Gardaí get up to speed with new road camera technology

IT’S GOODBYE “Gatso” vans, for the next generation of speed cameras is about to hit Irish roads. The new Garda detection equipment launched yesterday is capable of reading five car registration plates a second and will operate at night.

The Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system launched in Leixlip, Co Kildare, will revolutionise how gardaí detect speeding as well as stolen and untaxed cars.

The technology comprises two cameras, one mounted at the front and one at the back window of a Garda car, linked to a microprocessor. The processor will automatically recognise and notify the operating garda if the car detected is untaxed or on Garda records as stolen or wanted in connection with a crime. It will also be used to detect speeding.

Asked would the new equipment be better at reading number plates partially obscured by dirt and mud, regional traffic superintendent Ken Brennan said “there is a good possibility” it would.

He said the technology was much better than that currently used on the West Link toll plaza in Dublin to identify vehicles.

Some 104 of the units have been purchased and 70 marked and unmarked Garda cars have so far been fitted with the technology.

The cars will be deployed throughout the country and may be used at “speed enforcement zones”. Gardaí, in co-operation with the National Roads Authority, have identified almost 2,000 zones as collision prone and these will be targeted.

Co Donegal has the single largest number of zones, with 118 separate areas of roads identified as vulnerable to speeding, compared with 46 zones in Dublin. Leitrim has the fewest number of zones at seven.

The location and map of each enforcement zone may be found on a county by county basis on the Garda website, www.garda.ie

The zones will also be patrolled by white Garda vans containing “robot” technology, launched in the autumn.

This technology will replace the old “Gatso” speed-detection vans which have been in operation for 12 years. Gatso was incapable of operating during darkness, but the new technology, currently in eight vans, has night-time capability. It will be focused entirely on speed detection.

Supt Brennan said the purpose of deploying the new technology is not to catch motorists speeding, but to encourage them not to do so.

“What we want is to be preventing motorists from thinking they can speed because we have this technology out there,” he said.

“We want to create the safest road environment for all road users, but if people aren’t complying, this is the technology we’ll be using to detect them and to issue fixed penalty notices.”

He said each ANPR unit had the capacity to read 5,000 number plates a day in a rural environment where traffic is sparse and 15,000 a day in an urban environment.

In time, the Garda also hopes to be able to automatically detect if a car is insured and if it has an up-to-date NCT certificate, he said, but this will depend on the insurance industry and the Road Safety Authority coming on board.