Go safe vans - revenue raiser or life saver

Yiikes · 13-02-2015 11:53PM

SaveOurLyric wrote: »

Please desist from disturbing people in their ignorance having a good moan. You and your fancy 'objective' facts. They arent wanted around here thanks.

Money spent better on mental health and suicide prevention which claims more lives and gets a fraction of the budget. But no politician is going to wag the finger at us when this figure rises or compare year on year figures, better for them to stay quiet and pretend its not a problem. Upping the penalty points to 3 for speeding and outsourcing enforcement is where its at for saving lives in Ireland for politicians. Lets pretend these things are saving lives.

The introduction of speed vans coincided with the recession causing youth emigration and lower road activity. As the economy is taking off again we can see figures increasing once again. More cars, more miles, more crashes, behavior worsening will have zero to do with the inevitable increase. But of course the same people will call for more enforcement of limits. Claims behaviour has gotten worse is repeated year on year. Search on this site will show threads claiming its getting worse with posters agreeing.
Example from 12 years ago for example boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=103134
The vans are a waste of money.

14-02-2015 12:07AM

The GoSafe areas are well publicized, so not much of an excuse really for getting caught, no matter how sneaky they are. I doubt they are a major revenue generator.
What pisses me of big time is the sneaky Garda speed vans who are definately at it just for numbers and revenue. There is a road near me which is dead straight, no one has ever died on it or no serious accidents bar the odd fender bender. It is a 50km limit (reduced from 80 a couple of years ago) and they hide there late at night catching people doing 55km/hr. There are several other examples just in my local area.

Shep_Dog · 14-02-2015 09:43AM

The problem with the Go-Safe vans is that the chances of being caught in the first place are slim as there are so few of them, and the penalties are quite affordable given the chances of being caught again in the same year are so low. Those who do get caught put it down to bad luck or 'victimisation' rather than justice taking its course.

We could remove the excuse of 'revenue generating exercise' put forward by apologists for the law-breakers by getting rid of the fines and instead applying more points. Say, 1 penalty point per km over the limit. That combined with more vans and concealment would clean up our roads in short-order.

It's scandalous that under, the current regime, drivers who are detected as not being capable of controlling their speed or who deliberately break the law merely get a 'slap on the wrist' and are permitted to continue posing a risk to others. Fining them, just allows people to buy their way out of road safety obligations.

PFL · 14-02-2015 10:47AM

You've always done the correct speed in each zone every time? 55 in a 50 zone fine and three points is not proper use of these vans put in place to save lives.

Vans concealed when coming off higher speed zones all designed to get the numbers detected up.

The vans have a performance target to meet each year. Easier to do it when a driver has to make a drastic change in speed during their journey i.e. Entering a town etc.

Detection of speeding motorists doing 140 in 100 zones, dangerous overtaking, tail gating, aggressive driving, under taken - these are road behaviours that should be stamped out.

SaveOurLyric · 14-02-2015 11:31AM

PFL wrote: »

You've always done the correct speed in each zone every time? 55 in a 50 zone fine and three points is not proper use of these vans put in place to save lives.

Vans concealed when coming off higher speed zones all designed to get the numbers detected up.

The vans have a performance target to meet each year. Easier to do it when a driver has to make a drastic change in speed during their journey i.e. Entering a town etc.

Detection of speeding motorists doing 140 in 100 zones, dangerous overtaking, tail gating, aggressive driving, under taken - these are road behaviours that should be stamped out.

Agree with first point - the penalty points should be higher to be a greater deterrent.

Its goods that they have targets - performance always improve with targets. And common sense that they go to the target rich spots - the more they catch per hour the higher their efficiency and effectiveness.

The other behaviours are simply harder and less efficiently caught. But those with a generally cavalier and "I'll decide myself which road rules I will observe and which I won't" attitude can be best restrained in their behaviour by a high rate of points offence catching for whatever offence. And speeding works very well in this respect. The more caught, the greater the behaviour modification, which is the real goal.

Grayson · 14-02-2015 12:10PM

It's a bit nuts that people are complaining about getting caught speeding like it's unfair.

