From 2025, new regions will be affected by the deployment of 126 radar cars, entrusted to private parties. Here’s where you’re likely to come across them.
New generation mobile radars (RMNG) called radar cars have been deployed in France since 2013, with the aim of reducing the risk of road accidents. They make it possible to “detect, without visible flash and while driving, all speeding vehicles”specifies the road safety site.
They mainly target drivers responsible for excessive speeding, above a certain limit. Thus, taking into account the “technical margin” of 10 km/h for limits below 100 km/h and 10% for those above 100 km/h, the motorist is flashed at 146 km/h on the highway, 124 km/h on the expressway and 61 km/h in town.
In 2018, radar cars were deployed in Normandy in a privatized manner, that is to say that drivers dressed in civilian clothes, and not police officers or gendarmes, drive them. These are generally models such as the Peugeot 208, Renault Mégane, Dacia Sandero, VW Passat or Skoda Octavia, equipped with an infrared camera which automatically records speeding offenders.
These radar cars were gradually deployed until 2020 in Brittany, Pays de la Loire and Center-Val de Loire, then the following year in Grand-Est, Hauts-de-France, Burgundy. Franche-Comté and New Aquitaine.
According to a call for tenders published at the end of June 2024 by the government, three new regions should welcome them from the start of 2025, with 126 vehicles which will travel the roads of three new regions, or 31 departments. This is the south-east of France with the regions of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur and Occitanie.