If you are caught on your speed, this can usually be done in three ways. Either an awake cop catches you in the act, but most often you get a fine on the bus that can be the work of either a speed camera or an average speed check. The former is then based on a snapshot, while an average speed checker measures your speed over a longer distance and takes the average. In France, however, they have now discovered that the latter method is less efficient, at least for the state treasury.
Camp trajectory control vs. camp flash camera
The organization ’40 Millions d’Automobilistes’, which represents the interests of — you guessed it — French motorists, has in fact sued that France wants to exchange its average speed checks for speed cameras. According to them, the ‘Sécurité Routière’ did not so much decide to benefit road safety, but rather because speed cameras are more profitable. Such an individual camera, for example, would be good for an average of 14,000 fines per year, while a route check would hold up to 5,000 fines, even though those installations require a lot of maintenance. That, according to ’40 millions d’Automobilistes’, is proof that the state primarily imposes fines to bring in more money.
Of course, the whole issue opens up a deeper discussion, because there must be a reason for such a big difference in the statistics. You could say that speed cameras apparently do their job better when it comes to catching speeders. On the other hand, you can also see the figures as proof that a snapshot does not tell the full story, because seen over a longer process, there appears to be much less going on.
So the choice is yours, Autofans: are you camp speed control, or camp speed camera?
