Northern Ireland Speed Camera Report Contains Two Errors in Its Year-on-Year Calculations

Northern Ireland's Road Safety Partnership recorded 87,443 detections in 2025, the highest total in its published series. That was 3,439 more than the 84,004 recorded in 2024 — an increase of approximately 4.1%. The largest contribution came from mobile speed cameras: 86,628 detections. Average-speed cameras recorded a further 815.

The figures tell an important story about the machinery of enforcement. They do not tell the whole story about behaviour. The partnership's annual report explains that fixed speed cameras and red-light-running cameras have not operated since 2024 and that their future use is under review. A driver might assume that all camera types contribute to the modern total; the published figures show otherwise.

The longer history is dramatic. In 2004, the partnership recorded 11,291 detections across the listed categories. By 2025 the total had increased more than sevenfold. But attributing that change entirely to worsening driving would overlook changes in the enforcement system. The partnership identifies several influential changes, including different speed-detection thresholds, additional sites, the civilianisation of mobile camera van operation, staffing effects and camera technology upgrades.

The 2025 records also contain extraordinary examples. The Road Safety Partnership says its highest measured speed was 123 mph in a 45 mph limit. Separately, PSNI officers detected a vehicle travelling at 143 mph on the southbound M2 near Rathbeg, where the limit was 70 mph. Those examples are striking, but they are extremes and should not be presented as typical driving.

Excessive speed nevertheless remains a serious safety issue. The PSNI reports that excessive speed featured as a principal or contributory factor in 11 of Northern Ireland's 53 fatal collisions in 2025. Seven were recorded as principally attributable to excessive speed and four had speed as a contributory factor. This is roughly one in five fatal collisions.

There is a useful distinction between speed measured by cameras and speed regarded by investigators as inappropriate to conditions. A driver can be below a posted limit yet travel too quickly for a wet road, poor visibility, a bend or approaching traffic. Conversely, a recorded camera detection is a count of enforcement events and not an independently measured rate of speeding across the whole road network.

An anomaly in the published statistics: PureCar’s source check identified an arithmetic inconsistency in the Road Safety Partnership’s 2025 report. The table lists 84,004 for 2024 and 87,443 for 2025, correctly implying an increase of 3,439, but the same table prints 3,639 in its change column. The table also prints a 4,530 increase for mobile cameras although 86,628 minus 82,298 equals 4,330. The report’s accompanying text gives the correct increases. The discrepancy warrants clarification from the PSNI statistics branch.

The reported arithmetic error, shown transparently

| Camera measure | 2024 | 2025 | Correct subtraction | Printed change in report | |---|---:|---:|---:|---:| | All partnership detections | 84,004 | 87,443 | +3,439 | +3,639 | | Mobile-camera detections | 82,298 | 86,628 | +4,330 | +4,530 |

Both errors are in the change column of the published 2025 Partnership table; the report's prose gives the correct changes. These comparisons establish a publication inconsistency, not that the underlying annual detection totals were falsified. PureCar can demonstrate the subtraction from the published values. No reply from the PSNI is represented as having been obtained.

What happened to the 87,443 detections?

The Road Safety Partnership reports 45,332 speed awareness courses (52%), 36,464 fixed penalty notices (42%), and 5,647 referrals for prosecution (6%). These figures describe enforcement outcomes recorded in its statistical report; they are not a claim about the number of unique drivers caught or about final court convictions. The rounded percentages add to 100%, and the three outcome counts add exactly to 87,443.

Mobile vans registered 86,628 detections, making up roughly 99.1% of the Partnership total; average-speed systems accounted for 815, roughly 0.9%. Van deployments rose slightly from 8,017 in 2024 to 8,062 in 2025. Detections per deployment are a rough descriptive indicator, not a reliable enforcement effectiveness measure: deployments differ in duration, traffic and location. Still, the combination immediately poses a better question than 'Are cameras catching more people?' — *what proportion of the additional detections reflects coverage, technology, geography or actual driving behaviour?*

Local camera evidence: Hillsborough, Anahilt and Ravernet Road

A published PSNI information response recorded 340 mobile-camera deployments and 3,850 detections at sites in Hillsborough and Anahilt across 2023 and 2024. It also recorded 1,110 deployments and 9,239 detections in the combined South Armagh, West Belfast and Tyrone grouping over the same period. These broad groups cannot be treated as individual-road rankings.

A separate response reported 106 deployments and 463 speeding offences on Ravernet Road between 1 October 2022 and 30 September 2025. The disclosed speed bands were 241 detections at 30–39 mph, 211 at 40–49 mph and 11 at 50–59 mph. These are detected speeds, not all passing traffic, and the offence threshold and site conditions matter when interpreting them.

Another disclosure recorded 2,817 detections across a requested group of five mobile-camera sites around Carryduff, Anahilt, Lisburn and Royal Hillsborough between June 2024 and June 2025. These groupings overlap in place and time; their totals must not be added to claim an NI-wide figure.

The striking feature is not merely the number caught. Official disclosures show that the detailed, location-specific data exists. The unanswered question is whether enforcement is clustered at places with known serious-injury problems and whether the safety outcomes change following sustained activity.

Two measures that tell very different stories

Using the published totals, detections per reported van deployment were approximately 10.5 in 2024 (82,298 divided by 8,017) and 10.7 in 2025 (86,628 divided by 8,062). These ratios are PureCar calculations, not an official speeding rate; no consistent deployment-duration or traffic-exposure denominator is supplied. What they do establish is that the number of recorded detections rose faster than the modest increase in van deployments.

Mobile speed enforcement captured about 99.1% of the reported 2025 detections. That should change how the story is framed. For practical purposes the 2025 total is a report about mobile camera operations, not a balanced comparison of all the camera technologies Northern Ireland has ever used.