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Cypher@lemmy.world

Dublin: Garda Kevin Flatley dies while on speed checkpoint duty (www.bbc.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by Cypher@lemmy.world to c/motorcycles@lemmy.world

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A garda (Irish police) officer has died whilst carrying out a speed checkpoint in County Dublin.

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[–] Cypher@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

The loss of the officer’s life is horrible and I hope his family are doing alright. It seems the motorcyclist will be physically okay.

No mention of the circumstances of the collision which led to the officers death, I think there are two likely scenarios.

The first being that a speeding motorcyclist panicked when he saw the officer and hit him, either target fixation or low side due to grabbing brakes.

Or the officer stepped into traffic to halt the bike and the motorcyclist was either unable to stop or played chicken.

No matter how it happened I think the motorcyclist will be screwed (perhaps not unfairly) by the legal system as hard as possible, which will only highlight how little punishment car drivers receive for killing motorcyclists and pedestrians.

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

And highlight the danger of this approach to speeding. Seems there's an imbalance to the risk/reward using this approach.

I haven't seen the US use this kind of approach since forever. The most dangerous I've seen is them on the side of the road, on the protected side of their car, step out and wave you down. Even then they'd be one step out, so they could step back. And since they often use laser, they had you 1/2 mile back - plenty of distance to wave you down safely and step back.

Too much speeding enforcement is high risk, for what, by statistics, isn't worth the reward. But municipalities love that sweet income - fines, court fees, required safety courses (for which you pay the state and a third party), increased insurance costs (so insurance companies lobby for increased enforcement, etc).

I've sat in court enough to watch how it works - it's a money-generating machine, judges plea down massive infractions, but your costs don't change much, you just don't lose your license or do jail time.

For example, a couple places I regularly drive through recently reduced their base speed limit in town to 20 mph from 25. I doubt most speedometers are even that accurate at those speeds (mine isn't, just because of the small graduations on the indicator, I could easily be doing 22 or 28 and not be able to tell). Interestingly, I've seen many more cops on side streets, where I used to see none. Clearly this is all about revenue. These are places where there's little pedestrian traffic (suburbs of large cities).