Gardaí seize speed trap detectors
Gardaí have confiscated around 30 illegal devices designed to help motorists evade speed traps, it emerged today.
Officers from the Dublin Metropolitan Traffic Division uncovered the speed meter detectors as they carried out a series of raids at several locations across the city.
Alan Richardson of the National Safety Council said use of the devices was rare but they would not help road safety.
“We wouldn’t accept that they lead to safer driving for in effect it gives them advance notice of speed cameras,” Mr Richardson said.
“It gives the perception they can drive at excess speed where there are no cameras.”
There were no arrests made during the weekend raids but gardai are still investigating the seizures.
The speed detecting devices are not sold legally over the counter in Ireland but are believed to retail on the ‘black market’ for between €300 to €500.
The devices give off a warning beep when they pick up on the microwave radio emissions from Garda radar speed guns.
The speed meter detectors were designed to warn the driver in advance of a checkpoint.
“Some people probably speed freaks, for want of a better word, will use those devices,” Mr Richardson, acting chief executive of the NSC, said.
“It is a small hardcore of people, not your average man or woman on the street. They have no interest in obeying the rules of the road that the rest of us have to.”
It is an offence for anyone to use a speed meter detector in any vehicle, or import, fit or supply the devices, under the Road Traffic Regulations, 1991.
There have been 273 deaths on Irish roads so far this year – 30 more than during the same period last year.
“Everyone at the NSC was devastated at the number of fatalities last weekend with 11 killed. What is needed is visible and active presence of gardai on the roads,” Mr Richardson said.
“Basically if we don’t change our behaviour we are going to have another 100 people killed by the end of the year,” Mr Richardson said.
“That is another 100 people who are working and enjoying life but won’t be doing so by the first of January.”
