After seven years, the full penalty points system is still a long way off. Patrick Logue reports
It was delayed, then half-baked and has been beset with hiccups, loopholes and inefficiencies ever since. The penalty points system first came before Cabinet in 1998, but after seven years, a second Government term and one new transport minister only 6 per cent of the system is in operation.
In the intervening years more than 3,000 have died on our roads and about 70,000 have been injured at a cost of hundreds of millions of euro to the economy each year. The initial dip in road deaths experienced after the introduction of points for speeding at the end of 2002 was only to be a taster of what could be achieved by an effective, enforced system.
Certainly it was better to have some sort of punitive system in place instead of waiting for the perfect and completed system. But a long list of problems refuse to go away, leaving some wondering if the system is jinxed.
The most recently highlighted problem is that of drivers from outside the jurisdiction, mainly from the North, escaping points in the Republic because of a gap in legislation. Figures show that more than 42,000 such drivers have escaped points in this way, a figure that will rise until adequate legislation is introduced.
Although some of these drivers may have been brought to court, anecdotal evidence suggests some drivers have been getting away with verbal warnings from exacerbated gardai.
Minister for Transport Martin Cullen said last week that he is trying to get agreement among European transport ministers on a pan-European points system. In fairness, Cullen cannot be blamed for the slow-moving cogs of Brussels, but there are more long-running problems closer to home.
The issue of an adequate computer system to co-ordinate the issuing of points has been around since Seamus Brennan's time in Transport House. The first problem in 2002 was that colleagues in the Department of Finance refused to stump up the necessary €11 million.
Then we were told that contracts had been signed but the system could not be rolled out until late 2003. It was this that prompted Brennan to go ahead with a partial roll-out of points for speeding as the numbers of road deaths grew.
But three years on, we are still being given promises by the Department of Transport and still there is no computer system to manage the full points system. At the moment, it's to be the end of 2005 "at the earliest" (Government spokesperson language for "don't go getting your hopes up") before computerisation.
In the meantime, the manual nature of the system has resulted in thousands escaping prosecution because their fixed charge notices were not issued within the six-month time limit.
An indication of the scale of this problem came in a report to the Dáil Public Accounts Committee last October that said more than 7,650 had escaped points and fines in the first nine months of 2004 because of being statute-barred for various reasons.
The same report said that 2,500 escaped points and fines for speeding last year because a bug in the Garda's own computer system prevented notices being sent out before cases were statute barred.
Gardaí have piloted the required technology to speed things up in a handful of Garda divisions, with success, but a vital computer link between the Garda systems and the Courts Service summons system is not in place.
Part of the problem is that a range of groups must co-ordinate their actions. Obviously the Department of Transport must be involved, but so too is the Department of Justice which is responsible for the Garda, representatives of individual gardai, An Post which will be responsible for posting notices of detection, and the Department of the Environment which must supply details from the national driver file and the national vehicle file to An Garda. It's a little unwieldy, admittedly, but surely not beyond the capabilities of five or six capable people over three years?
As if this ongoing issue wasn't enough, the Comptroller and Auditor General threw in his tuppence worth last year with a scathing critique of the parts of the points system in operation.
His report found that almost half of drivers caught by Garda cameras speeding or not wearing seat-belts in the 14 months to December 31st, 2003, were not prosecuted because images from cameras were too poor, or because number plates were dirty or obscured, or because the vehicle was a motorcycle. Furthermore, in the meantime numerous fixed camera locations have been destroyed or removed by vandals and many have not been repaired or replaced.
The C&AG report also said that, where drivers were caught speeding or not wearing seat-belts in company cars, once a company ignored a notice from gardaí to nominate a driver for the vehicle at the time of the offence, gardaí could not proceed with the case. As far as we know, this is still the case. More recently, it has emerged that drivers may be swapping points to avoid reaching 12 points and being disqualified.
A study by the British-based Churchill Insurance showed 2.2 per cent of drivers admitted taking points on behalf of relatives or friends. The RAC said there was strong anecdotal evidence of a similar practice here.
Then there was the problem with the radar guns and the print-outs, or the lack of them. As recently as last January, a District Court judge in Ennis, Co Clare, threw out 20 speeding cases after ruling that tickets issued by gardaí did not represent a record of the alleged offence detected by speeding guns.
District court judges in Mayo and Cork also ruled in favour of defendants in relation to section 21.1 of the Road Traffic Act, where defence solicitors successfully argued that the hand-held speed guns did not provide a permanent record of the speed of cars.
The Department of Transport told The Irish Times that this particular loophole had been closed off since January 20th when the new Road Traffic Act, 2004, came into effect.
A loophole that hasn't been closed off, however, is the use of handheld mobile phones while driving. It will be the end of next year at the earliest, we were told recently, before gardai will be able to nab drivers nattering on their phones.
But, without visible enforcement by gardai, motorists will make the correct calculation that the chances of being caught and getting points is slim. In 2003, the first full year of points for speeding, 339 people died on the roads, compared to 376 in 2002 and 411 in 2001.
The partial manual introduction of points, for speeding, on November 1st, 2002, had an immediate but not a lasting effect. It's estimated 77 deaths were avoided in the following 12 months, but in 2004 deaths were back up to 379.
A dedicated traffic corps is promised by the Government by 2008. By 2008 the corps will be 1,200 strong, resulting in around 340 members patrolling roads at any one time. They will have their work cut out for them. Speeding, careless driving, non-wearing of seatbelts, and not having insurance can incur points as it stands today.
When the full system is in place, another 65 offences from failure to comply with lane markings to driving a vehicle the wrong way on a motorway, will have to be enforced.
Perhaps 2008 is a realistic target for the full roll-out of the penalty point system with effective enforcement by full Garda Traffic Corps using a well-tested and well-designed co-ordinated computerised system. Perhaps it will be to yet another minister for transport to see to this after the election in 2007.