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Nouveaux radars high-tech in France

France has set out some changes to traffic controls in a budget plan for the coming year 2025. The country wants to rely on modern speed traps that are not only designed to record speeding offences. This will affect all 4160 fixed speed cameras in France, as well as a few hundred speed cameras that will be converted. France wants to implement this with the help of artificial intelligence so that these offences can also be punished by speed cameras. A total of 46,3 million euros has been budgeted for this. On the one hand for the maintenance of existing speed cameras, and on the other for the construction of new speed cameras. France would like to be able to better control the distance regulation, as this has increasingly occurred in recent times. Mobile phone use at the wheel should also be better prevented. Another aspect is the seatbelt requirement, which is to be monitored.

If you don't follow the traffic rules to the letter in France, you can quickly be fined at least 135 euros. The new device would be able to summarise all traffic offences at once and thus punish them. That can be expensive.

It is estimated that this is already expected, as this point is already included in the budget. The costs for issuing fines, postage and printing will increase in any case, according to the budget.

The French automobile club ‘40 millions d'automobilistes’ criticises this approach. In fact, they suspect a huge government rip-off behind it in order to possibly replenish the state budget. According to the automobile club, this will have no real impact on traffic. The whole thing would rather serve the pursuit of greater financial interests.

It is unclear whether Germany will quickly copy this approach. The speed traps and measuring devices cannot be retrofitted so quickly without further ado, especially as the money for this would have to be available in the first place, which of course also requires some planning.

The technical requirements are too different, for example, and there is a double induction loop in the carriageway for detecting red light violations. And the distance has so far only been measured on motorways, by police patrols at points where there are special markings on the road. Furthermore, the recording of mobile phone use by measuring devices is problematic in Germany due to data protection laws. A ‘mobile phone speed camera’ used in the Netherlands has been successfully tested in Rhineland-Palatinate since June 2022, first in Trier and then in Mainz. However, both the Police Act and the Regulatory Authorities Act would have to be amended in certain areas in order to continue to implement this in a legally secure manner. This process cannot and will not work too quickly either.

However, the Netherlands, for example, relies on recording mobile phone use at the wheel and was able to catch some drivers using mobile phones at the wheel last year thanks to the measuring devices.

 

Source: Pixabay/speed-camera-5279648_1280