A new radar is arriving on our roads and is causing confusion among motorists.
The video, published at the end of August, has been viewed more than 1.6 million times on TikTok. Posted on the account of axxis01 – an Internet user who posts a lot of car-related content – it shows a small box fixed halfway up an electricity pole located along a busy road bordered by fields. We quickly realize that the equipment has nothing to do with an installation by Enedis – the country’s main electricity supplier – since we can see two small cameras facing the road. Enough to make us wonder about the function of this new type of radar.
Under the video commented on nearly 3,000 times, opinions diverge. Section radar – to establish the average speed over a certain distance –, license plate reader to detect stolen cars, camera to control the passage of heavy goods vehicles on a toll road… Hypotheses are flying among Internet users. Others prefer to simply complain about discovering a new way to charge motorists and some even suggest cutting the electrical wires to “unplug” the device.
A sign indicating the presence of speed checks over 22 kilometers, filmed by our Tiktoker at the very beginning of the video, instills even more doubt about the function of this new radar. Could these tiny cameras be capable of measuring the speed of the vehicles they overlook like traditional radars? Our colleagues at TF1 carried out a search on the government website which lists all the speed radars installed in France. And there is no device of this kind on this road which they identified as the departmental road 6009 which crosses the town of La Palme, south of Narbonne.
A priori, these would be cameras called “Lapi”, for automatic license plate readers. Increasingly widespread on our roads, they are used by the authorities to identify stolen or uninsured vehicles, to measure road traffic on certain sections or to check parking payments… Motorists used to using this departmental road in the south of France can breathe easy (the many Internet users who reacted to the video too): this small box is not intended to detect speeding.