The Government should opt for more covert speed detection in an attempt to slow drivers down and cut road deaths, according to a prominent road safety campaigner.
With privatised speed cameras arriving here within months, Mr Ray Shuey, former Assistant Commissioner of Australia's Victoria Police, will tell a major road safety conference today that hidden speed cameras are more effective at slowing motorists down than overt cameras.
Shuey has a wealth of experience in "road trauma reduction" and is convinced that concealed cameras have a profound effect.
His recommendations come at a time when discussions are underway between a working group headed by the Department of Justice and interested parties as to whether Ireland's new privately operated cameras will be covert and whether they will be fixed, mobile or both.
In Australia's Victoria state, authorities have introduced increasingly draconian measures to cut speeding. Research by Monash University Accident Research Centre in Victoria advised that if overall speed was cut by 3 kph, 90 lives would be saved. Therefore, the state reduced the allowable threshold for speeding (generally around 10 per cent) by 3 kph.
To enforce the law, Victoria uses a fleet of over 50 unmarked, privately operated camera cars that are indistinguishable from other vehicles. In the past two years the numbers killed on the Victoria roads has fallen from over nine per 100,000 people to just over six per 100,000.
However, the National Safety Council, which organised the conference, is not convinced of the hidden camera argument. But cameras hidden in unmarked vehicles have the advantage of being effective across the board, not just at blackspots, argues Shuey: "Victoria's mobile units are all covert. The areas [they operate in] are not signposted or obvious. The message to the motorists is that any parked car could be a safety camera unit."
But Irish society, as in Britain, may find hidden cameras unacceptable. In England, at least one local authority has produced CDs containing the exact locations of all of its cameras in an attempt to dispel the common belief that speed cameras are revenue generating rather than road safety tools.
As Conor Faughnan of the AA says, there is a fear of a similar backlash here: "One major concern is that the errors in Britain, where there is now a lack of confidence in speed cameras, are not replicated here. The primary function of speed cameras is not to catch speeding motorists, it is to slow them down, especially at accident blackspots."
But Shuey does not agree with the softening approach in Britain where many cameras are painted yellow, are preceded by warning signs and are located at accident blackspots. "I would challenge the blackspot enforcement that the British authorities use," says Shuey. "It turns into a cat and mouse game where motorists slow down for cameras and then speed up again."
There was some opposition to the hidden cameras in Victoria, admits Shuey. This was partly overcome by the use of hard-hitting campaigns. The latest stark message, which ties in the 3kph reduction in the speed limit threshold, states that the driver is "...only a little bit over the speed limit": at its conclusion it states that the driver is "... only a little bit dead."