France targets speeding drivers

The first of three hundred cars carrying speed camera systems are due to start operations on France’s roads on 15 March in around twenty regions. Installed in an ordinary-looking Renault Megane is a new-generation speed camera built into the dashboard with a vehicle detector radar behind the licence plate. Each is capable of detecting speeding vehicles and photographing them, without flash, while on the move at motorway speeds. Although unmarked cars are used, the officers driving them will still be in uni
February 28, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
The first of three hundred cars carrying speed camera systems are due to start operations on France’s roads on 15 March in around twenty regions.

Installed in an ordinary-looking 2453 Renault Megane is a new-generation speed camera built into the dashboard with a vehicle detector radar behind the licence plate.  Each is capable of detecting speeding vehicles and photographing them, without flash, while on the move at motorway speeds.

Although unmarked cars are used, the officers driving them will still be in uniform and for the initial period only drivers who overtake the unmarked car will be penalised.

The cars will also only target high-speed drivers, according to senior Sécurité Routière official Aurélien Wattez, who said they were aimed at motorists who ignored restrictions everywhere except where there were road-side cameras. They are set to catch drivers speeding at more than ten per cent above the road’s limit, above 143 km/h on the bulk of French motorways.

It is intended to bring in three hundred equipped vehicles over the next three years in a bid to cut road deaths, with excess speed blamed for twenty-six per cent of fatal road accidents in 2012, around 1,000 deaths.
Enforcement

Related Content

  • New ANPR solutions overcome variables
    May 18, 2018
    The sheer range of variables makes it difficult to find a single algorithm to ensure a 100% standard of ANPR. David Crawford investigates new processing technology. Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), using optical character recognition and image-processing to identify vehicles, plays key roles in traffic monitoring and law enforcement, access and parking control, electronic toll collection, vehicle security and crime deterrence. Overall, system performance is well rated, with high levels of
    Read More
  • Automating enforcement of environmental zones
    July 27, 2012
    Amsterdam City Council has chosen to move away from manual enforcement of its environmental zone, which is intended to keep highly polluting goods vehicles out of the city centre, and is installing an automated, ANPR-based system. The signs are not much to look at: white with a red circle and the all-important word Milieuzone ('Environmental zone'). But these signs mean that Amsterdam's city centre is strictly off-limits to polluting goods traffic. At the moment compliance is monitored by special wardens wh
    Read More
  • Loop detection still has a part in traffic management
    March 2, 2012
    Bob Lees, co-founder of Diamond Consulting Services, on why the loop detector just refuses to go away. The more strident proponents of newer and emergent detection technologies are quick to highlight what they see as the disadvantages, and hence the imminent passing, of the humble inductive loop. The more prosaic will acknowledge that loops continue to have a part to play in traffic management, falling back on the assertion that it is all a question of application. And yet year after year the loop, despite
    Read More
  • Big data and GPS combine to cut emergency response times
    April 2, 2014
    David Crawford looks at technologies for better emergency medical service delivery. Emergency medical services (EMS) play key roles in transporting, or bringing treatment to, patients who become ill through medical emergencies or are injured in road traffic accidents (RTAs). But awareness has been rising steadily, in the US and elsewhere, of the extent to which EMS can generate their own emergencies. The most common cause is vehicles causing or becoming involved in RTAs, as a result of driving fast under pr
    Read More

Highlighted Content