New mobile speed cameras to become operational from next week

SIXTY-ONE new safety camera zones will become operational from 6am on Tuesday 26th July 2022, bringing the total number of safety camera zones nationwide to 1,373.

Two of new zones will be included in the rollout in the north and south of county Meath.

The primary purpose of safety cameras is to reduce speed-related collisions, lessen injuries and save lives.

To date in 2022, there have been 89 road deaths an increase in 28 over 2021 and 13 to date in 2019.

Safety cameras operate in areas where there is a history of speed related collisions known as speed enforcement zones.

In the north of the county a section of the R163 which has been the location for a fatal and serious collison has been selected as a location while the Ballybin Road which has seen serious accidents in the past has also been selected.

New locations were selected following an analysis of collated Garda data acquired from fatal, serious and minor road traffic collisions and from further consideration given to locations of concern highlighted by local communities through local Garda Community engagement.

The new zones are spread across 23 counties, 49% on Regional Routes, 31% National Routes and 20% on other routes (Motorway, Local Roads etc.).

Superintendent Thomas Murphy, Garda National Roads Policing Bureau said:

"When someone decides to speed they put themselves and members of their community at risk, particularly children, older people, cyclists and other motorists. Our priority is to ensure that the vast majority of people who use the roads responsibly are not put in danger by a minority of reckless drivers who continue to drive at excessive speed.

GoSafe vans operate in areas that have a speed-related collision history where fatal, serious injury and minor injury collisions occur. In addition, locations which have been highlighted by members of the community as being areas of concern, have been included in the new zones. By identifying and targeting these high-risk areas, the aim is to reduce the number of fatal and serious injury collisions."

Superintendent Murphy continued:

"The deployment of safety cameras has been proven to save lives. I call on every road user to play their part to make the roads safer for all. You can do this by being a Lifesaver #Slowdown”

Since 2010, An Garda Síochána has contributed to making our roads safer through the use of safety cameras, using a service provider ‘GoSafe’ to operate them on its behalf. The cameras are operated using a fleet of marked vehicles.

Road deaths have decreased from 415 in 2000 to 137 in 2021. This shows a dramatic reduction in terms of risk and a huge increase in terms of road safety.

Safety camera zones are identified high risk locations and can include school safety zones, community engagement request zones and road works safety zones.

Collision data from the Garda Pulse system was extracted. The data analysis included type of collision (fatal, serious and minor) and the coordinates of where each of these took place. Each type of collision was assigned a weighted value (fatal, serious and minor). As a result of this comprehensive analysis, potential zones were identified: -

• 48.7% on regional roads,

• 20.4% on national roads

• 7.0% on local roads,

• 4.8% on motorways

• 19.1% on unclassified roads – Street Name, Road Name, Tertiary

‘GoSafe’ monitoring commenced operation on a phased basis in November 2010 and reached full operational capacity in March 2011. GoSafe are contracted to provide 7,500 hours speed enforcement per month as directed by An Garda Síochána. GoSafe are also set key performance indicators to ensure enforcement is targeted at key days and times.

GoSafe have completed over 1 million hours of enforcement and checked over 307m vehicles since launch (up to end 2021).

The number of vehicles detected by GoSafe in excess of the speed limit is on average less than 1.5 vehicles per hour of monitoring

More than 2.2m fixed charge notices for speeding offences both Intercept (Garda) and Non-intercept (GoSafe) have been issued in the same time.