If the State communicates each year the number of offenses recorded by the automatic speed cameras, it is extremely rare to have details on the very small excesses of speed, those which irritate the drivers so much. But in response to a parliamentarian, we now know the answer…
What a surprise, especially on the eve of a presidential election! In response to a written question formulated more than a year ago by a senator from Var, Françoise Dumont (LR), the Ministry of the Interior replied to her yesterday, Thursday April 21. However, this is a very sensitive issue since it concerns the smallest speeding offenses, those which have the gift of seriously irritating motorists, and therefore voters.
A category of offenses about which we do not know much, since if the State details each year the number of speeding violations noted, in particular by speed brackets (from 50 km/h and more, from 40 to 49 km /h, from 30 to 39 km/h, etc.), nothing is specified for those of less than 20 km/h except the distinction between those committed in town and those outside urban areas.
In 2020, for example, we knew that automatic speed cameras had precisely recorded 12,541,256 speeding violations, of which 94.8% were under 20 km/h (20.1% in town and 74.7% outside urban areas) . Yes, you read correctly : 95 speeds out of 100 are less than 20 km/h! On the other hand, no other precision for those corresponding to the few kilometers per hour too much, typical of the small moment of fatal inattention.
TO READ. Road safety. The 2020 review of automatic speed cameras
7.3 million mini-speedings
However, after learning about a double summer survey carried out among members of the Drivers’ Defense League on their perception of speed cameras and road safety, the senator took up the subject and officially questioned the government to find out the number of penalties for speeding between 1 and 5 km/h over the authorized speed (after deduction of the margin of error), this year by year since 2010, both in cities and outside built-up areas.
And against all expectations, therefore, the Ministry of the Interior has just responded to him, making this data public. We thus learn thatin 2020, nearly 7.3 million initial ticket notices were issued for speeding between 1 and 5 km/h by speed cameras:
- 1.44 million for excesses detected in urban areas
- 5.85 million outside urban areas.
Deducting, of course, the technical margin (- 5 km/h up to 100 km/h and – 5% beyond for a fixed speed camera; – 10 km/h up to 100 km/h and – 10 % beyond for a moving radar).
One out of 2 speeding less than 5 km/h
This therefore means that speeding violations of less than 5 km/h alone account for 58% of all speeding violations detected by automatic radars! Data that continues to grow slowly, since it was 52% ten years ago.
And this despite the sharp increase in excessive speeding observed in 2020:
- 35,970 greater than or equal to 50 km/h (+66% in the space of one year!),
- 35,353 from 40 to 49 km/h (+36%)
- 116,565 from 30 to 39 km/h (+21%).
Too bad that these figures only arrive between the two rounds of the presidential election. If they had arrived a few weeks earlier, there is no doubt that the controversy over the penalty for minor speeding offenses would have come back to the surface! In particular to ask for a lighter sentence for these small offenses, such as the non-loss of points mentioned many times in the past.
