A new decree now authorizes speed cameras to fine up to 15 different offenses. Enough to pave the way for ultimate devices at the cutting edge of technology. You will not escape their vigilance!
Be careful to respect the Highway Code when you take your vehicle! Not only can this save you and those driving around you from serious accidents, but it would also be a shame to have points taken off your license and have to pay fines. And to ensure this, the Government can count on radars, which are constantly improving – like turret radars – in order to catch careless motorists. Suffice it to say that violations of the Highway Code are going less and less unnoticed! Moreover, a new decree was published in the Official Journal last July to add two new offenses that can be punished by automatic radars, increasing the total number of offenses that can be fined from thirteen to fifteen.
This summer’s decree added two offenses that can be monitored by radar. Thus, they can now check compliance with the weight limits of vehicles or combinations of vehicles, but also sanction vehicles traveling normally on the left side of a two-way road. These two new offenses are therefore added to the thirteen which could already be controlled by these devices. In total, according to article R130-11 of the Highway Code, the radars will therefore be able to check the following fifteen points:
- Wearing a seat belt
- Using the phone while driving
- The use of lanes and roadways reserved for certain categories of vehicles
- Traffic on emergency lanes
- Respecting safety distances between vehicles
- Crossing and overlapping continuous lines
- Respecting red lights and stop signs
- Respecting the direction of traffic
- Compliance with the maximum authorized speed
- Engaging in an intersection or in the space between the two stop lines
- Wearing a helmet for two-wheelers
- The validity of vehicle insurance
- The noise emission level of two-wheelers
- The weight limit of the vehicle or combination of vehicles
- The circulation of a vehicle moving normally on the left part of a two-way roadway
However, no radar in France is currently capable of monitoring all of these offenses at the same time. In the United Kingdom, an experiment has been underway for several months, with a radar which, combining video surveillance and artificial intelligence, photographs the interior of vehicles. In our territory, the only model of true “multifunction” radar is the METSA Fusion 2, which was installed in 2018. It is a turret capable, when placed at an intersection, of measuring up to eight different offenses: excessive speed, failure to obey a red light, failure to respect safety distances, unauthorized overtaking, driving on a prohibited lane, speed too slow as well as failure to comply with the ban on turning right or to the left. Above all, this super radar can simultaneously control up to thirty-two vehicles in its field of vision! But this is the current maximum. Given technological progress, both in detection (camera, sensors), analysis (notably with AI) and calculation, it is therefore entirely possible that an “ultimate radar”, capable of measuring the fifteen offenses on the list, arrives one day on French soil. But it’s not for now…