Why don't we have speed cameras everywhere?

Del2005

AnthonyB wrote: »

So people, what about the autonomous cars argument? Forget cameras and cops, the cars themselves can rat out their own drivers. Shouldn't that be mandated by the government in order to register such cars in Ireland? So - if you want to sell autonomous vehicles here, their data feeds must be routed through a Government cloud to monitor cars for speed, tax, insurance and nct compliance. Real-diagnostics can even obviate the need for the NCT...isn't that a good thing?

If the car is autonomous then it'll be the car breaking the law not the person sitting in it, it'd be like giving the passenger in a taxi points for an offence committed by the driver.


The government can't do technology. Look at the farce of the health service being computerised (cost millions and just dropped) , Garda pulse system (which missed that "drivers licence" was repeatedly getting stopped but never flagged), the evoting machines (which were easily hacked and had no way to verify the votes), an ANPR system which doesn't work due to no central database of insurance.

Atlantic Dawn

At the end of the day it always goes back to this...the faster the car the safer you are...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qubpD1SMHUY

marno21

One way of cutting road deaths would be upgrading the inter-regional roads and national secondaries.

The roads to Dublin (M1 to the border, M6 to Galway, M7 to Limerick, M8 to Cork, M9 to Waterford & M11 to the south east) have been upgraded to motorway in the last 10 years or so so there are no head on collisions, weather related collisions, overtaking related accidents etc. The problem is that inter regional roads, between Dublin, Donegal, Sligo, Galway, Limerick, Tralee, Cork, Waterford & Wexford (such as the N15, N17, N20, N22, N25 etc) are either narrow, windy, single carriageway or massively wide 'runway' type roads. On the narrow parts, traffic is slow moving and overtaking is difficult, whilst on the 'runway' sections you have a free-for-all of overtaking, driving in the hard shoulder and speeding. Upgrading these important arteries would result in a removal of similar acccidents on these roads.

ironclaw

I'd be all for static and mobile NCT / Tax and Insurance. I can't understand why GoSafe don't have a contract for doing so. They record every plate going by regardless, run them when they hit the office in Tullamore and belt out a fine in the post if any of the above are missing.

It would also mean less Garda time spent on checkpoints and patrolling as you have 24/7 coverage, again freeing up resources to actually do productive, human orientated work. Taking a big step forward, we could also bring in a completely online tax system. No discs, perhaps the ability to tax a car for a day, week or month. Frankly that would be utopia and with a little joined up thinking, incredibly easy to implement.

M50, you could easily model the traffic flow and automate tickets for tail gating and incorrect lane usage.

Of course, never going to happen without a tribunal or two or blowing a couple of hundred million on someone ministers best mate to try their hand at milking the contract for all its worth

ohnonotgmail

marno21 wrote: »

One way of cutting road deaths would be upgrading the inter-regional roads and national secondaries.

The roads to Dublin (M1 to the border, M6 to Galway, M7 to Limerick, M8 to Cork, M9 to Waterford & M11 to the south east) have been upgraded to motorway in the last 10 years or so so there are no head on collisions, weather related collisions, overtaking related accidents etc. The problem is that inter regional roads, between Dublin, Donegal, Sligo, Galway, Limerick, Tralee, Cork, Waterford & Wexford (such as the N15, N17, N20, N22, N25 etc) are either narrow, windy, single carriageway or massively wide 'runway' type roads. On the narrow parts, traffic is slow moving and overtaking is difficult, whilst on the 'runway' sections you have a free-for-all of overtaking, driving in the hard shoulder and speeding. Upgrading these important arteries would result in a removal of similar acccidents on these roads.

This +1. when you look at the stats for road deaths in 2015 http://www.rsa.ie/Documents/Road%20Safety/Crash%20Stats/Provisional%20Review%20of%20Fatalities%202015.pdf

you will see that most deaths occur on rural roads. There were three deaths in total on 120Km/H roads in 2015. while 3 is 3 too much putting average speed cameras on motorways is going to do little or nothing to reduce roads deaths. If you really want to reduce road fatalities we need more gardai on the roads enforcing the existing laws. More than a quarter of the drivers who died on our roads last year were not wearing a seat belt. those people could be alive today if they were wearing them.

Quite frankly the OP is a joke. As somebody else said it reads like a Daily Mail story than an attempt to propose a solution to a problem.

gctest50

deandean wrote: »

Total speed monitoring? NO!

My one and only "speeding" fine was for driving at 56 in a 50 zone in Dublin at 6.30am of a Sunday morning.
............

that's why these will become more common

Indricotherium

CiniO wrote: »

I see a huge flaw in your logic.

Is your thinking really like that if everyone obeyed speed limits, there would be no road deaths?
And the only reason for road deaths is people speeding.