All they had to do was go a little bit slower.

I used to work with the wheelchair assoc. There were loads of members who had been in RTA's. Most weren't driving, they were victims. People think that it's ok to go faster because they've never harmed anyone. That's true, they've never harmed anyone until the point where they do.

(I will admit that the point of the Go Safe vans is kinda ruined if they can't actually testify but that's a separate issue whether or not we should be monitoring in the first place)

excuse_me · 14-02-2015 12:10PM

Shep_Dog wrote: »

The problem with the Go-Safe vans is that the chances of being caught in the first place are slim as there are so few of them, and the penalties are quite affordable given the chances of being caught again in the same year are so low. Those who do get caught put it down to bad luck or 'victimisation' rather than justice taking its course.

We could remove the excuse of 'revenue generating exercise' put forward by apologists for the law-breakers by getting rid of the fines and instead applying more points. Say, 1 penalty point per km over the limit. That combined with more vans and concealment would clean up our roads in short-order.

It's scandalous that under, the current regime, drivers who are detected as not being capable of controlling their speed or who deliberately break the law merely get a 'slap on the wrist' and are permitted to continue posing a risk to others. Fining them, just allows people to buy their way out of road safety obligations.

the penalties are 80 euro each , how is that affordable

whole thing is a revenue raising racket disguised as a safety protection system

Aka Ishur · 14-02-2015 12:24PM

excuse_me wrote: »

the penalties are 80 euro each , how is that affordable

whole thing is a revenue raising racket disguised as a safety protection system

Then its a fairly crap racket as it runs at a loss.

Capt'n Midnight · 14-02-2015 12:26PM

excuse_me wrote: »

the penalties are 80 euro each , how is that affordable

It's less the cost of a full tank for many.

Actually driving faster and accelerating more uses more fuel so habitual speeders are burning up that sort of money anyway in lower mpg.

If you're on €40 a hour it's two hours wages, and in the old days you could save that much time on a single trip down to Cork and back if you really put the foot down. How long would it take a taxi driver to make that sort of money rushing to an airport ?

The fine is not a deterrent. Only the points are.

To make the fine a deterrent you'd have to use the Scandinavian system where you multiply the excess speed by the persons income. Switzerland so something similar. The Dutch police impounded a Bugatti Veyron.

excuse_me · 14-02-2015 12:40PM

Aka Ishur wrote: »

Then its a fairly crap racket as it runs at a loss.

the state likes to be seen to be taking some action on certain things

a busy road not far from me has a 50 km speed limit yet the secondary roads feeding off it are 80 km , the reason for it is a number of years ago a mother was struggling to deal with noisy kids in the back of her car , she pulled up on this busy road , got out and stepped in front of a lorry

next council meeting , the suits decided they needed to do something so they slapped a redicolously low speed limit on the road in question

excuse_me · 14-02-2015 12:41PM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

It's less the cost of a full tank for many.

Actually driving faster and accelerating more uses more fuel so habitual speeders are burning up that sort of money anyway in lower mpg.

If you're on €40 a hour it's two hours wages, and in the old days you could save that much time on a single trip down to Cork and back if you really put the foot down. How long would it take a taxi driver to make that sort of money rushing to an airport ?

The fine is not a deterrent. Only the points are.

To make the fine a deterrent you'd have to use the Scandinavian system where you multiply the excess speed by the persons income. Switzerland so something similar. The Dutch police impounded a Bugatti Veyron.

what the scanadanavians have is nanny statism gone made

their is little to no enjoyment left in motoring with these speed vans , you are constantly wary of being done

Renegade Mechanic · 14-02-2015 12:52PM

I decided to drive the 100kmh N8 between Cashel and Thurles for a few weeks last year. Now, many don't know but that national road, despite being almost as wide as the motorway beside, had it's limit reduced to 80 kmh..
People regularly blitzed down the motorway at 160 kmh and rarely was there a speed trap set up. If there was, the "public protectors" deliberately ignored the vantage points built for them along the motorway and parked behind the embankments of the flyovers.
Or worse, parked on the on-ramps, forcing merging traffic to avoid them so they could catch someone going past (despite the fact that if you're awake, you can spot their roofs from the road :rolleyes: )

On the N8 however. At least twice a week, a van was parked at different "farmers gates" along the road, waiting. I'm not joking. Sometimes it was once a week but generally twice.
On one particular day, I drove past and ccontinued down the long straight. At the end? Another, unmarked mondeo. In case you either sped up after the van or flashed warn other drivers.

