Automobile club Luxembourg

Automatic speed cameras and road safety

The ACL has highlighted the complexity of problems relating to road safety on many occasions, notably distinguishing preventive elements from repressive elements. The latter include the automated control and sanctioning (CSA) systems provided by the law of 25^th July 2015, which have come to dominate and will further dominate Luxembourg’s road network in the future. With this in mind, we would like to reiterate the ACL’s philosophy with regards to radars in the context of the ACL’s statutes that state that the organisation aims to defend its members’ interests, particularly with regards to mobility, but also to support any initiative designed to improve road safety.
The legal framework states that the CSA system uses automatic devices to identify and record breaches of traffic legislation regarding the following offences:

• Exceeding the regulatory speed limit,

• Failing to observe a red or flashing red light,

• Failing to maintain an appropriate difference from the vehicle in front outside of urban areas,

• Driving on the hard shoulder, a part of the road reserved for other users or a closed lane.

For the time being, only the offence of exceeding the maximum regulatory speed limit is recorded.
The ACL is not opposed to the use of such speed cameras if they help to improve road safety. This being the case, we would like to reiterate the following points:

• Since speed cameras are just one of the many tools that can be used to improve road safety, they should only be installed if they are found to be the best or only option to a specific safety issue in a specific location, to be determined objectively.

• Speed cameras cannot be considered an alternative to investing in infrastructure and prevention, which we believe to be vital to improving safety, and accidentology analyses that impartially determine the cause of an accident must be used to help identify preventive measures,

• Speed cameras cannot be used as a tool for political communication or a way of boosting the State’s finances, and their location must be determined by a ‘safety audit’ working group and reviewed at regular intervals.

With regards to existing speed cameras and plans to introduce new ones, the ACL would like to reiterate the following points:

• Current tolerance margins are insufficient and lower than those applied in other countries and must be revised; a tolerance margin of 5km/h or 5% would be more appropriate.

• The values of fines are inconsistent with the risks incurred and must be modified; travelling at 4km/h over the speed limit in a 70km/h zone, for example, incurs the same penalty (€49) as travelling 23km/h over the speed limit in a 50km/h zone.

• Future ‘red light cameras’ require even more in-depth analysis when it comes to justifying their existence and the actual risks incurred in failing to observe a traffic light; whilst the aim is to improve the flow of the traffic, better synchronisation of traffic lights would undoubtedly result in a more significant improvement in the current situation.

• Last but not least, the ‘average speed’ project has also attracted criticism for a number of reasons (notably the fact that users who are not committing any offences are also recorded and the breach of privacy that this represents) and the ACL does not support this method.

We are not yet aware of any government plans to monitor distances between vehicles travelling in the same direction, despite the fact that this issue of distance appears to us to be a real problem when it comes to road safety.
With this in mind, the ACL will continue to work with political leaders to improve safety on our roads whilst protecting the interests of its members in the case of public initiatives that we deem inappropriate, ineffective or disproportionate to the actual problems we face with regards to road safety.

Road map with the locations of fixed radars (geoportail.lu)

 

Nr sur la carte	Emplacement
1	N12 Emeschbach
2	N7 Dorscheid
5	N14 Stegen
7	N10 Steinheim
8	N7 Rouscht
12	CR101 Schoenfels
13	N28 Pleitreng
14	N5 Niderterhaff
15	N13 Welfrange
16	N7 Lipperscheid
18	N8 Reckange
19	N10 Schmetterwier
20	N24 Oberpallen
22	N11 Gonderange
23	N13 Garnich
25	N3 Schlammestee
27	N10 Hettermillen
34	B7/A7 Schieren
35	N15 Heiderscheidergrund
45	A4/B4 Merl
53	N8 Saeul
54	CR118 Mersch
62	A4 Raemerich
66	B40 – liaison Micheville

 

The Highway Code in Luxembourg provides specific speeds for different types of roads and the possibility of introducing derogations:

Code de la route : la vitesse (in French)