I don't think it has any relevance.

I'd even say, if we introduced speed cameras everywhere and made it completely impossible for anyone to be speeding, amount of road death would probably go up. I would be happy to bet money on that.

Speed limis are just some general guidance, which very often have nothing to do with safe speed which everyone should be adhering to. Sometimes to be safe, you need to be below speed limit, other times, you might be double the speed limit and still be safe.

It's not as simple as you paint it.

Give me one example of somewhere in Ireland, where driving double the speed limit, would not have a devastatingly worse impact if an accident were to occur versus if a person were driving at or below the limit.

Melodeon

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

More than a quarter of the drivers who died on our roads last year were not wearing a seat belt.

I'd strongly suspect that a good number of those fall into the 'elephant in the room' category mentioned earlier in the thread.

frozenfrozen

Indricotherium wrote: »

Give me one example of somewhere in Ireland, where driving double the speed limit, would not have a devastatingly worse impact if an accident were to occur versus if a person were driving at or below the limit.

straw man argument.

he never said there would not be a worse impact at higher speeds. That's just physics.

There are plenty of roads with inappropriate speed limits, in some cases too slow and and some cases too fast.

Indricotherium

frozenfrozen wrote: »

straw man argument.

he never said there would not be a worse impact at higher speeds. That's just physics.

There are plenty of roads with inappropriate speed limits, in some cases too slow and and some cases too fast.

It absolutely is not a straw man argument.

The contention is that on some roads in Ireland, driving double the speed limit will cause no harm.

Speed limits exist to prevent accidents and to ameliorate the impacts, and harm of accidents that do happen.

Is driving 240km/h possible on a lot of the motorway network?, Absolutely.

Will an accident at that speed cause more harm than one at 120, or under? YES.

Del2005

Indricotherium wrote: »

Speed limits exist to prevent accidents and to ameliorate the impacts, and harm of accidents that do happen.

If that is the case why are boreens with grass down the middle 80km/h and some sections of N roads 60km/h? What happened to the N4 when it changed to an R that it had to drop from a 100 to an 80?

Most of our speed limits are completely out of whack for the road with some being way to high and others stupidity low.

inforfun

Dont think there are many countries that have as many traffic/speed camera as the country where the inventor of that ****ing thing is from, The Netherlands.

I can imagine if i would make a trip from Rotterdam to Amsterdam ( 70 km) i could have a movie made out of all the speed camera footage.

Road fatalities in 2015 in Ireland: 165
In The Netherlands: 570 (2014, cant find for 2015 but has been around the 570 mark for a few years now)

Now of course there are about 4x as many people in The Netherlands.
But there are not nearly as many roads as dangerous as there are here in Ireland.
And there is a proper drivers education in place.

Indricotherium

inforfun wrote: »

Dont think there are many countries that have as many traffic/speed camera as the country where the inventor of that ****ing thing is from, The Netherlands.

I can imagine if i would make a trip from Rotterdam to Amsterdam ( 70 km) i could have a movie made out of all the speed camera footage.

Road fatalities in 2015 in Ireland: 165
In The Netherlands: 570 (2014, cant find for 2015 but has been around the 570 mark for a few years now)

Now of course there are about 4x as many people in The Netherlands.
But there are not nearly as many roads as dangerous as there are here in Ireland.
And there is a proper drivers education in place.

But sure the km's driven in the Netherlands must be 1000 times that of Ireland?

inforfun

Really dont think so tbh. Small country.
Private car ownership is rather expensive, more than here in any case
Mostly proper public transport although being too expensive.
Lot of company cars though.

Edit:

Average per fuel type
Benzine – 11.000 km
Diesel – 24.000 km
LPG – 18.000 km

Average apparently 20.000 per year per car which seems weird looking at the above. But it is from the same source

ohnonotgmail

Indricotherium wrote: »

But sure the km's driven in the Netherlands must be 1000 times that of Ireland?

in fatalities/100,000KM we have less than the netherlands, in 2013 at least. this is despite them having better roads and more speed cameras.

Bio Mech

Indricotherium wrote: »

But sure the km's driven in the Netherlands must be 1000 times that of Ireland?

Where did you magic that figure from? Netherlands has 4x as many people as Ireland, roughly. So you think on average people in the Netherlands drive 250 times as much as Irish people per year?

As usual your logic and your figures don't stack up.

Indricotherium

inforfun wrote: »

Really dont think so tbh. Small country.
Private car ownership is rather expensive, more than here in any case
Mostly proper public transport although being too expensive.
Lot of company cars though.

