The Irish Mitsubishi FTO Owners Club

was headding over to my friends GF's house with my him (him in hte celica me in the FTO)

we took off fairly hard but when we hit the speed limit we let off.

continuing down the road he pulls into the hard shoulder completely and i overtake (not passing the white line at all) he pulls back out and we continue on.

at this point an unmarked car flyies up his hole and we spot it right away andcontinue driving along as normal
about 1km further down he flyies past my friend and pulls me...

goes through the usual speal and now says hes issuing me with 4 penelty points and 140 euro fine

speeding & dangerous driving.
they had no speed camera, we were both doing the same speeds, etc. but i got a all the hard end of the stick.

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Another case of traffic corps acting the &*^%
The 2 gards in the car,
no speed camera (i asked for proof and he changed the topic to my air filter)
and is overtaking somone whos in the hard shoulder counted as dangerous driving?

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I Hope its jsut them trying to scair me, iv been driving 3 years now with no points and would love to keep it that way.

anything about speeding but i deffo dont want to call my insurance company and say.... "hey i got done for dangerous driving"

To be honest dan I cant see how they can pull you for speeding as they have to have a camera, how did they gauge what speed you were doing? They have to be stationary and have to be recording it. Dangerous driving could be a different thing but you're perfectly entitled to pass someone if they're in a hard shoulder, thats what its there for, unless it had something like 'Garda Only' marked in it which I've seen the odd time but they usually have a lay-by and not a shoulder. I'm no expert on the legalities of it but I def think you cant get done for speeding and as long as you didnt act the mick while overtaking then they shouldnt be able to do much for the dangerous driving either.

From behind it might have looked like you intimidated the celica into pulling over.

Ah good point Bernard! Seeing as they didnt pull him over thats a possiblility. Did he pull in when they stopped you or keep driving Dan?

how do you go about contesting stuff like this?

i got onto my other halfs sister (whos a gard) who said they have to show you the camera or whatever. but if ya dont ask ya dont have to. the fact is i did. but i was so uppity over the points that i didnt know where i stood.

i was curtious and as polite as i could and when he asked me to drop in my NCT to the local gards station along with insurance in the next 10 days and iexplained that i wouldnt be able to do that as my date is set for a good bit in the future. to which he replied ok ill give you a bit longer.

Has this gard jsut done a really good job of scaring me to drive like a granny all day or am i going to get myself a nice goverment issue letter?

they're definately on the prowl these days - was talking to a colleague today - two of his mates got done for having a bit of a race last night.

They were essentially driving along at excessive speeds when next thing they know there's an unmarked car behind them.. and one in front!

Both got pulled over and allegedly they're both getting summoned for dangerous driving..

Morale of both this and Dans incident is:
Messing about on public roads is bad, keep it on the track - regardless of how harmless it might seem to you. The Garda don't take kindly to "messin'" these days..

And of course another incentive is that ones less likely to be in the news:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0519/rta.html
I don't know what they were doing - but that road is pretty straight forward..

the celica pulled in too and one of the first questions i was asked was.... do i know the driver behind.... which i replied yes