At the Signing of Safety Cameras Contract Garda College, Templemore - Friday, 20 November 2009.
"I would like to welcome everybody here to the Garda College in Templemore, particularly our own Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr. Dermot Ahern TD, the Minister for Transport, Mr. Noel Dempsey TD, and Mr Xavier McAuliffe of the Go Safe consortium. I acknowledge also the presence of the Secretary General, Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr Sean Aylward and the Chief Executive Officer of the Road Safety Authority, Mr Noel Brett.
We are here today to sign the contract for the provision and operation of safety cameras on our road network – an important step in our work to reduce death and serious injury on our roads and enhance overall road safety for all road users.
The objective of the safety camera project is to reduce the number of speed related collisions by:
· increasing compliance with speed limits across the entire road network;
· reducing the speed of vehicles at locations that have a speed related collision history; and
· acting as a deterrent to driving at excessive speeds.
An Garda Síochána is committed to reducing fatal and serious injuries on our roads and improving road safety.
In order to achieve this, we have assigned considerable resources to our work in deterring and apprehending irresponsible – and often reckless - drivers who can and do, kill and injure themselves and others.
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.
Inappropriate speed is the single greatest contributory factor in road deaths and serious injuries. In recent years, we have worked to identify those roads which have the greatest propensity for speed related collisions and this is where we direct our enforcement activity. The signing of this contract today enables us to supplement existing enforcement and ensure the deployment of enforcement technology to even more areas where it can have even greater impact.
The deployment of the enforcement resource will be under the direction of An Garda Síochána through the Office for Safety Camera Management which will be headed by a Garda Superintendent. Deployment will be directed at those areas and at the times where it can have the greatest benefit in terms of the reduction of death and serious injury on our roads and where it can pay the greatest dividends in terms of road safety. This will mean:
· More speed checks at weekends than on weekdays (Sundays 19-25%; Saturdays 16-20%; Fridays 14-18%);
· More speed checks between midnight and 03.00 than at other times (10-20% of checks);
· Motorways and dual carriageways to have less than 3% of speed checks;
· 50% of Speed Checks on National Roads and 50% on Non-National Roads;
· 15-20% of Speed Checks on heavy goods 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 driver 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.
An Garda Síochána will meet our responsibilities and enforce the law. My plea to drivers is that they face up to their responsibilities and stop reckless behaviour which endangers themselves, their families, friends and community.
I will now call on the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to speak".
Garda Press Office
20/11/09
