Just 1 CulmoreRoad crash due to speed

The Culmore Road is one of a number of specific locations in Londonderry where there are more speeding detections than almost anywhere else in Northern Ireland.

Londonderry motorists were caught speeding by PSNI safety cameras on 8,465 separate occasions in 2010/11 - 18 per cent of the NI total that year.

Incredibly, a whopping 12 per cent of detections were on just two stretches of road in Londonderry’s Waterside suggesting we have more speeding motorists than anywhere else or that local road police are more diligent in detecting speeding motorists than anywhere else.

But the Sentinel can now reveal that despite or perhaps because of accounting for 4.8 per cent of all speed detections in 2010/11 there have been hardly any accidents due to speed on the Culmore Road.

The PSNI revealed the lack of speed-induced accidents in response to a Londonderry speeder who asked the police for details of the number of fixed penalty notices issued “from your ‘normal’ spot at the bottom of A2 Culmore Road, Londonderry ie along the spot where I was caught doing 39 miles per hour in a 30miles per hour zone.”

The PSNI revealed that there were 1,273 fixed penalty notices issued between 2009 and 2011.

“The total number of Fixed Penalty Notices issued from site 911, A2 Culmore Rd opposite Kingsfort Park, Londonderry are as follows:

In 2009 the total was 274, in 2010 the total was 382 and in 2011 the total number was 617,” the PSNI stated in response to an FOI request.

But despite the heavy concentration of speeding detections and fixed penalty notices issued there was just one collision attributed to excess speed over the past five years.

“From April 1, 2006 to March 31, 2011, there have been a total of 12 Personal Injury Collisions on the A2 Culmore Road, from the Culmore Road Roundabout to the Pennyburn Roundabout.

“From these collisions a total of one has been attributed to ‘Excess Speed with regards to Conditions,’” the PSNI stated.