Survey documents 181 examples of red-light breaking, and zero enforcement

Kevin O’Donnell says drivers often rush right through red lights at the junction to turn off the main road into the smaller street where his kids’ school is in Coolock.

“Could be vans, could be cars – bikes, you don’t need to worry about, to be honest,” he says. “It’s led to a couple of worrying incidents.”

It’s been a persistent problem for years, O’Donnell says. He says he’s been going to and from Gaelscoil Cholmcille for a decade, and currently has three kids there.

Does he ever see any enforcement by gardáí? “No,” O’Donnell says.

This is not an isolated situation. Videos taken at intersections across the city – from Dundrum to Cork Street, Westland Row to Donaghmede – in March documented 181 instances of road users breaking red lights. And no enforcement.

The videos showed 89 car drivers, 49 cyclists, 38 pedestrians, two people on e-scooters, two bus drivers and one motorcyclist ignoring red lights. This wasn’t a scientific study, so these can’t be taken as an indication of who breaks red lights more across the city.

But what these videos do show is that none of these red-light breakers were stopped by gardaí. If they had been, the penalty for failing to obey traffic lights is €80 and three penalty points if paid within 28 days.

Gardaí did not respond to questions on whether they believe breaking red lights creates safety risks for road users, whether they seek to enforce, and whether they believe the observed lack of enforcement creates a culture of impunity among road users.

The RSA’s latest monthly penalty point statistics, for December, show 17 notices issued for “driving past a red light” in County Dublin, and 5,634 for “Fail to obey traffic lights”. When asked what the difference was, the RSA referred the question to the Gardaí, where a spokesperson said he wasn’t sure but would try to find out.

A Dublin city councillor says she thinks shifting responsibility for enforcing some road-traffic violations – such as red-light breaking – to the council would be a good idea. And a council spokesperson said the council would be happy to help roll-out a system of red-light cameras.

Priorities

Although O’Donnell doesn’t see gardaí stopping cars that break the red lights near his kids’ school, that doesn’t bother him.

“I personally wouldn’t blame the Gardaí,” he says. “I’m not one of those ‘Put a cop on every corner’ types.”

“That’s not a realistic approach to policing in the twenty-first century,” O’Donnell says.

These days, there are red-light cameras, he says, and they’ve been tested in Dublin years ago. “The technology is there, we have it.”

Red light cameras could monitor junctions, record people breaking red lights, and then they can be identified and penalised via their number plates.

This would not work on e-scooters, cyclists, or pedestrians – unless they were at some point required to have number plates too.

But buses, vans, SUVs, cars and other motor vehicles should be the priority for enforcement anyway, says David Timoney of the Dublin Cycling Campaign.

There is a huge difference between a 1.5-ton box of metal and plastic breaking a red light, and a person on a bicycle breaking a red light, he says.

“They’re not comparable from a kind of like, a danger perspective,” he says. “It might be an irritant if a cyclist goes through a red light, but they’re not really a danger in the same way.”

Even when no one is physically hurt by drivers breaking red lights – or speeding – this kind of dangerous driving can make parents too wary to let their kids walk or cycle to school, says Mairéad Forsythe, a campaigner with Dublin Cycling Campaign.

“Modern parents feel that they’re at risk from motor vehicles, and therefore they drive them, compounding the problem,” she says. “What we would like to see is safer routes to school and safer areas around schools.”

Deterring drivers from speeding is at least as important as deterring them from breaking red lights, says Timoney. “In fact, I think speeding is a bigger issue than breaking red lights.”

Whither Red-Light Cameras

Whether it’s enforcing the rules on stopping at red lights, or on obeying the speed limit, installing cameras could help, say O’Donnell, Timoney, and Forsythe.

There is also the question of enforcing bus lanes by penalising private motor vehicles that use them when they’re not supposed to – which bus drivers say is critical to keeping the bus network flowing smoothly.

Rolling out red-light cameras in Dublin is something that’s been in the works for years.

A 2015 press release from the National Transport Authority (NTA) announced the installation of “Ireland’s first automated Red Light Camera System”.

Put in at the Blackhall Place/Benburb Street junction in Smithfield, it was meant to prevent collisions between cars breaking red lights, and the Luas.

“The system captures images of motorists breaking red lights, their licence plate numbers and other data allowing An Garda Siochána to pursue offenders under the Road Traffic Acts,” the press release says.

However, that installation was just an 18-month pilot project, Hugh Creegan, the NTA’s deputy chief executive, wrote in a 2020 email released under the Freedom of Information Act to Green Party TD Neasa Hourigan.

“The larger permanent operation has to be publicly advertised for tendering purposes,” he wrote.

The next year, 2021, the government’s road safety strategy for 2021–2024 “phase 1 action plan” included a plan to “Further develop camera-based enforcement by the Gardaí, including at junctions and for management of bus/ cycle lanes” by Q4 2022.

That hasn’t happened yet. But the NTA has taken the lead on making it happen, an NTA spokesperson said.

“While a pilot installation was undertaken a few years ago at Blackhall Place on the Luas Red line, it has been recognised that tendering for equipment and services for just one or two isolated junctions would not provide a system that would be scalable contractually to cover other junctions, other areas and other offence types,” the NTA spokesperson said.

So the government has established a working group. “The NTA has been requested to Chair a Working Group to assess and make recommendations in relation to the further extension of camera-based enforcement,” the spokesperson said.

“Work needs to be done by the Working Group to identify the scale and ambit of the overall camera enforcement system, which will then allow the appropriate structuring of the procurement process,” the spokesperson said.

“Effectively, an overall strategy for this type of camera-based enforcement needs to be developed which will enable a planned approach to procurement, installation and operation,” they said.

In addition to the NTA, the working group includes the Department of Transport, the Gardaí, Transport Infrastructure Ireland and the County and City Management Association, the spokesperson said.

“It is expected that the Working Group will conclude its work and bring forward recommendations for consideration in the second half of 2023,” they said.

Who Would Run the Cameras?

At the same time as the working group mulls over a strategy, new legislation is on the way, said a spokesperson from the Department of Transport.

Legislation is in place that lets the guards use red-light cameras and speed cameras, the spokesperson said.

The Road Traffic and Roads Bill 2021, which has passed the Dáil and is now before the Seanad, “contains provisions to underpin the use of CCTV by road authorities – i.e. local authorities – and by TII, and also for the sharing of the images captured with the Garda”.

“It specifies that the information from these cameras may be used ‘the deterrence, prevention, investigation and detection of criminal offences, including road traffic offences’”, the spokesperson said.

Labour Councillor Alison Gilliland said she’d like to see Dublin City Council manage a system of traffic violation detection cameras.

“No doubt there would be an argument as to what department would collect and retain the fines,” she said.

But given the council’s need for more funding, Gilliland would like to see it manage the system and keep the fines, she said. “Similar to how we manage parking fines.”

At the moment, Dublin City Council has “no role in the detection of moving offences which are a matter for an Garda Siochana”, a council spokesperson said.

But “Dublin City Council will be happy to provide on street enforcement cameras in conjunction with AGS [An Garda Síochána] and the NTA in order to assist in the better enforcement of road traffic offences”, they said.

Handing this aspect of road-traffic enforcement over to the council could “allow our Gardaí to focus on other duties where their physical presence is required, so resources are freed up, if you like”, Gilliland said.

“Such a shift would require significant investment but some of this could be off-set from the fines if they were set high enough,” she said.