The case against average speed cameras

M50 is often at snails space. You could merge at walking space.

I think they get worse over time as well. When my old '98 fiesta showed 75mph on the speedo the sat nav was registering just 108km/h a full 12kmph out

Iv done all that myself speeding and bullshit especially when I was younger. The right conditions has nothing to do with it. I wouldn't say that a speeding driver is even a bad driver but the problem is it leaves very little margin for error especially with the amount of absolutely shocking drivers on the road that are following the speed limit. Just drifinting into lanes and slamming on merging on the motorway at ridiculous slow speeds and so on. A couple of near misses usually slows alot of lads down but for some it can be alot worse than that.

Its simple, would you remain in the right lane if you were overtaking on a single carriage way?
If you wouldnt, then dont do it on the motorway either, move back to lane 1 and then into lane 2 if needed, people merging on to the motorway will be at motorway speeds, so you dont necessarily need to be overtaking them.

"Not tolerate lane hogging" is code for aggressively, tailgate, beep and flash other cars out of the way. Fantastic. That type of behaviour is reflected in Italy's road death statistics which last year were 50% higher than in Ireland.

The yield sign in France, is for the cars on what would otherwise be the main carriageway. You did specifically ask this question in the below post.

Priorite a droite is France's attempt, in certain situations, to put onus on faster cars to slow, rather than underpowered cars to speed up, and is reminiscent of right of way on a ski slope. Makes a lot of sense.

Your original post, and the other which I have quoted below, all too commonly come from drivers who are more concerned about rigidly sticking to (and subsequently quoting) rules of the road, rather than just moving over to accommodate someone else, because "they don't have to".

Given how roads are actually designed, it is completely unrealistic, and in some cases outright impossible, for slower traffic to be able to get up to speed and merge safely onto a motorway in under 50m, following an unsighted, 90° entry road. The only option is to stop dead on the sliproad.

There seems to be this mistaken understanding that "keep left unless overtaking" is a command from God himself, that no other circumstance can ever override it. As an example, I posted a video to the dashcam thread a while back, and I was immediately questioned as to why I moved to the right lane.

Eh, becuase I'd rather not kill a Garda who might trip and fall in front of me. But hey, if the RSA weren't arsed putting good practice onto paper, why should I take it upon myself to accomdate anyone else?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121235555/#Comment_121235555

Do you really believe that drivers should keep left for example where a Garda is standing to the right side of a vehicle in the hard shoulder, or when they see another car joining from a clearly short slip road?

Other countries, with functioning governments, have thought this through, and decided that move-over laws are valuable for everyone's safety

• France
• UK
• USA

Funny thing about the speeding van is that he was probably well aware of the average speed check just 10km up the road, so was going extra fast here to try and save some time.

Speeders in Asia? Average drive zones? Which Asian countries?

Speeders in Asia are known as killers or even sleeping or just stupid. But speed cameras,where?

Seriously if you're equating driving in the rhl of a 2 lane road to that of a motorway you need to put your head in a cold bucket of water and hit the reset button.

On Your (b) point - we're not doing the theory test here. We're dealing with the real world and real people, so what should happen is just pie in the sky. What's important is reacting to what going on outside not shaking your fist at the outside world from inside your perfect world while quoting the rotr

Forgive me father, I have sinned, in accordance with the scripture of the theoretical world. I probably will burn in RSA hell. Christ almighty ....."awesome attitude" 😇

but remember that even the best racing drivers, driving in controlled conditions, crash!

What have racing drivers on a open/closed circuit got to do with road users?

You can be driving at 100mph and not racing anyone, no?

But it does get big and complicated very quickly.

Assuming measuring speed from A to B is different to measuring speed from B to A when you have one stretch of road there are only two pairs of cameras.

With ten cameras there are 90 possible pairs. With 100 cameras, 990 pairs.

Tracking and delivering parcels is far easier. They follow planned routes between a limited number of defined locations - van (collection) - one or more hub / distribution centres - van (out for delivery / delivered).

A fully ineterconnected mesh of average speed cameras would need all cameras time sychronised with high accuracy, real time capture, storage, processing, sharing of images, numberplate, timestamp for each passing vehicle, searching for previous capture of same vehicle from other cameras, average speed calculation, checking against insurance, motor tax, nct /cvrt databases, forwarding data / images / evidence for any offences detected to a prosecution processing system, ageing + deleting vehicle information once it has been processed, … It's a lot more complex.

Its almost as if Irish drivers were not allowed to drive on motorways while learning so never learned how to properly drive on motorways (and other multi-lane roads)

Because it forces drivers to undertake on Lane 1 (which happens quite a bit) or overtake in Lane 3. It can create a dangerous situation when they are also doing 20 below the posted limit because it creates a sharp speed differential between you and the folks overtaking you (and the unnecessary queue of traffic behind you) in Lane 3 so you can't get past the rolling roadblock.

Keep Left, it isn't rocket science

This is by far my biggest peeve, the obsession with speed (from the RSA). The way they blather on about it you'd swear that speeding was the only cause of accidents, 100kph in a 100kph zone is just fine, but dare to do 101 and you're going to have an immediate accident and join the statistics!

We have badly set speed limits with sharp drops (without gradation) in some places (like the sections of the N25 that drop from 100 to 60)

We have perfectly good roads with pointlessly low limits (like the R710) and some fairly terrible roads (like the N25 in places) with much higher limits that just don't make sense

While most of Europe has a sensible enforcement, ours is slapdash with a one-size-fits-all punishment. Get caught doing 125 in a 120 on a Motorway and face the same penalty for doing 60 in a 50 - one is very much more dangerous than the other.

I'm all for having average cameras (and fixed cameras) across the road network, not just on motorways, I'd like if that were followed up with a revision of our penalty system

They are never trained to do it, it's illegal while a Learner and once you pass your test you're on your own to figure it out. There's no point just having it in the Rules of the Road books you're (in theory) studying before taking your test without getting to practice it with an experienced instructor

Your choice is sit behind the slow moving middle-lane hogger, move back into Lane 1 and undertake them (assuming it's empty by that point) or risk being rear-ended as you pull out into Lane 3 with cars going 20-40kph faster than you (those gaps close pretty fast unless you floor it)

It really isn't hard, just don't hog the middle lane, it's almost as bad as parking between two spaces "because someone might bang their door against my car"

The problem isn't with implementing average speed cameras throughout the motorway network. As you correctly point out information only needs to be exchanged between adjacent pairs of cameras.

The problem is with the suggestion that it would be simple to extend this to the wider road network. This changes the interconnectity requirements from pairs to a mesh, orders of magnitude greater to implement.

That's also used in the UK, to catch duplicated registrations. If it would impossible to travel between too cameras in a set period, then the ANPR system can direct police to both cars in real time to check out thier drivers.