Traffic
Additional personnel at the federal police should soon make it possible to process up to nine million traffic violations annually. This means that speed cameras along regional roads and mobile speed cameras can continuously register violations.
At the end of last year, the De Croo government provided more money for the federal police to enable additional investments in better road safety. In the House, Minister of the Interior Annelies Verlinden (CD&V) made these investments concrete. The extra budget will be used to recruit dozens of extra people in the Regional Processing Centers of the federal police, among other things. The majority of traffic fines are processed there.
When the workforce is complete, it will employ 187 people. According to Verlinden, the processing capacity will then increase “to almost nine million violations”. That is an average of 1,000 fines per hour. “Today the processing capacity of those centers is limited to 5 million violations per year,” said Verlinden’s answer to questions from Vlaams Belang MP Ortwin Depoortere.
Some local police forces process their own traffic fines. In 2022, all Belgian police forces together issued 6.2 million speeding violations. Complete figures are not yet known for 2023.
Zero tolerance
Minister Verlinden says that by significantly increasing the capacity of the Regional Processing Center, many local section controls can finally be activated in Flanders. “And we will also apply more zero tolerance on local roads.”
Today there is already a so-called zero tolerance for speed on motorways. This means that fixed speed cameras along highways always flash. Moreover, they do so without using a large margin. In the past, a speed camera only operated every few hours for a certain period and, for example, it only flashed at speeds above 140 km per hour. This way, the police and the judiciary could stay on top of the pile of traffic fines.
But that system has been a thing of the past along motorways for some time now, and the intention is to introduce the same zero tolerance along regional roads this year. According to Verlinden, the additional processing capacity will also allow the federal police’s mobile speed camera equipment (mainly used for speed checks along motorways) to be set to the same zero tolerance in 2024.
According to experts, stricter speed controls are urgently needed. In 2022, 540 people died on Belgian roads and 54,000 people were seriously injured. We are doing a lot worse than our neighboring countries.
13 billion euros
To criticism that the government uses speeding fines as an easy source of income, Verlinden previously responded “that at least 150 deaths and 550 serious injuries could be avoided every year if everyone respected the speed limits.”
Moreover, the proceeds from traffic fines do not outweigh the social costs of the many traffic accidents. The Vias safety institute estimates this to be a total of around 13 billion euros per year for our country, with the cost of a traffic fatality estimated at 7 million euros.
