Skip to main content

French authorities start sending road fines to Belgians

French authorities have started sending fines to Belgian citizens for road traffic violations observed in France using roadside speed cameras. Foreigners account for more than 20 per cent of road traffic violations in France but up until recently there was no mechanism for taking action against them once they had returned to their home country. In June 2012, Belgium opened its car registration database to the French, Spanish and German authorities so that violators can be traced and fined.
August 8, 2012 Read time: 1 min
French authorities have started sending fines to Belgian citizens for road traffic violations observed in France using roadside speed cameras. Foreigners account for more than 20 per cent of road traffic violations in France but up until recently there was no mechanism for taking action against them once they had returned to their home country. In June 2012, Belgium opened its car registration database to the French, Spanish and German authorities so that violators can be traced and fined.

Related Content

  • Chile looks to replicate French speed camera system
    April 3, 2012
    Chile's Public Transport Minister, Pedro Pablo Errazuriz, has announced that the government is looking to replicate the successful speed camera system that is used in France. The system captures photos of speeding cars and then sends out letters to offenders, issuing them with a fine within two days of the offence. This has enabled France to dramatically improve the safety of its roads, reducing the number of road deaths from an average of 8,000 per year in 2003 to an estimated 4,000 in 2012. The cameras ar
  • Smoothing out city freight movements
    May 28, 2014
    David Crawford welcomes a national first. Urban freight movements, while commercially and socially vital, are a growing logistical headache for planners and people alike. Figures from France’s Lyon Laboratory of Transport Economics indicate that goods transport in major urban areas accounts for: 20% of traffic; 35% of CO2 emissions made by all urban trips; and 50% of the diesel used; while final km delivery runs account for 20% of the total cost of the transport chain.
  • Monitoring and transparency preserve enforcement's reputation
    July 30, 2012
    What can be done to preserve automated enforcement's reputation in the face of media and public criticism? Here, system manufacturers and suppliers talk about what they think are the most appropriate business models. Recent events in Italy only served to once again to push automated enforcement into the media spotlight. At the heart of the matter were the numerous alleged instances of local authorities and their contract suppliers of enforcement services colluding to illegally shorten amber signal phase tim
  • Enforcement comes in many guises
    June 22, 2016
    Colin Sowman looks at some enforcement case studies from around the world. It is a sad fact of life that unenforced laws are not adhered to by a sometimes sizable proportion of the public and once enforcement is seen to be lacking, some drivers can take this to extremes and authorities must decide how to regain control.