Caught by Gatso van

Victor

Originally posted by Tommy Vercetti
then I question their motivation.

Well apparently, quite a few of them are being issued in Dublin city which is almost exclusively 30 and 40mph zones.

Originally posted by Tommy Vercetti
then I question their motivation.

To cut the number of serious accidents, not the number of accidents per se.

Originally posted by Tommy Vercetti
If they have a quota on the number of tickets they issue, then I believe that is a flawed system, as Nutzzz pointed out above, it should be a quota based on lives saved, not tickets issued.

You can't have a quota of lives saved, you cna target blackspots.

Originally posted by Tommy Vercetti
I think that's a pretty good idea in theory. It's similar to what police forces in England do, but again they seem to base it on the number of fines issued, and when that dropped dramatically, they lowered speed limits because revenues dropped also.

The estimate that speeding fines would need to be in the order of STG£100 (€150) in order to break-even in the UK. Typically they target those who speed excessively (say 70 in a 40 mph zone), so it's possible what you heard was thy were reducing the prosecution speed not the speed limit as such. Some cameras were running out of film before the end of the day, so many people were speeding in some places.

The UK has introduced 20mph zones in resiudential and shopping areas.

Tommy Vercetti

Originally posted by Victor
The estimate that speeding fines would need to be in the order of STG£100 (€150) in order to break-even in the UK. Typically they target those who speed excessively (say 70 in a 40 mph zone), so it's possible what you heard was thy were reducing the prosecution speed not the speed limit as such. Some cameras were running out of film before the end of the day, so many people were speeding in some places.

The UK has introduced 20mph zones in resiudential and shopping areas.

I'd be in favour of the 20mph limit here for certain places too.

I wonder what they defined as being "break even" though, they probably took lessons from the "loss-making" insurance industry here to help manipulate their figures.

Nuttzz

You can't have a quota of lives saved, you cna target blackspots.

is there a difference really, Put big Hi Vis speed cameras on the N7 every five miles from here to Limerick and which the death toll fall on that road, but you will never see that because of cost.

How about a system a bit like the track sure (?) that one of the insurance companies are involved with?
You have a black box on your car, when you go 5mph over the limit it beeps and when you go 10mph over the limit it sends a signal to the cops and your ticket arrives in the post soon after? Make them manditory in all cars, like your NCT

It would cut speeding but not dangerous driving.

Victor

Originally posted by Nuttzz
It would cut speeding but not dangerous driving.

You do realise the importance of speed to fatality? That speed turns an injury accident into a fatal accident and so on? Yes?

If you want to monitor dangerous driving connect a cheap camera (it doesn't need to record every detail, just context) to a recorder that is triggered (using say an accelerometer) by sudden swerving, breaking, etc. have a loop tape that records the 15 seconds before the incident. Have the data downloaded when you do you NCT or whatever or say when the recorder is nearly full (it sends a message to a central controller using SMS technology). You should be able to record several hundred incidents at least with something like this.

It would also prove who was to blame in a lot of accidents.

Tommy Vercetti

Originally posted by Victor
You do realise the importance of speed to fatality? That speed turns an injury accident into a fatal accident and so on? Yes?

That brings us back again to the old driver education argument. Dangerous driving caused the injury and fatal accident.

This is going to go on and on :dunno:

Victor

Originally posted by Tommy Vercetti
Dangerous driving caused the injury and fatal accident.

Not necessarily, some accidents are caused by weather conditions, road conditions, vehicle defect, pedestrian error and so on.

Tommy Vercetti

Originally posted by Victor
Not necessarily, some accidents are caused by weather conditions, road conditions, vehicle defect, pedestrian error and so on.

True, I suppose an argument could be made that the driver should have been aware of these factors but accidents will always happen unfortunately.

Victor

Originally posted by Victor
Take the billion euro cost of the (whole) Garda, add the courts sytem ... and set it off against the under €100m they get from fines.

Ooops, I made a calculation errors, they make about €10m in "on the spot" fines.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0301/roads.html

The Government has raised more than €9m in fines from speeding motorists since then, and this total is growing by an average of €132,000 per week.

It is 13 months since penalty points were introduced and since then an average of 1,650 people per week have incurred points.
Those people have also had to pay a fine of at least €80 each.

The Department of Transport said yesterday that a total of 107,000 people have incurred points to date, including 6,600 people who have more than two points. This corresponds to a total of €9,155,440 raised for the Exchequer.

Andrew Duffy

More like €7m pa. That's effectively nothing. I wish there were a proper traffic corps though - all the speed cameras in the country won't stop ar$eholes driving dangerously below the limit and breaking pedestrian lights - something that I think deserves a punch in the face rather than a fine.