Gardai cause Rubbish Driving Standards in Ireland

Fore Iron wrote: »

Seeing the thread about middle lane drivers in Ireland it got me thinking how different our attitude is to so many aspects of driving in this country compared to others. Personally, I blame the Guards for a large part of the general attitude out there.

Now, this will of course inevitably sound like I'm tarring all gardai with one brush which I don't mean to do but read this in the context of comparison only. How many times do you see the guards breaking the law or the rules of the road while going about their non emergency business?

Just in the past few weeks I have seen:

Garda car doing about 90mph on the motorway with no lights or sirens.

Garda car doing about 50mph through a village with no lights or sirens.

Lots of occasions of poor or no use of indicators.

Garda bike wizzing up the middle of two lines of slow moving traffic with no lights or sirens to sit at the head of the queue waiting for green. (Do no bikers out there realise how dangerous this is?)

Garda car in left lane at roundabout, me next to them in right lane. I'm heading to the right for the third exit. Halfway around the roundabout the gardai continue all the way around the roundabout to go back where they came from, cutting me off in the process and as far as I could tell they did not even know I was there.

Leaving the airport heading for the M1. As you leave the airport roundabout the two lanes from the roundabout merge into one lane. There is generally always a tussle as cars struggle for position. This one day, a big tinted window car, accelerates hard from behind me at the last minute, dives in front of me and brakes hard behind the car in front, causing me to hit the brakes too. Angrily, I rather pointlessly flash the lights and gesture. Then the guy puts on the blue flashing lights in the back window and sound the siren once. So it was an undercover car. But what the feck was the point of flashing the blue lights other than trying to intimidate me by saying "we're the Gardai, we can do what we like!". What an arrogant twat!

Heading south on King street about to turn left onto curch street. Garda car was queueing with us, when he suddenly turns on his lights and siren and makes his way through the junction, turns left, causing other traffic to stop and let him through. Fair enough. Immediately afterwards, we get the green light and turn left too just in time to see him turn off the lights and turn into whatever Garda station it is there near Chancery street. As we pass by, I can see one guy get out and put his jacket on and another guy just gotten out chatting to someone nearby-obviously not in any hurry at all.

Now, perhaps you will wonder what my problem is, but I feel that generally the Guards have very little respect for the law as it applies to themsleves and little respect for other road using citizens. In Ireland, I think a lot of Gardai see their position as firstly allowing them to have perks and an entitlement to do what they want. They have little sense of duty to the imposition of the law on the roads and the fact that they should be leading by example.

In the states, I was pulled over by a Sheriff who I passed in a 55 zone. He was doing 55 exactly in an unmarked car and I was doing about 60 or something like that. I more or less crawled past him. When I tried to defend myself he said "I don't break the law because I have respect for it. And it is my job to expect that you will do the same thing for the same reasons."

In this country, drivers see that the law doesn't appear to apply to the guards in the same way, so they end up with an attitude that the law is a bit a la carte and special people are exempt. Hence the large group of drivers who feel their particular skills are such that speed limits are really only for everyone else, or whatever.

If you saw non flashing or screaming Garda cars using indicators properly, never breaking speed limits, sticking rigidly to the rules of the road, wouldn't we all be more likely to do so too? But when you're on the M1 doing 120kph and a garda car drives by doing 140 with no lights or sirens, don't you always feel "well if it's OK for him, I can do it to"?