Edit:

Average per fuel type
Benzine – 11.000 km
Diesel – 24.000 km
LPG – 18.000 km

Average apparently 20.000 per year per car which seems weird looking at the above. But it is from the same source

But sure it's plonked in the middle of the European motorway network, and the busiest port in the world is there.

gozunda

AnthonyB wrote: »

Why don't we have speed cameras everywhere, or universal monitoring of road traffic? Everyone who breaks the law on our roads should be held accountable, and the technology is there to do it cheaply and efficiently.

Road deaths are a national disgrace. It's a small country, and it's not difficult to make sure road safety is a priority, if we have the political will to do it. There are issues around equal rights - the Gardaí are cleaning up their act - and due process (the jury's still out), but in principle the objective still holds. There may be civil liberties concerns, but the good must outweigh the bad.

Furthermore, this is an increasingly important conversation as we start to see self-driving cards coming onto the roads. How will they be monitored? Will the manufacturers be required to relay all data to the Gardaí or some regulatory body in order that road traffic law is respected? Or will the government require all smart-car companies provide access to data after the fact when there's an issue, precipitating disputes like the Apple-FBI case in San Bernardino?

So what are the concerns? And why don't we actually do it, and roll out automated cameras everywhere?!

Are road deaths here a 'national disgrace'? Ok every death the could be avoided is a concern. However asfaik Ireland is not anyway at the top of road deaths worldwide.

For example see:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate

As for your comment why "everyone who breaks the law on our roads should be held accountable, and the technology is there to do it cheaply and efficiently."

That argument could be pushed for all law breaking not that which is just motor related. Cctv surveillance is now universal.

But back to motor related issues why not just advocate for speed limiters to be placed on all vehicles in order to stop speading. In Self drive cars this should be an easy option imo. That would be a lot cheaper than rolling out some Orwellian dystopia

And asfaik an owner of a self drive car will still be liable unless they can prove otherwise.

inforfun

Indricotherium wrote: »

But sure it's plonked in the middle of the European motorway network, and the busiest port in the world is there.

Eastern part of the country has enough roads with nice trees.
As said, not as many dangerous roads as here but still.

Speed camera's are mostly a money making machine.



This is a trip of 76 km.

5 speed checks, 8 max speed changes, 4 different maximum speeds.

ED E

Forget the speed component and simply look at insurance. If we can take most of the uninsured drivers off the road it will help everyones premiums. This is a win win. The speed controls are just a bonus to help fun AGSs useless traffic corps.

gozunda

ED E wrote: »

Forget the speed component and simply look at insurance. If we can take most of the uninsured drivers off the road it will help everyones premiums. This is a win win. The speed controls are just a bonus to help fun AGSs useless traffic corps.

Why put all responsibility on the 'useless traffic corps'? Should drivers not have some responsibility for their actions and some social conscience for the consequences of their actions? Better driver education or greater penalties perhaps to prevent such behaviour in the first place.

Uninsured drivers should not be able to get a drivers licence or road tax. A cross complience check would ensure that anyone without insurance would be committing a more serious offence of driving illegally on all counts.

JC01

Despite what the RSA likes to babble on about speed is far from the biggest factor in fatal crashes. Human error is.

ED E

gozunda wrote: »

Why put all responsibility on the 'useless traffic corps'? Should drivers not have some responsibility for their actions and some social conscience for the consequences of their actions? Better driver education or greater penalties perhaps to prevent such behaviour in the first place.

Uninsured drivers should not be able to get a drivers licence or road tax. A cross complience check would ensure that anyone without insurance would be committing a more serious offence of driving illegally on all counts.

Responsible drivers would be great. Would love that. Not the world we live in. Watch one episode of "Road Wars" "No Tax, No Insurance, Disqualified...No Tax, No Insurance, Disqualified...No Tax, No Insurance, Disqualified...". A cross check doesnt stop those who are pulling the triple multiple times. Having their cars regularly impounded and not returned will help here as we all know they will not be jailed for an extended period. Cameras assisting policing is the viable way of doing this.

Not really the topic of this thread but AGS ignore minor offences which creates an ethos among some drivers that there's no harm unless you're drink driving or doing 120 in an 80.

marno21

It's no wonder insurance premiums are so high. The amount of crashes happening in this country is downright obscene. There needs to be a bigger clampdown on mobile phone usage, stupid driving such as illegal turns, late lane changes, and not driving appropriate to the conditions not just 'speeding'.

frozenfrozen

Indricotherium wrote: »

It absolutely is not a straw man argument.

The contention is that on some roads in Ireland, driving double the speed limit will cause no harm.

Speed limits exist to prevent accidents and to ameliorate the impacts, and harm of accidents that do happen.

Is driving 240km/h possible on a lot of the motorway network?, Absolutely.

Will an accident at that speed cause more harm than one at 120, or under? YES.

