garda speed camera in phoenix park

burnedfaceman

i was driving home today at 3 o clock and seen there was a garda car parked on far side of roundabout parked slyly between two cars, as I was driving past i seen one of guards had a speed camera out the back window trying to catch people speeding. the speed limit is 40 km/h in park which is ridiculus. have the gardai nothing better to be doing with their time than petty crap like this??

BendiBus

It's a park. It's full of people and wild animals. Speeding in the park is bad.

burnedfaceman

i was driving below speed limit.

yes park is full of people, they can usually be found on the footpaths which are some distance from road.

would you regard 41km/h as speeding and dangerous?

the point im trying to make in a roundabout way is why are the gardai not manning speed checks which are accident blackspots and were drivers are driving on roads which have high speed limits and are clearly not designed to cope with cars driving at high speeds? take the majority of rural roads in the country as an example

cmoney

burnedfaceman wrote:

would you regard 41km/h as speeding and dangerous?

would you still be raising this point if you were to run over a poor innocent squirrel?

but all joking aside as ya do raise a good point but people speed everywhere not just in accident blackspots

Ronan H

Is / was the speed limit in the park not 50KMPH or have they reduced it again? Also i thought because its an enclosed space (or something like that) that they arent allowed to put speed checks in it? I definitely heard something like that before...

Space Head

burnedfaceman

true people do speed everywhere but in fairness someone driving at 41km/h per hour on a straight road is less likely to cause an accident than someone driving at 101km/h.....I reckon its just a money spinner for government coffers clocking people driving slightly over speedlimit on low speed roads

burnedfaceman

my bad think limit could well be 50, i was driving at 40 though

sunnyjim

burnedfaceman wrote:

true people do speed everywhere but in fairness someone driving at 41km/h per hour on a straight road is less likely to cause an accident than someone driving at 101km/h.....I reckon its just a money spinner for government coffers clocking people driving slightly over speedlimit on low speed roads

Hm...... 41kmh is something like 6.25% over the 40kmh limit.

101kmh is 1% over the 100kmh limit.

Poor choice of example.

nikolaitr

sunnyjim wrote:

Hm...... 41kmh is something like 6.25% over the 40kmh limit.

101kmh is 1% over the 100kmh limit.

Poor choice of example.

41kmph is 2.5% over the 40 limit


Poor choice of calculator

sunnyjim

Jeanie mack, I'm on a poor roll of calculations this morning!!! My bad. Pedantry aside (on all our parts), the point stands. Speeding at a 'low' speed is actually worse than at high speeds.

A crash at 80kmh is pretty much as bad as one at 100kmh.

A crash at 40kmh is by far much worse than one at 20kmh.

The only people that get pissed off by speed cameras are the ones who get caught speeding. Speeding = bad,

Pines

sunnyjim wrote:

A crash at 80kmh is pretty much as bad as one at 100kmh.

The amount of energy released (i.e. the damage caused) when a car is suddenly decelerated, such as in a crash, is proportional to the square of the speed.

If a 20 km/h crash causes (say) 400 units of damage, then:
... a 40 km/h crash will cause 1600 units (4 times as bad as the 20 km/h)
... a 60 km/h crash will cause 3600 units (9 times as bad as the 20 km/h)
... an 80 km/h crash will cause 6400 units (16 times as bad as the 20 km/h)
... a 100 km/h crash will cause 10000 units (25 times as bad as the 20 km/h)

This means that a 100 km/h crash involves about 56% more damage than an 80 km/h crash, which could very well be the difference between surviving the crash and not.

It's true, however that if you're a pedestrian and are hit by a car driving at 80 or 100 km/h, you're almost certainly not going to survive irrespective of the actual speed.