Speed is one of the main risk factors on the road. One in five traffic accidents with victims can be directly related to excessive speed, according to the General Directorate of Traffic (DGT), which emphasizes that the probability of dying or suffering serious permanent injuries is much greater in an accident with excessive speed. than in another with a more moderate speed.
One of the mechanisms that Traffic has at its disposal to control the speed of vehicles that circulate on its roads are radars. Currently, it has more than 400 active speedometers on the interurban roads managed by the organization -those in Catalonia and the Basque Country are excluded-, a figure that multiplies by 4 what it had in 2005. In parallel, the road accident figures have decreased progressively during these two decades.
In 2004, 3,841 deaths were recorded in road accidents on interurban roads. In 2022, this figure had been reduced to 1,273 people, that is, two-thirds less. “Fixed speed and average speed controls are very effective in reducing accidents,” says Ana Blanco, deputy deputy director of Traffic at the DGT, to the magazine Tráfico y Seguridad Vial.
The effectiveness of automatic speed controls in enhancing road safety has led the DGT to expand the network of fixed radars. Blanco confirms that the organization will intensify speed control over the next three years with the installation of 150 new speed meters.
The majority of these radars, 80%, will be placed on conventional roads and the rest on highways and highways. The location of the devices will take into account the accident criteria managed by Traffic.
Of the 150 new speedometers that the DGT is going to deploy on the roads it manages, 90 of them will be section ones and the rest will be fixed instantaneous speed radars. This confirms a trend that has been consolidating in traffic organizations in recent years, where the implementation of section radars has become an effective tool for speed control on roads.
Section radars, “the most effective”, according to Ana Blanco, calculate the average speed of each vehicle between two kilometer points on a road. They consist of two or more synchronized artificial vision cameras and are located at both ends of the section to be controlled.
The system calculates the time it takes a vehicle to travel the section and finds out the average speed. Cars that exceed the established speed limit are automatically penalized.
Before notifying the violation, Traffic verifies that all the required conditions are met: validity of the radar Metrology certificate, operation of the device, data of the violation, quality of the photograph, etc.
On Spanish roads (excluding Catalonia and the Basque Country) we can find 355 fixed speed cameras and 64 section speed cameras. Most of the devices - approximately 90% - are of the Doppler type, radars themselves that emit waves of microwaves against moving vehicles to calculate their speed.
The rest of the measuring equipment uses laser technology, which allows legible images to be captured in low light conditions, inside tunnels or even at night.
In addition to the fixed means of speed control on the roads, there are another 325 mobile radars operated by agents of the Traffic Group of the Civil Guard. In addition, the DGT Air Resources Unit has 11 helicopters equipped with Pegasus radars.