Straw man argument. Quote where exactly that was said.

gozunda wrote: »

Why put all responsibility on the 'useless traffic corps'? Should drivers not have some responsibility for their actions and some social conscience for the consequences of their actions? Better driver education or greater penalties perhaps to prevent such behaviour in the first place.

Uninsured drivers should not be able to get a drivers licence or road tax. A cross complience check would ensure that anyone without insurance would be committing a more serious offence of driving illegally on all counts.

Uninsured drivers should not be able to get a drivers license? What?

How do you reckon that will work? You have to get insurance when you apply for your theory test?


Until we get ANPR people will continue to drive without tax and insurance. There's no point having cameras everywhere because then only the otherwise law abiding citizens will get punished. How do people on fake plates with no tax or insurance or license get caught in that situation? They send a letter to the address on the log book?

Guards need to have anpr and pull anyone in who doesn't have tax or insurance or a license and tow the car and have it crushed the same day and give them a big fine and potential jail time depending on how severe the abuse was.

Strictly enforcing speed limits is an archaic way of trying to make the roads safer. It's just the easiest measurement.
What about the people who are day dreaming or tired or bad drivers or those who don't follow 'the system' or have any kind of forward planning or employ any advanced driving techniques.

Doing 100kmh in a housing estate is obviously dangerous. But doing 80 in a 50 zone at 5 in the morning which was only made a 50 zone for traffic flow reasons? I see no issue with that at all.

Bigger issues than casual speeding on irish roads: people on the phone, still drunk from the night before, drink driving, over tired, not paying attention, no forward planning, improper upkeep of car brakes and tyres, being forced into a tin can of a car because of insurance, road rage, improper lane usage, not knowing how to use roundabouts, not letting people merge from slip roads, and a million other things that I'd rank above casual speeding

Speed limits become stupid things when they're treated as this absolute line you can not cross. 110kmh in a 100 zone could be more safe than 100kmh on that same road on a wet day in winter, or if the hedges haven't been cut and you can't get the same view.

Del2005

gozunda wrote: »

Uninsured drivers should not be able to get a drivers licence or road tax.

What about people who know how to drive but have no need for a car 24/7 so hire or borrow when required?

gozunda

ED E wrote: »

Responsible drivers would be great. Would love that. Not the world we live in. Watch one episode of "Road Wars" "No Tax, No Insurance, Disqualified...No Tax, No Insurance, Disqualified...No Tax, No Insurance, Disqualified...". A cross check doesnt stop those who are pulling the triple multiple times. Having their cars regularly impounded and not returned will help here as we all know they will not be jailed for an extended period. Cameras assisting policing is the viable way of doing this.

It would if they were convicted of this more serious offence and recieved appropriate custodial sentencing.

Television programmes don't prevent individuals learning lessons in responsibility.

ED E wrote: »

Not really the topic of this thread but AGS ignore minor offences which creates an ethos among some drivers that there's no harm unless you're drink driving or doing 120 in an 80.

I would assume that is more likley due to poor resources and level of resources provided for effective policing.

Plus getting away with a blown bulb does not give someone a green card to do 120 in a restricted speed zone.

Del2005

marno21 wrote: »

It's no wonder insurance premiums are so high. The amount of crashes happening in this country is downright obscene. There needs to be a bigger clampdown on mobile phone usage, stupid driving such as illegal turns, late lane changes, and not driving appropriate to the conditions not just 'speeding'.

I don't think we have more crashes than other countries, we just have judges who are extremely generous when giving away other people's money. €14k for an unprovable injury which gets €4k in our nearest neighbour is why our insurance is so expensive, then the legal profession ad a nice lump on top for all the hard work in getting money for an unprovable injury!

gozunda

frozenfrozen wrote:

Uninsured drivers should not be able to get a drivers license? What?

How do you reckon that will work? You have to get insurance when you apply for your theory test?

Following the "driver theory" test a successful applicant becomes a learner with a learners permit.

Insurance requirements would remain the same for qualified drivers

The current situation with insurance is that you must have a valid licence. To obtain NCT a driver needs to show their insurance. Full Cross complience is only a matter of time.

The nitty gritty is largely irrelevant as there are always exceptions.

frozenfrozen

gozunda wrote: »

Following the "driver theory" test a successful applicant becomes a learner with a learners permit.

Insurance requirements would remain the same for qualified drivers

The current situation with insurance is that you must have a valid licence. To obtain NCT a driver needs to show their insurance. Full Cross complience is only a matter of time.

The nitty gritty is largely irrelevant as there are always exceptions.

that makes no sense. How can someone be expected to get insurance before they get a license?

I don't care about the bold part, if I had an issue with that I would have quoted it from your original post.