2023-05-14 04:00:00
Bad surprise for Angélique who has been making the same journey for 20 years to get to work. A radar-section has been installed in her path, but it is not regulated in the way she imagined.
Angélique takes the same route every day to get to her work, located in Flanders. 14 kilometers that she travels in regarding twenty minutes. But recently, she received a shower of fines, the fault of a new, very Belgian story.
“I first received 4 PV at home. I received them on March 26 and the last was on the 14th. I thought that between the 14th and the 26th, two weeks ago, so I will surely still receive minutes. And indeed, I received five last week”, says Angelique. The addition is very salty: “I have more than 600 euros“.
At the origin of these reports, a newly installed radar section. But, the reason is also and above all to be found in a difference in the highway code when the linguistic border is crossed.
In effect, “since 2017, speed limits outside built-up areas have been regionalized“, explains Benoit Godart of the VIAS institute for road safety.
Since that date, the Flemish nationals are limited to 70 km / h where they are 90 km / h in Wallonia. “I had seen that they put cameras, but I thought they were surveillance cameras. It was a colleague who told me that it was a section radar and that the road is at 70 and not 90. I was disgusted“, grumbled Angelique.
“At the beginning of the radar-section, there is no sign to indicate that it is 70. A French speaker who never comes to Flanders, he does not know that it is 70. He will stay at 80-90, like me“, she is indignant. However, she “understands that they put radars stretches. There are people sticking out like crazy.”
Why this difference?
If this measure taken by Flanders aims to reduce the number of accidents, Wallonia says it limits its speed according to the circumstances and the environment. “It can be the configuration of the network, it can be the territory, it can also be climatic circumstances or traffic circumstances. In the recovery plan, we have pilot projects which aim to introduce dynamic speeds on portions of territory in Wallonia, because these speeds are better understood and therefore better respected.explains Valérie De Bue, the Walloon Minister of Road Safety.
“You can sometimes drive on roads in the province of Luxembourg and Namur where you do not have the slightest dwelling for 10 km, there is also not the same road network so where the 70 can be justified in Flanders , it is less justified in Wallonia. Imposing the 70 everywhere in Wallonia does not make much sense”specifies Benoit Godart.
It works ?
The answer is simple: yes! Reducing speed by 20 km/h on the roads has had a positive impact on road safety, as Benoit Godart points out: “The number of accidents fell by around 6% and the number of victims fell by 10%. What is interesting is that we also see a difference in speed and in the number of accidents on roads where nothing has changed. This means that Flemish drivers have gotten used to driving slower.”
The measure therefore has a positive balance, but we should not find it anytime soon on the Walloon roads. Angelique, she will now be doubly careful.
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