Safety Camera Expansion 2016
• Over 1,000 safety camera locations nationwide including high risk locations near Blessington are to be active from midnight 27th May 2016

• Safety cameras are proven life savers
• More than 938,000 speeding tickets issued since introduction of safety cameras.

Since 2010, An Garda Síochána has contributed to making Blessington roads safer through the use of safety cameras, using a service provider ‘GoSafe’ to operate them on its behalf. The primary purpose of safety cameras is to reduce speed related collisions, lessen injuries and save lives.
Safety cameras only operate in areas where there is a history of speed related collisions, known as speed enforcement zones, using a fleet of marked vehicles. Prior to the introduction of safety cameras, approximately 31% of fatal collisions occurred in these zones. In 2015 this figure had reduced to 14%. This shows a dramatic reduction in terms of risk in these areas and a huge increase in terms of road safety. All locations are available on the Garda website.
An Garda Síochána recently initiated an updated collision analysis of the road network based on the most recent collision statistics post four years of operation of the Garda mobile safety cameras. The objective was to identify new speed enforcement zones not currently being monitored as part of the current project and to remove those existing zones which were no longer high risk zones.
Collision data from the Garda Pulse system was extracted. The data included type of collision (fatal, and serious as before, but now including minor) and the coordinates of where each of these took place. The data looked at the previous five years from April 2009 – April 2014 and consisted of approximately 25,000 data points.
Each type of collision (fatal, serious, and minor) was assigned a weighted value. A fatal collision was given a value of 10, a serious collision a value of 5 and a minor collision a value of 1. A new zone must have a minimum weighted value of 10. Also, a new zone has an approximate maximum length of 10 Kilometres.
As a result of this comprehensive analysis, 355 new zones were identified:-

• 7% were on local roads,
• 54% on regional roads,
• 32% on national roads
• 7% on were motorways
• 49 zones were identified for removal due to zero collisions in past 5 years.
In total, there are now 1,031 speed enforcement zones nationwide where safety cameras operate effective from midnight 27th May 2016.
Chief Superintendent Aidan Reid said today:-
"An Garda Síochána is delighted to announce the expansion of this vital road safety measure. The safety cameras are proven life savers and only operate in areas which have a speed related collision history where fatal, serious injury and now minor injury collisions occur. By identifying and targeting these high risk areas our aim is to continue to reduce the number and severity of collisions, thus save more lives and prevent more injuries from occurring. This makes them roads safer for every road user.”
Chief Superintendent Reid continued:-
"There is no doubt these safety cameras save lives. This has been independently confirmed*. They actually operate at a financial loss, but the human savings are incalculable. Saving lives and preventing injuries is our number one goal and we urge every driver to become familiar with the full list of speed enforcement zones, freely available on the Garda website, so that they know to take extra care when travelling on these 1,000 plus stretches of high risk road.”
Notes

‘GoSafe’ monitoring commenced operation on a phased basis in November 2010 and reached full operational capacity in March 2011. GoSafe are contracted to provide a minimum of 7,375 hours speed enforcement and 100 hours surveying per month as directed by An Garda Síochána. GoSafe are also set key performance indicators to ensure enforcement is targeted at key days and times – with a particular emphasis on night time and weekends.
# GoSafe have completed over 421,000 hours of enforcement and 35,000 hours of speed surveys since launch (up to end December 2015)
# The number of vehicles detected in excess of the speed limit is on average 1.49 person per hour is detected by GoSafe
# More than 938,000 fixed charge notices for non-intercept speeding offences have been issued in the same time by both Garda and GoSafe operations