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TWO NEW AVERAGE speed cameras have been launched in Cavan and Mayo this morning ahead of the October Bank Holiday weekend.
From noon tomorrow, the new speed cameras on the N3 between Kilduff and Billis in Co Cavan, and on the N5 between Lislackagh and Cuilmore in Swinford will be live.
The cameras were launched by Minister for Justice Helen McEntee and Garda Commissioner Drew Harris this morning.
Average speed cameras monitor a driver’s speed while driving between two points, rather than those that take a snapshot at a single location.
They use Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology to record the time, date, and location of each vehicle that passes through an entry and exit point.
Drivers found to have travelled over the speed limit will be issued with a fixed penalty notice, which, when processed, will result in them receiving three penalty points to their licence and a fine of €160, or €240 if not paid within 28 days.
The location of the new cameras were chosen because they meet the criteria as being high-collision sites, with numerous road traffic collisions, involving injury, serious injury, and fatalities.
Gardaí said international studies have found that speed cameras can influence a reduction in collisions and the severity of collisions through the ‘halo effect’ – where drivers have been found to reduce speed due to the presence of speed or safety cameras.
It is expected that a third average speed camera will be installed on the N2 road before the end of the year.
As part of the initiative, six static speed cameras, which measure a driver’s speed at a single point, will also become operational before the end of the year, while a further three will be rolled out in early 2025.
Funding of €9 million which was announced in Budget 2025 will also be used for up to 100 new static safety cameras.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland this morning, Justice Minister Helen McEntee said the objective of the average speed cameras is to try and change people’s behaviour while driving.
“I think we’ve all been really shocked by the massive increase over the last year or two in the number of road deaths and serious accidents,” she said.
“We are all doing across government, with the Gardaí, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, and all of us individually, everything that we can to reduce and to change those numbers around, because these are all people who have lost their lives and families impacted.”
She said that the two existing average speed cameras on the M7 and Dublin’s Port Tunnel have been effective.
“There’s about 20,000 people who use the M7 every day. There’s about 30 fixed charge notices, so people are largely compliant. For the Port Tunnel it’s about 26,000 people, 10 notices a day,” she said.
“People, where there are average speed cameras, where they know there are speed cameras, they slow down, they stick within the speed limits, and that’s the whole objective here.”
There have been 143 fatalities on Irish roads so far this year. McEntee said there has been a reduction in
“If you take this month, five people have lost their lives. That is five too many, and I’m really conscious we’re talking about five people have lost their lives. It was over 20 last October.
“So we’re starting to move in the direction we want to, but we can’t be complacent.”
McEntee also said that since all uniformed gardaí began doing 30 minutes of road safety policing per shift, there has been an increase in detections for people driving with their phones and people driving without seat belts.
The whole point here is not to catch people out. It’s to change the behaviors and to change people’s attitudes.
She said there has been “a shift in how people are thinking” when they get behind the wheel of a car since the Covid-19 pandemic.
“More people, it seems, are willing to get behind the wheel having taken drink or drugs, and we have to try and change that.
“When you look at other countries, how they’ve used technology, it’s been really effective in reducing people’s speeds, and when that contributes to about 30% of deaths on our roads, we really have to focus there.”
When asked about the 620 gardaí attached to the Roads Policing Unit (RPU), McEntee said that the Garda Commissioner has given a commitment to increase that number by 75 this year.
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Should the ANPR camera also pick up those with no tax and no insurance?
@Dave Sherman: Last centuries tech??… we’re still not ready for it. lol.
@Dave Sherman: average speed cameras seem like a great idea
@Dave Sherman: That would be dangerously close to common sense so i’d say they can’t. Speed vans should also do people driving in bus lanes but they don’t either. I see them regularly parked on stretches with bumper to bumper traffic with car after car going up the bus lane. It’s grand though, they’re under the speed limit!
@Thesaltyurchin: AAAAAGGHHHH!!! Should be ‘Last Century’s tech’! Sorry!! A pet hate!
@Dave Sherman: it does
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: Got it. Wont happen again! (probably will;)
Average speed cameras need to be installed in Donegal.
Good.
And that’s from someone who has had a total of 14 points on his licence over the decade or so since they came in (8 at one time) but one thing I have noticed about them, It was never the Guard or the go safe van driver who was pressing the accelerator in my car.
I was.
Some people will go extraordinary mental gymnastics avoid accepting the consequences of their own actions.
@P. J.: How do you have 14 points since a licence only hold 12?
