Mobile speed camera initiative rolled out

A LONG-awaited speed camera initiative was rolled out yesterday.

By mid-2010, it is expected that 45 mobile cameras will target many of the country’s estimated 700accident blackspots where speeding is a concern.

A commercial company, GoSafe, has secured a€13 million yearly contract, for five years, in an historic public private partnership involving law enforcement in this country.

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said the new cameras will scan road networks for 7,000 hours a month. Monitoring heavy goods vehicles is one of the key focuses of the scheme.

The mobile camera units will be fully operational within the next six months, a year after the Government first announced the introduction of a comprehensive speed camera system.

Speed cameras were, however, promised 11 years ago.

Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy said speed was the single biggest factor in road accidents.

The new mobile units will be widely used at weekends and, mainly, between the hours of midnight and 3am.

All national routes would be targeted, with 15%-20% checks on the monitoring of heavy duty vehicles.

“The clear purpose of the safety camera project is to save lives. The bottom line is that if people speed, there is every likelihood they will be caught. However, we want to change drive behaviour and our objective, therefore, is not to catch people speeding – it is to stop people speeding and to stop the needless loss of life on our roads.

“Our approach is that we have a dedicated core of people who use the available technology, to target enforcement activity at those locations which are most prone to collisions and loss of life. The deployment of the enforcement resource will be under the direction of An Garda Siochána through the Office for Safety Camera Management which will be headed by a Garda superintendent.”

The Road Safety Authority welcomed the announcement, agreeing that mobile camera patrols would be more effective than the fixed speed cameras – flagged on “sat navs”.

GoSafe will employ 100 people, of whom 45 will be based in Listowel at the Spectra film processing company whose owner, Xavier McAuliffe is a director of GoSafe. The cameras will be supplied by a French company, Redflex.

Figures show 128,000 motorists have been caught speeding this year.

A quarter of the country’s motorists carry penalty points.

Mr Ahern said the focus will be on locations where enforcement will result in the greatest benefit in increasing road safety, and not on any other criteria. “There is no question of outsourcing enforcement on our roads – the project will remain under the control of An Garda Siochána.

“And this is not a revenue generating exercise,” he said. “Instead its purpose is to stop people speeding on our roads in the interest of the safety of us all.”

A reported 157 people died on the roads over the past three years as a result of speed and a further 310 received serious injuries.