‘You see drivers watching matches on laptops, people eating breakfast cereal, putting on make-up, shaving’
https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/courts/2024/09/17/you-see-drivers-watching-matches-on-laptops-people-eating-breakfast-cereal-putting-on-make-up-shaving/
Posted by MaelduinTamhlacht
17 Comments
There’s not much [gardaí ](https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/garda-siochana/)from the Dublin Roads Policing Unit haven’t seen as they go about the business of trying to catch drivers [breaking the law behind the wheel](https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/road-safety/).
“In rush hour, you’ll see people in traffic watching matches on their tablets or laptops, people eating breakfast cereal, putting on their make-up, shaving,” says Insp Peter Woods. “These are all kinds of things that lead to distracted driving and can cause fatal collisions.”
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Insp Woods and Sgt Griffin were speaking to The Irish Times on the Naas Road, Co Dublin, while working on Operation Iompair. It is a first for Irish roads policing in that patrolling is done by gardaí in a truck.
The use of an unmarked truck comes as more motorists are now expertly shielding their offending, usually using their phones. They are simply holding their phone “down by the knees” and next to the driver’s door.
…
“They are surprised,” he said of drivers being caught by gardaí in a truck. “‘When did you get that?’ is often the question. And then you’ll get the typical comment, ‘have you nothing better to do with your time?’ **But with [the level of] road deaths, no we don’t have better things to do, we are focusing on this.”**
There just isn’t enough deterrence for this sort of dangerous behaviour.
Almost like we’re shit drivers and most of us wouldn’t pass the standard driving test in the rest of the EU.
One Garda on the m50 for a half day could fill the court for a month.
The amount of people using their phones behind the wheel is absolutely out of control. Wasn’t there talk of some online reporting system coming soon?
We need some cycling Mikeys around our towns!
Spending a pile of money on a custom HGV cab can be justified but surely putting cameras on all buses and getting a dashcam video portal up and running would be *much* more effective at providing the kind of widespread enforcement you’d need to get people to cop on.
Drove by a man with a fixture holding his phone to his sunblock visor watching netflix on the m50 in rush hour traffic.
If you’re in here white tesla man, you’re a cunt.
They could do with actually targeting truck drivers themselves. The amount I see on phones is not even funny.
I saw a gaurd on his phone yesterday in a squad car driving through town I wonder would that truck have done anything
Maybe if they released any semblance of data about the cause or major contribution to road incidents,accidents or deaths folks could somewhat get behind these ideas and puff pieces
I usually use public transport so I didn’t know how bad it was but a while ago I decided to start cycling and had to stop again from the amount of times I was almost hit.
Its crazy the amount of people on the phones while driving
I walked past a garda armed response jeep(whatever they are called) stopped at lights, near Patrick Street Dublin, and the garda was on his phone. This was yesterday afternoon
In 2008 we had 14,500 Gardai. Today thanks to recruitment and retention problems, we only have 14,000. There are a million extra people living in the country.
The Gardai can in no way keep up with the level of demand.
No surprise. With no public transport people _live_ in their cars.
Yeah, phones bad, drivers bad, white vans the worst. But that’s easier to say than to solve an actual problem.
Be interesting to see guards on unmarked motorbikes