Louth has emerged as the country’s speeding blackspot, with 95% of all motorists nationally who were driving over the limit in 120km/h zones over a four-year period detected in the county.
According to figures provided by Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald, the Wee County accounted for 95% of all motorists nationwide caught speeding in a zone with a limit of 120km/h between November 2010 and February 2014.
In data supplied to Fine Gael TD Patrick O’Donovan, Minister Fitzgerald confirmed that Louth recorded a whopping 7,077 detections out of a nationwide figure of 9,482.
The next highest was Dublin (790), Longford (872) and Kildare (261).
Cork has the highest number of detections (16,280) in zones with 100km/h limit, followed by Wicklow (11,991) and Meath (10,597), Clare (7,207) and Dublin (5,272).
Dublin is the most ticketed area in the country for speeding, with 172,309 tickets for speeding in a 60km/h zone and 143,344 in a 50km/h zone.
The next nearest county for the issue of fines in a 60km/h zone is Limerick at 15,876 and Cork in a 50km/h zone with 37,066.
The detections were made by the 50-strong Go Safe vans and the gardaí’s own eight Gatso vans over the period.
The Go Safe vans, which do not patrol motorways for speeding, have produced €18.9m in revenues from fines and the minister said that the income “is retained and offset against the cost of the safety camera contract”.
The Go Safe consortium secured the €80m Garda contract in 2009 and was recording operating profits of around €50,000 per week in 2012.
However, the consortium has since put its profits off limits by re-registering as an unlimited company where it is no longer required to file annual accounts.
The firm’s operation has come under scrutiny in recent months, with district court judges in Clare and Monaghan throwing out en masse Go Safe speeding prosecutions.
AA director of corporate affairs, Conor Faughnan, said: “The bar stool view is the speeding van system is all a racket, but we have done systematic research to find that this is not the case.”
He said: “As far as we are concerned, Go Safe is performing very, very well and it does save lives. Go Safe is supported by around 80% of Irish motorists who believe that the system does make Irish roads safer, but you have a cohort of 10% or 12% who think differently.”
Mr Faughnan said that the figures relating to Louth “don’t indicate that local driver behaviour is bad, but that Louth may be a victim of geography with two major roads, the M1 and M3 going through it.”
Source: Irish Examiner