Safety? Don't make me laugh.

ScumLord · 14-02-2015 01:25PM

Turtwig wrote: »

I hate this obsession with year on year road deaths. Like we can actually tell something from them. We can't! The sooner they stop reporting and pontificating rules on them the better.

What I don't like about it is the reason for every crash is speeding, I wonder do they investigate at all anymore or just use every road death as a statistic in their advertising campaign.

I see people on the road now that seem to assume that just because their rolling along at 70kph that their safe. They can now look out their side window, play with their phone or have a face to face conversation with their passenger while the car wobbles all over the road.

What about the state of the roads, that never seems to be a contributing factor to accidents, even though the closest I've come to crashing my car was due to poor road conditions. What about slow moving vehicles causing tail backs and aggressive overtaking? What about stupid road junctions? Putting pedestrian crossings right beside junctions? junctions with two lanes on one side of the junction which turn into one lane just on the other side of the junction?

The government is blaming everyone that get's killed on the roads of this country of being speeders so they can avoid any blame for the condition of the Irish road network.

Capt'n Midnight · 14-02-2015 01:38PM

Renegade Mechanic wrote: »

I decided to drive the 100kmh N8 between Cashel and Thurles for a few weeks last year. Now, many don't know but that national road, despite being almost as wide as the motorway beside, had it's limit reduced to 80 kmh..
People regularly blitzed down the motorway at 160 kmh and rarely was there a speed trap set up.
...
Safety? Don't make me laugh.

Pretty much word for word a description of using the old road to bypass the M4 toll.

Limit was dropped to 80Km/h and overtaking prohibited.

EazyD · 14-02-2015 01:53PM

Until they start putting them in actual black spots I won't be convinced.

Little CuChulainn · 14-02-2015 01:55PM

I remember when they were first put in people were giving out about them not being in dangerous spots. Yet I've been to the scenes of fatal accidents at nearly every road they are on in my county. A lot of the times people just don't know about the accidents that have occurred on a stretch of road.

Little CuChulainn · 14-02-2015 02:04PM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Pretty much word for word a description of using the old road to bypass the M4 toll.

Limit was dropped to 80Km/h and overtaking prohibited.

The bit from enfield to kilcock or enfield to clonard? FYI the traffic corps from Mullingar regularly patrol that stretch of motorway in an unmarked car. The thing about it is, motorways are designed for higher speeds so while you might be successful in trapping speeders on a motorway you aren't necessarily stopping dangerous driving. Better to focus on the smaller unlit and poorly maintained roads.

EazyD · 14-02-2015 02:09PM

Little CuChulainn wrote: »

I remember when they were first put in people were giving out about them not being in dangerous spots. Yet I've been to the scenes of fatal accidents at nearly every road they are on in my county. A lot of the times people just don't know about the accidents that have occurred on a stretch of road.

In Dublin they are more often than not on wide stretches where speed limits change abruptly and very few if any fatalities have occurred. Their placement should be determined by the proportion of collisions relative to usage/amount of traffic over a given period.

ScumLord · 14-02-2015 02:26PM

Little CuChulainn wrote: »

The thing about it is, motorways are designed for higher speeds so while you might be successful in trapping speeders on a motorway you aren't necessarily stopping dangerous driving.

The magazine focus has an article on Britain's most dangerous roads and micromorts, a unit of measurement for how likely you are to die doing something. 1 micromort would be a one in a million chance of dying.

Amazingly in the article it says that Ireland doesn't have the most dangerous roads in Europe. Germany, France and Finland are above us.

It also showed motorways are generally much safer.

The_Valeyard · 14-02-2015 02:36PM

The roads have gone to sh'te though since winter. Potholes everywhere.

