Safety authority calls for funding for privatised speed cameras on roads

THE CHAIRMAN of the Road Safety Authority (RSA), Gay Byrne, has said he would be "disenchanted" if the Government does not use today's Budget to fulfil a five-year-old promise to finance privatised speed cameras.

Addressing an international conference on road safety at Croke Park yesterday, Mr Byrne told delegates people thought the RSA "had a fetish about speed cameras", while the cameras were in fact only one of some 126 individual actions in the Road Safety Strategy.

"But", he maintained, "if put into effect on time and in sequence, [ the cameras] will undoubtedly save lives. And I am sure that if they are not put into effect on time and in sequence, undoubtedly lives will be lost."

Mr Byrne warned against "complacency" on road safety and said provision for the camera scheme had been promised "five years ago, then it was four, then three, then two".

He told the audience, which included Minister of State at the Department of Transport Noel Ahern and Assistant Garda Commissioner Eddie Rock, that budgetary provision for the cameras would be "an important commitment, an important statement" about Government support for the Road Safety Strategy.

While he accepted the Government may say it is in the greatest financial crisis ever, he told reporters after his address that "all we can say, rather weakly, is that we are saving lives". He said the lives in question were also those of the politicians themselves and their children.

Estimated costs for the privatised system which involves 6,000 hours of monitoring of traffic by mostly mobile cameras have been put at €25 million. However, much, if not all, of the money is expected to be recouped in fines paid by speeding motorists.

In his address, assistant commissioner Rock said one of the main reasons for the downward trend of fatalities in recent years and general overall improvement in road safety was a change in driver behaviour. "Each one of us is responsible for our own attitude," he said, before adding that he would have no hesitation in using covert surveillance to catch loutish behaviour among drivers. "I make no apology for that," he said.

"The proposed privatised cameras would have a ratio of 20 per cent covert use, while the locations of 80 percent will be widely advised," he said.

The conference also heard from Dr Declan Bedford, acting director of public health, population health, at the Health Services Executive, who called for the legal alcohol limits for drivers to be reduced.

According to Dr Bradford, preliminary results of a study of 995 crashes between 2003 and 2005 showed that 31 per cent of deaths each year, on average, were alcohol-related. However, he said, in almost one-third of cases no blood alcohol results for the driver were available.