Galway Bay fm newsroom - There's been a major increase in speed offences recorded across the city.
The matter arose at today's meeting of the City Joint Policing Committee - which heard figures have more than doubled compared to this time last year.
In the year to the end of October, there's been 5,712 speeding offences recorded by Gardai within the city boundaries.
That's a rise of almost 150 percent on the figure of 2,348 recorded this time last year.
At this week's meeting of the City Joint Policing Committee, Superintendent Tom Curley said the blame for the enormous increase lies with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Less traffic, he reasoned, allowed drivers to open-up on the roads, in many instances at times or places where such speed wouldn't even be possible under normal circumstances.
Elsewhere, and there was a downward trend in most other road statistics.
Figures for those driving without insurance, drink-driving, breaking traffic lights and parking offences are all significantly down compared to this time last year.
Superintendent Tom Curley also spoke of the issue of drink and drug driving, stating that in the case of the latter, cannabis and cocaine are the most common drugs involved with such offences.
He also noted that drink-drivers, in most cases, are not 'hard luck' stories of people caught slightly over the limit - but drivers being four or five times over the legal limit.
