On the Saturday of the last bank holiday weekend, at around 3.30pm, I was coming into town from Navan on the N3. As you approach Blanchardstown, the speedlimit reduces from 100 KPH to 80 KPH. There was a Garda speed check set up there in the middle of the road, 3 - 4 gardai, a bike and a car. I thought to myself at the time what a useless waste of resources.
About 1/2 a mile past where this speedtrap was set up is the Blanchardstown Roundabout. I stopped there and was first at the lights. I'm always slow to move off (experience) and sure enough, about 3 seconds after they turned green, a car comes barrelling along and crashes the lights.
Since then I have been taking notice and I have lost count of the number of times that I have seen cars on those 3 traffic light controlled roundabouts together on the N3 (Blanch, M50 and castleknock) crashing the lights.
Would the Gardai not be better and more effectively occupied, going out in an unmarked car, driving from one roundabout to the next, making sure that they were first in the queue and racing after anyone who broke the lights with full sirens. To me this would be high profile policing. I would feel no sympathy for any motorist caught in this way. They are a real and genuine danger on the road, and to my mind this is what the gardai should be doing, rather than shooting fish in a barrell, where there is no real danger to the public.
I note that as usual the people who were killed over the last day, seem to have died on smaller country roads, rather that the main national roads where the speedtraps are invariably located.
Murt