Capt'n Midnight · 14-02-2015 02:48PM

The_Valeyard wrote: »

The roads have gone to sh'te though since winter. Potholes everywhere.

must be an election coming up soon

Worst thing a politician could do is get potholes fixed permanently because they'd have nothing to campaign for next time

Outkast_IRE · 14-02-2015 02:52PM

I know recently they have become a plague around cork city, convieniently they are often located in spots where it is 50km/hr and you are coming downhill towards them. I might also add this is often about 3-4am in the morning................ Very few accidents in these spots at that time of the morning.

endacl · 14-02-2015 02:57PM

Dr Turk Turkelton wrote: »

Complete money spinner. I always flash oncoming traffic to warn them of these parasites.
If they at least pretended to put them in dangerous areas I could come around to believing they are for safety but in their current guise it is all about the money.

I must say, although i broadly agree with you, I don't flash. If they're speeding, they're speeding, and should accept the consequences. For clarity, imagine the offence was shoplifting. If you weren't robbing sweets and don't rob sweets, would you warn people you thought might very well be robbing sweets that there was a guard in the next aisle?

ScumLord · 14-02-2015 03:13PM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

must be an election coming up soon

Worst thing a politician could do is get potholes fixed permanently because they'd have nothing to campaign for next time

The Co Council guys have them covered. They make such a mess of patching the road that the bit they worked on has inevitably sank long before the next election. They dig up extra patches of road randomly in surprise roadworks campaigns to ensure they have plenty of work to get back to come election time.

anncoates · 14-02-2015 03:32PM

It's just Irish logic.

Speed van at handful of revenue generating location so I'll break the law everywhere else.

File under Only Using Fog Lights In Non Foggy Conditions, Tailgating At High Speeds etc etc.

punisher5112 · 14-02-2015 03:44PM

Biggest scam ever these vans.

Tax payer pays a private company to run them then we all pay when caught sneakily.

Roads need to be patrolled and policed properly and snub out dangerous driving

I absolutely hate the points system and sure they had to increase speeding to 3points which is a joke.

Roads that are dangerous such as narrow, bad surface dangerous bends and so on should be improved.

Stop the sale of cheap Chinese tyres.

Its a joke.

anncoates · 14-02-2015 03:50PM

Everybody should sicken the money grabbing bastards by observing the speed limit on roads.

That'd show the fcukers.

Renegade Mechanic · 14-02-2015 04:10PM

anncoates wrote: »

Everybody should sicken the money grabbing bastards by observing the speed limit on roads.

That'd show the fcukers.

You know what, they absolutely should. And when the road death rate falls by probably less than 10% I'll laugh even harder than I did when Gaybo quit his post, after years of back patting for Irelands continued decline in road fatalities. Years of boasting about how his and cos asinine, arbitrary system of rules and regulations were saving everyone and absolutely not the fact that a huge section of our road users found themselves either unemployed or leaving the country, oh no, it wasn't that at all. Quit after a sudden realisation that now that the country was getting busier again, road deaths were rising and no amount of condescending crap was going to do anything about it.

And I must say I laughed pretty bloody hard.

Shep_Dog · 14-02-2015 04:25PM

ScumLord wrote: »

What I don't like about it is the reason for every crash is speeding,

Speed is a factor on the seriousness of the outcome of any road incident regardless of whether speed was the cause.

Targeting speeders is a very efficient means of removing from the road people who cannot or will not control their speed. It's a safe assumption that they probably have the same attitude towards other road safety laws they don't like.

Anyone who drives knows that there is a certain element who think laws are for others.

EazyD · 14-02-2015 04:27PM

Shep_Dog wrote: »

Speed is a factor on the seriousness of the outcome of any road incident regardless of whether speed was the cause.

Targeting speeders is a very efficient means of removing from the road people who cannot or will not control their speed. It's a safe assumption that they probably have the same attitude towards other road safety laws they don't like.

Anyone who drives knows that there is a certain element who think laws are for others.

I'd agree, however there are so many other factors being blindly ignored that you can understand the cynicism.

Go safe vans - revenue raiser or life saver

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