Thank goodness red light cameras haven't made it to this country. Having said that for the most part I don't think they're needed. I have very rarely seen people run red lights. I cannot think of a time when I ran a red. Possibly the amber light is set to a sensible time scale.
We do have speed cameras, GATSOs and vans with cameras. They carefully place the vans where they know they will catch people over the limit. Usually main roads with lots of lanes. Make sure you have an absurdly low limit and bingo, in comes the cash.
Of course in Ireland, we are always anxious to ensure our reptutation for quirkiness is maintained with the rest of the world. So we have this kind of thing
That's 50MPH on a road where couldn't do 20mph. That was plucked off the website of an American tourist. I'm sure most tourists have their own version. I've seen worse, the other day out on a drive we turned up a road with 80k signs only for it to turn to a dirt track in yards and so narrow that both mirrors were scraping the hedges. Somehow we turned around and as we rejoined the main road the speed limit sign placed on the back of the 80kmh sign said 60kmh (40mph).
I've also seen a 100kmh sign placed just before a sharp left over a humpback bridge only wide enough to allow one car to a pass at a time. But yet they've just reduced to general speed limit in Dublin city to 30kmh. Which will be ignored by everyone including the police.
In 30 years on the road, bikes and cars, never had a ticket. I was stopped last October but haven't heard anything since. I wonder if the cop on the day decided not to bother. It turned out that one of the three in their car was a trainee out on work experience from the Garda college. He recognised me as the pilot when he did a tandem skydive a few weeks earlier. We all had a good laugh and I told them I would be doing over 240 kmh soon and they couldn't touch me for it. I told them to come over for a jump so I could earn some of the money back to pay the fine. Perhaps in the light of that he decided it wasn't worth the paperwork. Here's hoping. You couldn't do that with a camera. Plus I drive really slowly past that spot ever since. Lesson learned.
