Six Points for Speeding and Mobile Phone Use

I've often pointed those ones out myself in the past.

To my mind, driving the wrong way on a motorway should be an automatic ban. It's certainly deserving of far more than just two penalty points.

As for the roundabout one - failure to turn left means either continuing straight ahead through the central reservation, or turning right, into the face of oncoming traffic. Either of those should surely bring more than just one penalty point.

And with mention of roundabouts - here's one I had myself a few weeks ago. The car in front of me was being driven by an older woman, who seemed a bit unsure of herself even as she approached the roundabout. She entered it okay, with a view to taking the second exit (which happened to be my intended exit too).

However, as she got to the first exit, she noticed there was another car there, with the driver waiting to enter the roundabout too. So, not only did she come to a complete halt to let that other driver in - she also then reversed a bit, to make it easier for them!

Luckily I'd left enough room for her to reverse into without hitting my car. But I've thought about it regularly since then. How does a person's mind work for them to decide that the correct thing to do is reverse on a roundabout?

Now, that woman is unlikely to ever pick up penalty points for speeding, or be involved in a high-speed crash causing serious injury or death. She'd be held up by some as an example of how such drivers are "safer". But really???

I think it depends on the roundabout. Theres loads of mini roundabouts in Dublin that are just painted onto the road. If theres no one else around its really not dangerous at all to just drive straight over them or turn right over them as if they aren’t there.

How do you know they weren't two Irish women wearing hijabs?

In England you can send in dash cam footage and get other drivers done for dangerous driving.

That would sort out alot of idiots on the road. I'd take pleasure in sending in the dangerous gobshites I have seen.

No it was a bit of hyperbole to make a point.

I have seen someone drive the wrong way once, and if someone made that mistake 12 times, I think they would be a very bad driver. Much worse than someone who broke the speed limit multiple times.

I have, and they're waffle if you're looking to get to the root cause of a problem.

If you read them, you would see the hoops that the RSA jump through to avoid stating how many fatalities were actually linked to "driving above the speed limit".

Despite basing these publications on forensic collision investigation data, where detailed information on vehicle speed is a fundamental fact, they have masked it under the broad descriptor "Exceeding a safe speed", which also includes "driving too fast for the road/conditions" (driver skill level / car / tyres)

Slide 29:‘Exceeding a safe speed’ refers to driving above the speed
limit and/or at an unsafe speed for the road/conditions

If the RSA are happy to stand behind what is now over €400M of investment in cameras which only check for drivers breaking the limit, and trying to ban drivers who are caught doing 90km/h in an 80 zone twice in three years, don't you think they could at least be able to state how many fatalities were actually caused by driving above the speed limit?

Why is it so hard for them to do? This is utterly basic information, that not even a Freedom of Information request could get them to release.

My conclusion from all of this is that that RSA are desperate to deflect from their own failings here (or they flat out don't have a clue).

Take the following 3 facts:

1. The majority of fatal collisions occur on 80-100km/h roads (page 9 of your link)
2. There is no information to state that fatalities were actually caused by driving above the speed limit.
3. The RSA curriculum does not train/test drivers on these roads.

The only logical conclusion is that the RSA know full well that the majority, or at least a very large percentage of exceeding a safe speed deaths were due to driving too fast for the road, not not driving above the speed limit.

The latter is breaking the law, and the former is fundamentally a training issue, which the RSA are responsible for. Rule 2 in the ROTR of "You should always take the prevailing road conditions into account." doesn't meet that responsibility.

I'd assume they'll come up with some legal issue if civilians process footage, so maybe a new class of "Administrative" Gardai, with limited but specific Road Traffic training and enforcement powers is needed for ANPR and Portal processing. Much reduced entrance requirements, and equivalent to other civil servants pay and conditions (i.e. wouldn't need to be the 30 years service, general pay scales).

Vast majority of road deaths arise from a collision of one form or other, so there's a fairly strong correlation here.

It is extremely unlikely that civilians will have any decision making role around such incidents. This would be a complete change of Garda strategy with huge legal implications.

Far be it from me to defend the RSA, but I do think you're being a bit harsh. Technically, you do have a point, and yes, there is a difference between those who were exceeding the speed limit and those who weren't. From the discussions I've seen around here, I'm not convinced that those who focus on this technicality have a good faith interest in reducing road deaths. Most of the discussions I see around here are focused on continuing to allow drivers to drive however the hell they like at whatever speed they like, and when the worst happens, they'll go to great lengths to find anyone or anything else to blame other than driver behaviour.

The RSA do have pretty good research on the prevalence of breaking of speed limits.

Yes, IN a collision. You're making the assumption that a collision has already happened, and THEN seeing if speed can influence the outcome. Well, of course it does in that case. If you don't crash, then 10km/h over/under the limit doesn't matter, does it?

The point is, that the RSA's approach only trains and incentivises drivers (via punishment) to drive below the limit, and no less.

How many fatal collisions occurred, where "speeding" was listed as a causation factor, were actually due to a driver driving below the limit, but too fast for the conditions?