Number of Cork drivers with penalty points falls 10%
The number of Cork motorists with penalty points on their driving licence dropped by 10% in 2018. Road Safety Authority figures show that 52,784 drivers living in Cork at the end of last year got penalty points on their licence in the previous 36 months.
The corresponding number at the end of 2017 was 58,594.
About 337,000 people living in Cork are licensed to drive.
At the end of last year, there was also a slight drop in the number of Cork motorists due to receive an automatic driving ban for six months, for having accumulated 12 penalty points over a three-year period. Seventy-two were on 12 points at the end of 2018, compared to 79 a year earlier.
A further 112 also risked losing their licence if they incurred any further offence before any points lapsed, as they were on 11 penalty points.
More than three-quarters of Cork motorists who had penalty points had three points or fewer.
The RSA figures show that the total number of offences recorded against Cork motorists between 2016 and 2018 was 63,614 — also a 10% decrease — and more than 7,000 fewer than in the period 2015-2017.
They also reveal falling numbers caught for speeding offences — 40,458 between 2016 and 2018 — a 14% decrease over the previous three-year period, while the numbers caught driving while using a mobile phone were down 7%, to 9,199.
However, there were increases in the number of motorists in Cork detected driving without a seat belt and driving with no insurance.
RSA figures show that, nationally, there was a 6% reduction in penalty point offences against motorists here in the Republic last year.
The decrease was primarily driven by a 13% decrease in speeding offences, which was partially offset by increases in other high-risk offences.
An RSA spokesman said of the drop in the number of motorists being caught speeding by safety cameras nationwide in recent years: “It would suggest there is greater compliance with motorists slowing down, as last year was a record low for road fatalities and, hopefully, that trend will continue.”
However, he said, it is “difficult to say” whether an increase in many of the other main risk behaviours — using mobile phones when driving and non-wearing of seat belts — is due to greater enforcement or worsening driver behaviour.
Drivers of foreign-registered vehicles account for around 10% of all penalty point offences each year, while the identity of the vehicle cannot be established in 0.1% of cases.
Separately, the number of gardaí attached to the Garda National Roads Policing Bureau (previously the Garda Traffic Corps) fell from more than 1,000, in 2009, to a low of 623, in 2017.
The size of the corps rose to 744 by the end of last year but suffered a reduction in 20 gardaí by the end of January – the latest date for which figures are available.Four of the country’s 28 Garda divisions had fewer specialist traffic gardaí in January than two years ago, despite a sharp increase in recruitment of new gardaí in recent years.
They were Dublin North Central, Kilkenny/Carlow, Cork City and Cork North. Numbers have remained unchanged in another three divisions – Dublin East, Westmeath and Galway.
