Through the agents of the Traffic Group of the Guardia Civil, as well as the rest of the local police officers who join it, the General Directorate of Traffic is launching a new specific control campaign focused on monitoring traffic speed as one of the key risk factors in road traffic incidents.
The objective of the campaign, which will run from today until next Sunday 23, is to control especially risky sections associated with speed, as well as those points where traffic exceeds the established limit and there is a high incident rate, all following the recommendations of the international and European Organisations that urge the agencies in charge of road safety in different countries to ensure that the established speed limits are complied with.
In view of its preventive nature, the existence of controls will be announced to drivers, either through variable message panels, or through circumstantial vertical signage when the road does not have such panels.
As this is a campaign also carried out at a European level by the RoadPol (European Roads Policing Network) association, surveillance will not only be carried out in Spain but in all the countries adhering to said association. Within it, the RoadPol Speed Marathon will be held on Friday the 21st, a speed control action throughout the European continent that this year celebrates its tenth edition and to which more than 14,900 traffic police officers joined last year from 19 countries that controlled more than 3,100,000 drivers at 10,500 checkpoints.
It is necessary to remember that inappropriate speed is the third most common contributing factor in traffic incidents, especially those with fatalities, with more than 251 cases in 2022.
It has been shown that speed not only affects the risk of being involved in a traffic incident, but also that the higher the speed, the more difficult it will be to react in time to prevent the incident and the more serious the injuries produced as a result of it will be.
European Baseline Project
The General Directorate of Traffic has recently presented the results of the European Baseline Project, a road safety program in which 18 countries have participated and with which it is intended to adequately monitor progress in road safety in member countries through 8 key performance indicators related to the behaviour of people, vehicles, infrastructure and post-incident care.
With regard to speed, in Spain the level of compliance with the established speed limit varies depending on the type of road. In the case of conventional roads, where the majority of incidents take place, compliance with the established speed limit is 43%, a low level, similar to that registered by Belgium (46%).
On urban roads with a 50km/h limit, the level of speed compliance by passenger cars is 65%, the third highest value of the 13 countries with which we share a limit.
For its part, on 30 km/h streets, the level of compliance is 32%, the highest value of the three countries for which data is available. It should also be noted that the average speed of cars in streets 30 is 11 km/h lower than that of streets 50 (36 versus 47 km/h), a difference that represents a great reduction in the risk of fatal collisions.
The Intelligent Speed Assistant as a helper
All vehicles approved since July 6, 2022, as well as those newly registered as of July 6, 2024, must have a series of advanced security functions, the so-called ADAS, among which is the Intelligent Speed Assistant (ISA).
This system, made up of the vehicle’s navigator, which shows the speed limit on the road on which it is driving, and a sign recognition system that complements digital cartography and detects temporary speed limits, helps the driver to know and respect speed limits, thus contributing to the improvement of road safety.
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