I moved to Leixlip recently. Nice enough neighbourhood. Down the road, the N whatever, that dual carriageway that links the Westside of Dublin's teeming masses of suburbanites with the city, there's a speed camera. A gatso writes Justin Hynes.
It's where they hand out penalty points where I live. A penalty point point, if you will.
Or rather it's a fine-collection point. For it has absolutely zero to do with road safety, saving lives, decreasing the carnage on our roads.
There's nothing there. It's an innocuous dip in a dual carriageway where, for some apparently arbitrary reason, the speed limit drops to 50mph.
Presumably so they could install a speed camera and catch out the unprepared who had previously been tootling along at 54 mph or 62 mph or even 8 mph, for that's as fast as you seem to be able to go between the hours of 6am and 10.15am and 11.15am and midnight. But that's a whole other rant.
In fact, during the free and easy hour of the day, the camera is more likely to be the cause of carnage, as forgetful types suddenly stamp on their brakes inches from the camera zone in a futile attempt to slow their cars from light speed to snail pace.
That miserable, exploitative, cowardly, speed camera encapsulates every hateful, spiteful, feeling I harbour towards penalty points. They are a con, a sham designed solely to bilk the hard-pressed motorist out of yet more of his or her hard-earned cash.
According to statistics 167,000 now have points. That's an evil 1 in 40 (after just a couple of years) who deserve to be punished for their homicidal ways. In two years it will be one in 20, in six, 1 in 10. Eventually we will all be punished by insurance companies. I mean we'll all be punished more by insurance companies.
If they really want to save lives, why not start by offering us a decent driving test. A course that would teach drivers, particularly novices, some skills that are useful behind the wheel, rather than attempting to teach them how to drive a 1935 Ford Popular through the leafy byways of the Free State.
The current test teaches you how to execute a three-point turn in a cul-de-sac and how to pilot a car and react to the world in slow motion. How about teaching drivers the difference in braking distances between dry and wet conditions or how to control a skid.
Or just proper motorway etiquette - no such thing as a fast lane, but merely an overtaking lane, some correct lane changing procedure, and the right way to merge into fast-moving traffic. Stuff that might actually be useful to the modern driver.
What would help is improving roads. Wider roads, better surfaces, better lighting, signage and warnings - you know the kind of things we pay road tax, VRT and speeding fines for.
What would help is better garda presence on rural roads at pub closing times, instead of having them shivering by a Superser in a draughty station, filling out reports about speeding tickets handed out on the nearest dual carriageway.
What doesn't help is penalty points being handed out by gardaí with radar guns lurking like 'peeping toms' on shadowy motorway verges. What doesn't help is tickets awarded by blinking cameras on harmless stretches of dual carriageway in the suburbs.
What is indisputable is that death is handed out to drunk young men in 'blinged-up' Micras racing on country roads at 3 a.m. Not a lot of speed cameras or gardaí about there or then.
Kilian Doyle is away on leave.