The solution to our woes is nigh – put the pedal to the metal and fill those coffers, writes Kilian Doyle
HERE’S A prediction for you: over the next 18 months, the Irish courts system is going to go the way of the banking system, the house sales and the Green Party’s credibility. It’s going to collapse.
Why? Because every court will be rammed with people challenging the new speed camera regime. (Smart conveyancing lawyers will also have foreseen this and used the fallow times of late scouring speeding legislation for loopholes, rather than twiddling their thumbs and filling out dole forms.)
Not that this should put the Government off its plans to roll out the Robocops later this year. I, for one, will welcome our new one-eyed masters with open arms. The country is crying out for them.
I do lots of cross-country motoring and am constantly astounded by the antics of some drivers. You’d think they were never told the speed limits changed from miles to kilometres years ago. But, in a way, you can’t blame them. It’s in human nature to do whatever we can get away with. Which, with the dearth of enforcement at present, is quite a lot.
That said, one of the greatest myths about driving is that speed kills. Speed, per se, doesn’t kill. As a far better paid motoring hack than I once said, it’s suddenly becoming stationary that kills you.
What really kill are bad driving, booze, fatigue, poorly-maintained roads or vehicles, weather conditions and a combination of myriad factors. The problem with speed is that when you throw it into the mix, the risks and consequences are magnified exponentially.
Without question, the most dangerous thing on the road is the addled or daydreaming motorist. But, short of having a Garda riding shotgun in every car, how can you clamp down on some idiot pulling out without checking his mirrors or prevent someone from veering into oncoming traffic because he was looking for a dropped sweet instead of watching the road?
To those people who claim cameras are a tax on motorists, I say this: you are wrong. Cameras are just a tax on those motorists stupid enough to speed past a huge, automated device sticking out of the back of a big white van parked at the roadside. Don’t want a fine? Don’t break the law. Simple.
But, on second thoughts, the idea that the new cameras will serve solely as cash cows may not be such a bad thing in these gloomy financial times.
Department of Justice honchos have estimated that they may generate half a million speeding detections a year on top of the 200,000 currently detected using Gatso vans and hand-held units. At €80 per fine, they could generate the nearly €40 million a year in revenue. That’s a lot of dosh to spend on important stuff like hospital beds, classrooms or first-class ministerial Paddy’s Day trips to hotbeds of Irishness like Tahiti.
Now, as Minister for Squandered Resources Brian Lenihan is so fond of saying, we all need to do our patriotic duty and make sacrifices. But rather than tighten our belts, in this context we need to flex our right ankles and push the pedal to the floor every time we see a speed camera. Every flash of the camera is money in the Exchequer’s cobwebbed coffers. When money’s tight, a speeding fine’s yer only man.
So you know what to do. Go forth and speed.* Your country needs you.
* Since submitting this for publication, I’ve been informed that, for legal reasons, I am not allowed to encourage anyone to break the law, no matter how forcibly my tongue is shoved in my cheek. Seems terribly unfair, but the law is the law. So, in retraction, motorists of Ireland, don’t change a thing. Carry on as normal. For most of you, it amounts to the same thing anyway. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t need speed cameras, would we?