This week's revelations of a new Garda zero-tolerance policy on speeding in suburban areas is enough to send you round the bend, writes Justin Hynes
The introduction of penalty points at the end of last year was a cue for mass panic on the roads. People immediately clamped a heavy boot on the brake of their cars and proceeded to crawl at four miles an hour for fear of incurring the wrath of the ticket-happy uniforms who had taken up 24-hour watch on any blind section of dual carriageway in the country.
That panic receded, however, and we gradually returned to old habits - a bit of a blast here, a crafty nip through traffic there and everybody was reasonably content.
Not good enough, howled the powers that be, time for harsher measures. Hence the announcement this week that gardaí are to implement zero tolerance measures in the enforcement of speed limits in the greater Dublin area. Thus, if you're clocked at 31mph in a 30 mile zone, you can expect a couple of penalty points immediately.
Since the introduction of penalty points, the gardaí have noticed a marked decline in motorists' inclination to batter the speed limit into submission on the nation's feeble motorway network. But this has been matched by acorresponding degree of recidivism in built-up areas. Thus the conclusion that a finger-wagging crackdown on suburban speed-freaks is the order of the day.
This is linear thinking at its best, or worst. Lets instead proffer the notion that the decrease in motorway speeding since the introduction of penalty points is predicated not on fear but on the kind of deductive reasoning whoever came up with the 31mph tolerance could do with a pinch of.
Where are speed cameras, vans, speed patrols most prevalent? Motorways and dual carriageways. Where are they, at present, least likely? If you were to say suburban rat runs, well, give yourself a big gold star.
Hence, the notion that sending the same fearful message to suburban speeders will work just as well. Wrong. People speed in places they feel they will get away with it and on under-policed suburban roads they feel just that. The machinery used by the gardaí in pursuit of speed limit breakers, the laser guns trained on your vehicle from the side of the road, have an inbuilt margin for error, 5 per cent or thereabouts, according to a Garda spokesperson who featured on Thursday's Gerry Ryan Show on 2FM.
"The technical stuff we use," he said, reffering to gatsometers, guns and sundry toys, "all those things have a tolerance built-in of about 5 per cent. If somebody is going along at 62 mph it may not flash them but if they're going 65 mph, it will come up. That's built into the machinery." If this is the case, then an infringement at 31mph is unlikely to register, so the status quo remains.
This though is nit-picking The real bugbear for drivers is the paucity of roadside information concerning speed limits and the inconsistency of the limits that are in place. Fine Gael transport spokesman Denis Naughten raised a salient objection to zero tolerance by pointing out that many road signs are either badly located or obscured from view.
Dublin is perhaps better served than most in this regard because most will presume a 30 mph limit applies even if a sign is not present, that being the norm for built-up areas. But there are notable exceptions to such norms. The M50 is one. As far as I am aware, the designation "M" on an Irish road stands for motorway. The designated speed limit for a motorway is 70mph. Yet upon reaching the most recently opened section - from Tallaght to Sandyford - the limit mysteriously plummets to 60 mph. I have tried to fathom some reasoning behind this and have had no luck.
The volume of traffic is also markedly lower than on other sections of the same motorway. As for hazards, the only one I can assume is that the road inclines slightly and there is a bit of a bend in it. No consistency.
Head west to Galway. Last New Year's Eve I found myself attempting to round the city on my way to Connemara. Traffic was heavy and slow moving on the ring road. It was only when I clocked that the bulk of this dual carriageway, which should carry a 60 mph limit, is actually limited to 30 mph that I realised why. Curious to know why there is such inconsistency in speed limits, I called the Garda press office and asked who was responsible for the setting of limits on our roads.
"Nothing to do with us," came the weary reply. "No, that would be the local authority. It might be different on motorways, that might be the national roads authority, but I think it's normally local authorities." And what would be the criteria for the imposition of those limits? "I suppose the engineers would have a look and make recommendations." There you have it. It is discretionary and seemingly as confusing to the gardaí themselves judging from the above conversation.
What about outside Dublin? For not all urban areas are in cities. Speed limits on rural yet suburban roads - the roads the Garda claim are the locations for 25 per cent of deaths - are almost entirely absent. I know this because I live in a rural area. I took one of those roads on Thursday, through Co Carlow, that for most of its passage through the county fronted onto houses and schools and churches, albeit more sporadically than in a city. Yet for 26 kilometres, there were just three speed limit signs; one at a school which told me to slow to 30 mph and two more upon entering the next major town, which told me to first hit 40 and then 30.
Up until this point you can go as fast as you like. It's actually 60 mph because it's a national road, or so I imagine. It is, however, a hideously deformed stretch of road. Traveling at 60 was a white-knuckle ride, especially when sequences of acute turns come upon you without warning.
The bottom line is this: everybody hates speed limits, but they apparently stop people getting killed. Having them, then, is probably a good thing. But guardians of the peace must give the poor perpetrator a vague clue as to what their limits are.
The Governnment is like a bad parent in this. Instead of educating and informing a child as to the nature of their wrongdoing, the parent simply slaps the the child and says that if it carries on to expect the bogeyman to come. The truth is that we all know the bogeyman doesn't really exist and we'll keep being naughty until someone properly explains why we should behave.