Traffic agents of the Unified Association of Civil Guards (AUGC) do not hide their discontent with the management of the current Director General of Traffic, Pere Navarro. They consider that many of the measures that are being put in place have “a collection effort” and explain why, in their opinion, the DGT is promoting the use of section radars.
“The DGT is putting the technical means first and, in second place, the traffic agents”, they affirm from the association (which has recently launched a survey on Twitter that confirms the support of drivers for this sentence).
The lack of traffic agents puts road safety more at risk than exceeding the margin to overtake on secondary roads by 20 km/h
1. They are cheaper
Section speed cameras work differently from conventional kinemometers (fixed and mobile).
- The section radars have a system of cameras that, located at the beginning and the end of a section of road of several kilometers, calculate the average speed of the vehicles during the journey and penalize those that circulate above the established speed limit .
- Conventional kinemometers measure speed through radio waves. By sending an electromagnetic wave, it collides with moving objects, that is, vehicles, and they bounce back until they return to the speed radar itself. Based on the sound of this return wave, the radars are able to determine the speed at which a vehicle is traveling. This phenomenon is what is known as the Doppler effect.
For what interests us today, this translates into a much lower acquisition and maintenance price for section speed meters.
According to the specifications published by the DGT when buying new cinemometers, the average price is around 75,000 euros for fixed and sectional ones. The value of buying a section radar is lower.
2. They reduce the resources of fines
The elimination of the margin of 20 km/h to overtake on secondary roads has been, in the opinion of AUGC, a maneuver to increase the effectiveness of the speed cameras and, above all, reduce resources to the fines that they impose.
“Until now, a driver could claim that the section radar had detected speeding because during those kilometers he had exceeded the speed allowed to overtake one or more vehicles; with the new rule, there is no possibility of appeal,” they explain.
Missing agents and material
In statements to autobild.es, active traffic agents have lamented that the DGT prioritizes the use of technical means over human means.
Not only that, they denounce that the lack of agents and means to work is increasingly pronounced. They affirm that they are not only forced to substitute part of the uniformity by their own means, but that while the DGT announces alcohol and/or drug surveillance campaigns, the reality is that there are not enough measurement tests to carry them out.
