Last year there were a record number of speeding offences recorded in Northern Ireland
Heavier fines may be needed to combat an “epidemic” of speeding motorists in Northern Ireland, a senior police officer has said.
Last year there were a record number of speeding offences recorded in the region, with that total likely to be exceeded in 2025, Chief Superintendent Sam Donaldson has predicted.
Mr Donaldson also said he wanted to see technology used to catch speeders in areas where it is currently not suitable to site safety cameras.
The PSNI is part of the NI Road Safety Partnership, which also includes the Department for Infrastructure, Department of Justice and the Courts Service.
The partnership operates a network of mobile and fixed speeding cameras. PSNI officers also operate hand-held laser devices which monitor speed.
There are about 100,000 speeding detections in Northern Ireland a year, the majority detected by the 12 road safety vans fitted with mobile cameras.
Mr Donaldson said: “In the year 2024 we made 84,004 detections by the road safety vans.
“That was the highest number of detections since the road safety vans were launched in Northern Ireland. That concerns me.
“I have been keeping an eye on the month-by-month detections and I am confident that we are making more detections this year than we were last year.
“We have the same number of vans and we are already this year seeing the number of detections rising.”
He added: “Unless we can change the culture, encourage people to slow down and stop taking the risks that they are taking, we are not going to be able to drive down the number of people that are dying on our roads.”
The standard speeding fine in Northern Ireland is £60. In the rest of the UK it is £100 and 160 euro in the Republic of Ireland.
Mr Donaldson said: “I am in some conversations with the Department for Infrastructure and others around an increase in the penalty.
“Just to be really clear, that is not to make more money, that is because we are out of kilter with other parts of the islands on which we live.
“I wouldn’t want people to be panicking and to be thinking we are going to fine people more, but I think we are out of kilter, there is something wrong there.
“I am not sure the consequences are high enough in the circumstances.
“No decision has been made at this moment in time, I have brought it to our strategic road safety forum and colleagues in the Department for Infrastructure are having a look at it.”
He added: “But there is something wrong about going over to Scotland and getting fined much more, or driving over to Monaghan and getting fined much more, the consequences have to be the same.
“We are also looking at the possibility of graduated consequences. Maybe it will stay at £60 and three penalty points for the first one, but if you get caught a second time maybe it needs to go up to £120 and six points.
“Something needs to change there.”
Mr Donaldson said he had concerns around the continuing culture of speeding in Northern Ireland.
He said: “I am old enough to remember when people didn’t wear their seatbelts, particularly in the back of vehicles.
“I am also old enough to remember when, I wouldn’t say it was acceptable, but there wasn’t the same concern in the community around drink driving.
“Culture has changed around the wearing of seatbelts and culture has changed around drink driving, it hasn’t gone away, we are still detecting people not wearing their seatbelts and we are still detecting people drink driving, so it hasn’t completely and utterly changed, but there has definitely been a shift.
“But I have to say the average person out there still hasn’t grasped the issues that speeding creates.
“Something has got to change. That sentiment has got to change.
“We need a cultural shift just like the drink driving and just like the wearing of seatbelts.”
He added: “That is why I make the point that we can deploy the vans on any road and we will still detect people speeding, that is because it is an epidemic.
“People have got this mentality where they think it is OK to speed. I think that is something we need to talk about a lot more.”
Mr Donaldson said: “Northern Ireland is one of those places where about 75% of our road deaths happen on rural roads.
“I would love to be able to put (safety camera) vans on a lot of our rural roads, our A roads, but it is extremely difficult to do that because I don’t want to cause a collision by having a van parked around the corner.
“We are looking at technology around that at the minute as well. Is there technology in existence which doesn’t necessarily have to be in a van or fixed somewhere?
“We are exploring the opportunity of trying to identify other cameras which could perhaps be temporarily located on some of our A roads, because those are very dangerous places for a lot of our drivers and a lot of our pedestrians and a lot of our cyclists.”
He added: “The gold standard vision is that nobody speeds and nobody can speed, but that is a bit of a pipe dream right now.
“We are a long way off that.
“So, sitting down below that are circumstances where I would love to be able to say that no matter where you are, no matter when you are driving, if you are going to speed, we will detect you speeding.
“We are not there yet, but that is something we are working towards.”
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