THE SPEEDING CONTRACT WITH GOSAFE

THE KEY ASSUMPTIONS WERE WRONG

Assumption 1 Privatised system would be self-financing[1]

           Initially the revenue from speeding fixed charges will outweigh the costs substantially. With a potential 1.1 million detections (10% of checks) and the likelihood that 80% of detected drivers will pay the charge of €80 initially, the prospective annual income could be as high as €70 million. The moneys collected from the fixed charges are accounted for as Extra Exchequer Receipts and are paid directly to the Paymaster General. There will also be revenue from court-imposed fines. However as the project begins to have an effect the revenues generated will fall off dramatically as driver compliance increases. Nevertheless, it is anticipated that even in later years the revenue generated would exceed the cost of operating this scheme.

Wrong

           This prediction was wrong and this was confirmed by the CAG in 2014. The system costed the taxpayer €15 million in 2012 and this negative progression has continued.

  PAC 2014 “When the GoSafe contract was approved by Government, it was envisaged that the receipts from the detections would be more than enough to cover its costs. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform sanctioned the proposed contract expenditure on that understanding. The outturn has been quite different, with less than 30% of the contract costs being recovered from detections in 2012. The shortfall in receipts from GoSafe detections is met by fixed charge notice fine receipts related to other detected offences, which would otherwise have been paid into the Exchequer.”

 Assumption 2 Would result in a drop in road casualties

 Wrong

The privatised system has had no discernible impact on road casualties and by the time the system was introduced in late 2010 casualty figures were at an historic low (212). This trend has continued to the present time (2017- 159 lowest recorded) and the factors producing this trend were not dependent on the privatised approach. In any event the detection return from the privatised cameras seems to be falling and accordingly the State subvention will be increased.

 Assumption 3 Would be directed at black spot areas

 Wrong,

This was due in part to the fact that the 2005 figure was 396 dead and this level of casualty had decreased by almost 50% in 2010. Simply put this meant that there were fewer black spot areas and less low hanging fruit to detect. Therefore it was no longer possible to use the same criterion of high incidence of road deaths so convincingly. This marked a change to a more subjective measure of measuring the speed of vehicles at a particular point in the road system but these points of detection were invariable the safest points in the entire safety zone. Arguably this process artificially inflated the danger at that particular location and by default justifying many speed detections that were not in the least risky or dangerous. In 2017 these zones have been increased in number to over 1,031. In effect the road safety challenge had migrated to a different profile less amenable to the privatised static camera approach. Unequivocally it has to be said that every road death is one two many but the pattern of collisions and speeding had changed markedly and the detection methodology being used by the Go Safe consortium is redundant.

 There is another interesting anomaly in that penalty points and fines are imposed at the same level regardless of the speed infraction involved. There is an inherent assumption, which is wrong which suggests that the degree of danger caused by exceeding lower speed limits is the same as that for exceeding the highest speed limit. Paradoxically the penalties imposed under the fixed charge system remain the same regardless of the speed limit being infringed. A 10 KPH breach of a 60 KPH Zone will incur the same penalty as 10 KPH breach of the 120 KPH Zone even though the danger posed at the higher limit is exponentially greater. That contention is wrong. The danger posed is exponentially greater at the higher speed but the penalties are not graduated to reflect the increased danger. The late Dr. Vivian Foley did significant research in that regard in his seminal work “Is your Car Safe” 2002.

 Assumption 4 Speed limits are empirically based

i.e. that the limits have been set with regard to inherent safety characteristics

  Wrong,

A speed limit review conducted by the Department of Transport in 2013 recommended a rationalising of some anomalies in speed limits. Nothing has effectively changed other than there obviously was recognition that change was desirable. A key observation was that “The two key issues arising are inconsistency and inappropriateness” of speed limits. A major issues arises with the default speed limit of 80 KPH on Local roads. These narrow winding local roads cannot sustain this speed limit and in many instances they feed into much wider roads with speed limits of 60 KPH. The logic of this approach is seriously defective.  

 Assumption 5 Operation more suitable for Private Operators[2]

  The operation of safety cameras is more appropriate for a private service provider than for the Garda for a number of reasons: the Garda Síochána cannot achieve critical mass in terms of enforcement; private service provider personnel will require mainly technical training; it would be efficient to transfer the risk represented by advances in the technology to a private service provider; and it would also be more efficient for a private provider rather than the Garda to provide back office capability such as processing camera detections and issuing fixed charge notices as these are not core policing matters (section 5).

?  Wrong:

The GS operates the Back Office process whereby the FCNs are inputted into the process system. The initial data capture is a function well understood by the GS in terms of the need for flexibility and dynamic change. The detection actions also provides the GS with an opportunity to collect collateral information such as the use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition System (ANPR) to collect information on the movement of criminal suspects. There is no reason why technological changes should provide an obstacle. The GS have demonstrated the capacity to achieve critical mass detection.

[1] Report on the Use of Safety Cameras 2005

[2] ibid