LAST UPDATE | 17 Sep
GARDAÍ HAVE BEGUN using an unmarked Scania truck on specialist road policing operations across the country.
The white tractor unit has been equipped with blue lights and sirens as part of the operation.
The Journal accompanied gardaí from the Dublin Metropolitan Regional Roads Policing Unit based in Dublin Castle as they patrolled the N7 and M50 yesterday afternoon.
The initiative is part of Operation Iompar. Gardaí use the vehicle to see down in to cars in order to catch motorists using mobile phones or not wearing seatbelts.
As we accompanied the officers the gardaí aboard the truck observed another truck driver with no seat belt. He was stopped and when his details checked he already had nine points on his licence. He is now facing a ban from driving as he will reach the 12 points limit.
The observer in the truck, Garda Des Griffin, looked into cars as the truck drove alongside in traffic, as Inspector Peter Woods drove.
Repeatedly truck drivers waved back at the uniformed gardaí travelling alongside as they checked if they were wearing seatbelts and make sure that they were not using mobile phones.
During the day a number of motorists were detected not wearing seatbelts and using mobile phones.
The truck has been used in the operation in other parts of the country and is part of the fleet operated by the National Roads Policing Bureau.
So far this year, Gardaí have detected over 15,000 people using their phone while driving. That’s almost 2,000 more than during the same period in 2023.
Last month, 421 drivers received a fine and penalty points on their licence having been found using their phone behind the wheel.
Woods told The Journal that the idea for the operation came from garda links with police across Europe who are using a similar vehicle to police their motorways.
“We do a lot of work with Roadpol, the European roads policing network and we do multinational operations with our colleagues in roads policing overseas.
“I was in Belgium at a checkpoint in 2019 and I saw the Belgian police with a truck like this and they actually had a marked tractor unit for the motorways there.
“Our colleagues in the UK do similar operations, and we’ve had a look at them and see how they do things so we’re just replicating that process here.”
Woods said the benefits are simply that the gardaí can observe vehicles from a height.
“We can look into trucks and see down into cars as well and see motorists holding a mobile phone, not wearing a seatbelt or engaging in any other behaviour that can distract them which can result in fatal road traffic collisions.
“We would not normally be able to see that in a normal patrol car – we would see the person looking down but not see the phone in the hand.
“The name Iompar comes from ‘transport and behaviour’ so this allows us to see poor driver behaviour to stamp out a lot of the causes of those fatal collisions,” he added.
To date 131 people have died on Irish roads. The trend for the first six months of the year was that Ireland was heading towards a 15% increase year-on-year in fatalities.
2023 was the worst year for road deaths in nearly a decade, with 188 deaths. Since July the rate appears to be steadying but fatalities are still taking place. In one of the most recent fatal crashes a woman in her 80s died in a collision in south Dublin.
Woods and his team in Dublin Castle are tasked with reducing road deaths.
“Our road fatalities, unfortunately, are on the increase, and there are a number of reasons for that, but this truck and other vehicles like it are just additional vehicles for us, additional tools in our belt for us to be able to enhance our enforcement capabilities and detect more offences.
“By using initiatives like this we can get that message out there to people not to engage in this kind of distracted behavior that can result in collisions and hopefully make the roads a safer place for everyone,” he added.
Woods believes that the use of the unmarked Scania truck has proven itself as an asset and that there will likely be more on the roads in the coming months.
“We’re getting plenty of detections. We’re still in the early days, and it’s a pilot project.
“We’ve only done four or five enforcement days since we started last month but each day we’ve gone out, we’ve detected upwards of 30 offences in a six to eight hour tour. The vast majority of those will be mobile phone offences and seatbelt offences as well.”
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