A LONG-RUNNING and hotly contested GoSafe speeding prosecution finally reached its conclusion at Tuam District Court when a prosecution Garda Sergeant admitted it was a 50/50 case.
Garda Sgt Christy Browne said the issue boiled down to whether the GoSafe van clocked the defendant going into Kilkerrin village or coming out. The GoSafe operator had informed him that he was clocked going in.
However, he added that he had looked at the GoSafe pictures and they were only of the number plate of the car so he couldn’t say if it was coming or going - so in his view this was a 50/50 case.
“Well if it’s a 50/50 ball then Mr Collins gets the bounce and I’m striking it out,” Judge James Faughnan said.
Padraic Collins, Scregg, Kilkerrin, Ballinasloe had persistently insisted that he could not possibly have broken the 50kph village speed limit in place from a standing start, as was claimed by the GoSafe operator. However when the case was called yet again at Tuam Court on September 8 Sgt Browne said the operators had told him Collins was coming in to the village and could have been breaking the speed limit.
Collins argued at one of his previous hearings that he pulled out from a premises 25 metres from where the van was operating. He was aware it was there and he was only going a short distance before he turned down the Graveyard Road.
His BMW was only capable of going from 0 to 60kph in 7.6 seconds and he didn’t travel the distance to get higher than the 50kph speed limit.
He produced documentation which he told Judge Faughnan would support his case and offered to present this to him.
However, the Judge told him that it was prosecuting Garda Sgt Christy Brown that needed to see this, not him.
On examining the documents Sgt Brown said: “All this is just a Google map with a couple of squiggles drawn on it.”
He added that Collins had drawn a square on the map to indicate the premises where he said he was coming from. However, he added “there’s a lot of road behind that square.”
But he pointed out that the premises in question was Mee’s pub and if the pub CCTV was available it might clarify where Collins started his journey from and this might be presented as independent evidence.
Judge Faughnan thought this was a good idea but Sgt Brown said that the onus was on the defendant’s solicitor to source this evidence, not the Gardaí.
In the event the long-running saga was concluded without the production of any footage.
