“Pure surveillance!”: private speed camera cars are coming to Occitanie roads in spring 2025

Private radar cars will be able to detect speeding without the knowledge of motorists. Midi Libre – MICHAEL ESDOURRUBAILH

Nightmare in the passenger compartment! Private radar cars, already in service in eight of the thirteen French regions, are being deployed in the south-east of France, which has so far been kept away from this system.

Private radar cars operate in eight of the thirteen French regions. They are being deployed in the south-east of France, which has so far been “spared”.

These vehicles, managed by private companies since 2018, are capable of detecting speeding without the knowledge of motorists, without “flash” thanks to infrared technology, invisible to the naked eye. And this, whether they pass them in the absence of a central divider, or overtake them.

More than 12 million checks in 2023

The fleet of these cars will therefore gradually expand from this spring until 2026, by 126 vehicles. The report on the checks carried out during the year 2023 published on the radar-privé.fr website managed by Nicolas Lourdin, who is working to list and identify them, shows 12,666,427 checks for 1,249,789 speeding offences in the 55 departments making up the eight regions covered. This represents an infringement rate of 9.87%.

A fleet of vehicles that makes you cough

Things are going to get complicated for the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Occitanie and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur regions, which will welcome an unmarked fleet, owned by the Ministry of the Interior, not without creating some turmoil.

Associations such as the Drivers’ Defense League have long expressed their opposition, judging them to be “trappy”. Road patrol officers might be tempted to slow down “in order to encourage others to overtake them, which is forbidden,” describes Alexandre Legendre of the LDC, who has established a comparison between private and public.

Where does the money from traffic violations go ?

In its 2024 report on the Control of Road Traffic and Parking, the Court of Auditors notes that the special allocation account (CAS) does not receive all the revenue from traffic fines. Thus, in 2023, only 85% of the revenue from fines is allocated to the CAS, i.e. €1,640 million out of €1,931 million. Of this amount, only 62% of expenditure is allocated to actions related to road safety."

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"A complex architecture"

Safety expenditure CAS road fines therefore represent only 53% of traffic fine revenue.The Court points to a “complex architecture of the CAS” that no longer meets the objectives that justified its creation. The budget documents do not allow it to trace in a legible and detailed manner the use of appropriations from fines. The Court recommends the abolition of the CAS and a clear presentation, separating road safety expenditure from revenue from traffic fines.

“Driven by law enforcement officers, each radar car runs for an average of 1 hour and 12 minutes per day and generates 0.46 tickets per hour. Driven by a private driver, the same vehicle runs for 5 hours and 30 minutes per day and generates 2.09 tickets per hour. Based on operation 7 days a week, the first will thus give rise to 200 tickets per year, the second to nearly 4,200”, she calculates. Trial by intent, because the fruit of the harvest will not benefit the driver, not paid for the fine ? No, because the State is the winner.

A device to lighten the police force

The association that denounces a “scandalous profit”, provides proof. “As of January 1, 2023, there were 223 private vehicles in France. Out of €305,000 in turnover, each car generates a profit of €262,400. We can therefore estimate the profit for 2023 at more than €58 million! In the long term, the net profit outlook for the State are 94 M€”.

In 2015, the Interministerial Committee for Road Safety (CISR) justified this move to the private sector, “to free up working time for the police”. Speeding appears in one in three fatal accidents, “but alcohol and drugs, we talk about them ?”, Alexandra Legendre gets annoyed.

“A pure policing”

“Road safety is a skill of the police who can intervene in the event of infractions, which these drivers cannot do whose mission is limited to driving. It is a pure policing. Pedagogy disappears in favor of profitability!” In the chapter of “paradoxes”, the league points out the “useless emission of more than 15 tons of CO2 per year (Ford Focus base traveling 140,000 km per year). The 126 vehicles will emit nearly 1,800 tons of CO2 each year.”

A symbolically too heavy toll “when the government pursues a merciless hunt for CO2 with, in its sights, in the front line, the motorist”.

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