Jusqu’à présent, seules les forces de l’ordre pouvaient réaliser ces contrôles mobiles. Midi Libre – JEAN MICHEL MART
La société OTC a décroché un marché d’externalisation des contrôles de vitesse par plusieurs dizaines de voitures réparties sur les routes de 31 départements du Sud.
When the State opts for subcontracting by entrusting small parts of missions to private companies, the fear is great for the associations defending motorists, of seeing police skills sacrificed on the altar of profitability that has nothing to do with road safety, and even less with prevention.
The Council of State has ruled in favor of private companies
Alcohol and drugs are just as deadly, but these new drivers aboard their radar cars will not be authorized to intervene in the face of risky behavior. Motorists are caught speeding. The first fines will fall in the spring and they already leave a bitter taste.
The decision to entrust private companies with the power to record speeding dates back to 2015. Inaugurated on the roads of Eure in 2018, speed cameras are gradually being deployed throughout France. Contested at the time by 40 million motorists, the association judged “illegal, a loan of labor for profit prohibited by the Labor Code”.
The Council of State had then ruled in favor of the Road Safety Delegation by confirming the legality of the privatization of cars. It is up to the prefectures to indicate the routes to be favored, via a daily schedule that can be established on daytime, nighttime, weekend or even public holiday schedules.
Hundreds of kilometers scheduled daily
A driver must have 10 points on his license and a clean criminal record (bulletin 3). The remuneration is set at €25,000 per year. A classified ad published on the Bon Coin website by the private Mobium company, which covers the west of the country, specifies that “hundreds of kilometers are scheduled daily”, and that working time “is annualized with periods of activity with variable hourly volumes”.
Today, 223 radar vehicles out of the 400 existing ones are driven by private service providers, the other half by the police. By 2025, this will be almost all of them. Only Corsica and Île-de-France are still exempt.
The speed camera can flash in both directions. LDC – SW
Since these radars that flash while moving are less reliable than fixed ones, the inaccuracy is corrected by 10% or 10 km/h. According to the Road Safety Authority, these radars “are designed to target drivers responsible for significant speeding”. They target, according to a clever calculation, vehicles traveling at speeds of 61 km/h or more in built-up areas, 124 km/h on expressways and 146 km/h on motorways.
How to spot them ?
Unless you are an expert in percentages, the wisest thing to do is to respect the speed limit. Very difficult to spot, the presence on the dashboard of a large box containing a camera quite visible at the front and at the back will arouse suspicion.
An unmarked car packed with technology to catch offenders. LDC – SW
The warning lights can also be a warning at night. Several sites publish the make and models used by private companies, including the license plate. Peugeot 308, Berlingo, Ford Focus… nothing more banal, not to mention that these cars are regularly required to change departments.
The 126 new vehicles will eventually be managed by the company OTC, which won the public contract for the period from December 2024 to December 2026, for an amount of €34,478,148.
Discreet mobile units
The winner concluded the contract with the Ministry of the Interior, owner of the equipped vehicles, on December 6. The sites specializing in the census of mobile units currently count 8 in Hérault, 5 in Aude, 5 in Gard, 2 in Pyrénées-Orientales, 1 in Lozère and… zero in Aveyron.
“The cost of road insecurity reaches €50 billion”
Since the installation of the first fixed radars in 2003, “mortality has fallen”, says Nicolas Gou, president of the League against road violence in Montpellier. “40,000 lives have been saved by the speed reduction induced by radars.
From golden bridges to apps such as Coyote or Waze
” Since fixed radars, and therefore signaled, cause more of a sudden braking than a lasting reduction in speed, Nicolas Gou denounces the victory of the lobby for radar detectors such as Coyote or Waze, first banned then authorized,“The regulations have made golden bridges for mobility operators by releasing these apps. The effectiveness is reduced. The 3rd generation mobile radar is an instrument that offers a much greater control potential. These vehicles must circulate as much as possible in accident-prone areas. The product of the fines is more than 800 M&euros; but the cost of road insecurity, hospital, rehabilitation, rescue, reaches 50 billion euros per year, at its lowest, because this does not include the impact of what is borne by the insured."
France is the 11th country for the number of radars per square kilometer. "Ten times less than in Belgium or Italy. 1% less speed is 4% less mortality. The ideal would have been for the State to set up a road police force that records other offenses. The financial windfall does not exist since 20% of the proceeds from fines go to local authorities. We campaign for all fines to go to prevention and infrastructure. The acceptability of a measure also depends on this." If the relationship between speed and accidents is close, "40% of accidents also occur below the authorized speed".
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