private companies or the Gardai doing the speed checks its about time they got off the motorways and setup random checks on bad country roads during day and NIGHT. I don't have any stats at hand but most accidents seem to occur between 11pm and 6am.

egan007

Clearly a money racket......

These will rake in millions in stealth taxes - the irony is the best speed cameras don't make any money....

No way in the world i'm handing over 1 cent to a private company for a speeding fine. I almost gag when i have to hand over a road toll so no more.....

The amount of bullsh!t going around in this country is reaching an all time high
much more of this and im going to start a political movement against it.
This movements primary goal is to remove bullsh!t and give back the country to the people who own it. I think it's very very necessary.

Mucco

jimbling wrote:

only 12% of the "carnage" on the road is caused by breaking the speed limit.

Why that's only 48 people last year - speed away folks.

mackerski

Mucco wrote:

Why that's only 48 people last year - speed away folks.

Statistics are very versatile, though. What would 48 people be as a proportion of the folks who actually exceed the speed limit? Anyone else want a go?

Dermot

saobh_ie

Would speed checks work on bad country roads? To check somebody’s speed it needs to be observed over a fixed distance. The problem with the country roads is line of sight, they’d need to find an open piece of road, with a safe place to stop at the roadside for themselves and people caught. Such a road would be safe anyway because of the good visibility etc.

The reason there isn’t speed enforcement in accident black spots is because it would be far too dangerous. Even if a squad car could be physically parked in the vicinity of a black spot it would only serve to distract people in what is known to be a dangerous bit of road, right?

I wouldn’t like to come around a corner and find a load of slowly moving or stopped traffic waiting for the chance to pass a speed check car and a number of pulled cars, forcing me to slow down so somebody can come around the corner behind me and hit me. Anyway, a lot of these back roads speed isn’t a problem, speed defined as per popular opinion as going faster than the speed limit.

Anyway, speed doesn’t make people crash all by itself. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for stupidity.

I suppose the benefit to privately operated speed checking would mean that the Gardaí could start going after people for bad driving. I’ve never heard of anybody getting even a talking too for dangerous driving, its always speeding.

DubTony

saobh_ie wrote:

Anyway, speed doesn’t make people crash all by itself. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for stupidity.

Good point. But stupidity checks could only be carried out by members of Mensa and people with degrees and things, and anyway, they probably wouldn't take the job.

Sorry :rolleyes:

Villain

saobh_ie wrote:

Would speed checks work on bad country roads? To check somebody’s speed it needs to be observed over a fixed distance. The problem with the country roads is line of sight, they’d need to find an open piece of road, with a safe place to stop at the roadside for themselves and people caught. Such a road would be safe anyway because of the good visibility etc.

The reason there isn’t speed enforcement in accident black spots is because it would be far too dangerous. Even if a squad car could be physically parked in the vicinity of a black spot it would only serve to distract people in what is known to be a dangerous bit of road, right?

I wouldn’t like to come around a corner and find a load of slowly moving or stopped traffic waiting for the chance to pass a speed check car and a number of pulled cars, forcing me to slow down so somebody can come around the corner behind me and hit me. Anyway, a lot of these back roads speed isn’t a problem, speed defined as per popular opinion as going faster than the speed limit.

Anyway, speed doesn’t make people crash all by itself. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for stupidity.

I suppose the benefit to privately operated speed checking would mean that the Gardaí could start going after people for bad driving. I’ve never heard of anybody getting even a talking too for dangerous driving, its always speeding.

Very simple solution to that one saobh_ie, timing devices that record the time it took a car to travel a distance. E.G. A device records the time and number plate of a car when it passes a given point another device does the same 2 or 3 miles down the road. Its very easy to work out the minimum time it should have taken to travel that distance within the legal speed limits, if you have been speeding you will be below that time and are then prosecuted. These systems are in use in other countries as stationary camera's I'd like to see a simalar mobile system used here on black spots on bad roads.

MorningStar

egan007 wrote:

Clearly a money racket......

These will rake in millions in stealth taxes - the irony is the best speed cameras don't make any money....

No way in the world i'm handing over 1 cent to a private company for a speeding fine. I almost gag when i have to hand over a road toll so no more.....

The amount of bullsh!t going around in this country is reaching an all time high
much more of this and im going to start a political movement against it.
This movements primary goal is to remove bullsh!t and give back the country to the people who own it. I think it's very very necessary.

Love the way you mixed in loads of things without really thinking about it.

The assumption it is money making and has no other benifit

A speeding fine is not a stealth tax it is a penalty for breaking the law combined with points.

A road toll is a charge for a service. I don't use that road so why shoul I pay for it? It is a tax on your use not mine. Don't like don't use the raod. If you use it because it is quicker you are paying for a benifit.

Take responsibilty for your own actions and use.

There are speeding laws break them pay the fine. Does it matter whether there is a cop catching you or a machine? Not in my eyes. All studies of criminal activity show that the small crimes are connected to the big crimes.

If you can justify to youself that it is safe to speed where you think it is safe you will continue to do so in all places you feel safe. That means you speed on the motor way you will speed in your local area.

Speed does kill. If it is money making scam don't speed and they will make no money off you.:rolleyes:

Give the country back to the people and not to those who impose their feelings of what laws and rules they think suit them.

Ignore the fines and be off the road in three offenses I don't mind;)

MrPudding

irish1 wrote:

Very simple solution to that one saobh_ie, timing devices that record the time it took a car to travel a distance. E.G. A device records the time and number plate of a car when it passes a given point another device does the same 2 or 3 miles down the road. Its very easy to work out the minimum time it should have taken to travel that distance within the legal speed limits, if you have been speeding you will be below that time and are then prosecuted. These systems are in use in other countries as stationary camera's I'd like to see a simalar mobile system used here on black spots on bad roads.

I like this, nice solution.

saobh_ie wrote:

Would speed checks work on bad country roads? To check somebody’s speed it needs to be observed over a fixed distance. The problem with the country roads is line of sight, they’d need to find an open piece of road, with a safe place to stop at the roadside for themselves and people caught. Such a road would be safe anyway because of the good visibility etc.

The solution from Irish1 above would get round this issue. My preferred solution for accident blackspots would be to have brightly coloured highly visible fixed speed cameras which are signposting in advance in both directions approaching the blackspot. I would also make sure they *always* had film or were digital with realtime connections to a central control station.

I feel this system could be used to force people to slow down in dangerous areas. As far as I am concerned a fixed speed camera doing its job properly would not catch anyone speeding.

MrP

Nuttzz

irish1 wrote:

Very simple solution to that one saobh_ie, timing devices that record the time it took a car to travel a distance. E.G. A device records the time and number plate of a car when it passes a given point another device does the same 2 or 3 miles down the road. Its very easy to work out the minimum time it should have taken to travel that distance within the legal speed limits, if you have been speeding you will be below that time and are then prosecuted. These systems are in use in other countries as stationary camera's I'd like to see a simalar mobile system used here on black spots on bad roads.

I dont know if the average system would really work, for example on parts of the ennis to N7 back road you can see people hit 70+mph on it however 500m later they are traveling at 30mph, then back up to 60 then back down to 40, anyone who knows the road will know what i mean, so while they are speeding in places their average clock speed is under the limit.

corktina

ennis to N7 backroad? tell me more.....missing out Limerick you mean on a Galway to Cork journey.....?

Nuttzz

Not quite Ennis - Killaloe - N7 Just South of Nenagh by pass

corktina

Nuttzz wrote:

Not quite Ennis - Killaloe - N7 Just South of Nenagh by pass

shame...too far north....