@P. J.: you are away with the fairies
@Alex: Thats what hes had in total. After points drop away
@Alex: said over a decade. Points go away after a few years
Better option than the shooting fish in a barrell exercise that is Gatso vans and sneaky cops sitting at ‘questionable’ locations!
@Andrew Kenny: Good to see a judge threw out about 35 cases,not for the first time,the other week for exactly that. He noted that the van was almost hidden behind a wall,and drivers were jamming on their brakes and causing more danger as a result. Also,an usually large number were clocked at exactly 59kmh,so instructed those in charge to check the calibration of the speed detection system.
@Larry Betts: how do they prove the location, as in the townland that the offence was committed in? If the distance between cameras is more than one townland???
@Brian Dineen: It works by distance and time. You are clocked at point A at time C and point B at time D and it will give your average speed over that distance. I would assume it’s on the same stretch of road.
@Brian Dineen: There are exact gps coordinates for the cameras posted on the Garda website.
But the hyperlinks on the website were as of yesterday incorrect, the mayo link brings you to the cavan page and vice versa.
You can copy the gps coordinates of each camera and paste them into Google maps to find the exact locations.
Awful carry on in the UK with the ULEZ cameras. Vandals cutting the poles or spray painting the lenses. Apparently a cheap can of expanding foam is particularly damaging. Hopefully we won’t get any of that thuggery here.
@FlipBip: good ideas, well done. Hopefully people take your advice and use your vandalism and sabotage techniques here in Ireland.
@FlipBip: or maybe just don’t speed?
@Buster Lawless: You are advocating vandalism, I am not. I’m just saying that its amazing the lengths that some people will go to. Such as balloons filled with oil based paint or even a simple bin liner, placed over the camera. Terrible behavior towards a government that only has our interests at heart.
@FlipBip: You seen to be very well versed in ideas on how to sabotage the cameras . Methinks you are actually encouraging vandalism . Maybe it’s your line of work. Where’s the cheapest place to buy expanding foam?.
@Patrick MC Dermott: I am doing no such thing, I just keep abreast of similar issues in other countries.
@FlipBip: good Intel and methods. Spread this further.
@FlipBip: you’re a gas man and all but why would you want anyone do that? speed limits are reasonable nationwide, probably far too generous on some rural roads, and people shouldn’t be breaking them. this kind of thing will save lives.
@eoin fitzpatrick: I don’t want anyone to do that, I thought I’d made that clear. I have no time for mindless vandalism.
@FlipBip: Any ideas about all the terrible ways people murder people.m and don’t get caught?. Just awful so it is.
@FlipBip: The ULEZ cameras are not speed cameras. That means that people have a completely different issue with them.
another election stunt wont be another word about cameras after that
Put speed cameras outside schools.
@Dan Murphy: school kids have cars??
@Dan Murphy: It should be in most main streets to be honest with ted light camera.
The gouging beasts they are, screwing the drivers with taxes, tolls and now fines. They can piss off
@Buster Lawless: So don’t break the speed limit. How hard can that be? Do your limit braincells can’t tells you that the little sign with numbers on the side of the road are actual speed limit?
@Buster Lawless: I travel on one of these roads every morning and evening and I am glad the camera has been erected because the speed of some of the traffic including trucks etc is absolutely shocking. Also over the past few years there have been a number of fatalities on this road, it’s very sad.
The N5 location is a new enough road, I havent heard of any accidents on that stretch, and if there is, perhaps its a design fault? No overtaking lanes on the new section being currently constructed also, surely they can engineer lanes to allow safe overtaking of slow moving vehicles?
They could use that system to fine people driving too slow while they’re at it. Anyone in a car doing less than 70 a 100 zone.
@Substance2020:
Never going to happen.
This is just enforcing existing laws, minimum speeds would need a whole new set of laws, also what you are suggesting would make 99.9% of tractors illegal on the road.
Now I know lots of people who wouldn’t mind if that happened haha but not very realistic is it?
Never going to happen.
@Substance2020: When its really slow it’s usually some terrified old person, it’s a shame they way we peddle fear an breed anger on our roads. Should be using deliveries for prescriptions (are drones a ‘bridge too far’ for the imagination here? probs) and medical care should be more mobile too. Don’t see the point of dragging the elderly to appointments that make one lad a fortune.
Push the speeders onto smaller, narrower roads. There’s always a rat run. Bound to end well.
@Chutes:
Don’t know the location in question so maybe but unlikely in most cases.
As someone who likes speed there simply isn’t many smaller narrower roads you can break 100/110km on whereas you can do it legally on a main road.
@P. J.: 75% of road deaths happen on rural roads.
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