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Juan Roig Valor
Lunes, 3 de febrero 2025, 11:05
In 2024, Traffic authorities detected over 1,100 drivers exceeding the legal speed limit by more than 80 kilometres per hour on Spanish roads. Most of these violations were captured by fixed radars, but also by the Pegasus radar installed on helicopters patrolling the highways.
The DGT has released several videos of drivers travelling at speeds that constitute criminal offences, resulting in the suspension of driving rights for one to four years, in addition to fines. If deemed reckless driving, this can extend to six years and two years of imprisonment.
In one of these videos, a car is seen travelling at 238 km/h on the A-7, making dangerous overtakes and ignoring road signs. According to Traffic authorities, "the offence was captured by the helicopter's camera operator, who contacted the Traffic Operations Centre to have a local patrol provide support from the road and stop to identify the driver."
The patrol brought the driver to court for alleged reckless driving. Additionally, the driver was charged with another offence for exceeding the speed limit by 118 km/h, with the road's limit being 120 km/h at that point.
Pegasus can operate from a height of 300 metres and a kilometre away from the target. The system's purpose is to determine the geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude) of the vehicle being monitored to calculate its speed.
Firstly, it accurately determines the helicopter's position in space using various mechanisms (gyroscopes and accelerometers) and a computer program added to the surveillance cameras.
Next, a laser measures the distance between the helicopter and the vehicle every three seconds. With this data, it can determine the vehicle's successive positions and calculate its average speed for sanction purposes.
Once the violation is confirmed, a frame from the recording is sent electronically as evidence to the Automated Complaints Processing Centre (Estrada) for processing. Immediate action is even planned in cases of criminal offences, contacting a Civil Guard patrol from the helicopter.
Another video shows a driver travelling at 206 kilometres per hour on a section of the N-610 conventional road connecting Palencia with Benavente, limited to 90 km, who had fled a preventive control in Valladolid. This driver was later apprehended in Zamora.
According to the DGT, inappropriate speed was a factor in 21% of road accidents in 2024. The Ministry of the Interior has been striving for years to reduce road accidents, which have seen an increase over the past three years.
Traffic authorities believe that maintaining the appropriate speed could prevent around a quarter of fatalities in accidents, noting that "At speeds over 80 km/h, it is practically impossible for a pedestrian to survive a collision, whereas at 30 km/h, the pedestrian's risk of death is reduced to 5%."
In the latest figures for 2024, 1,062 people died in road accidents, 17 more than in the same period the previous year. Among the most significant data from the accident analysis conducted by the DGT is the reduction of vulnerable users to 25 people, compared to 45 last year, driven by the decrease in pedestrian and motorcyclist fatalities.
According to the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) study, if average speeds were reduced by just 1 km/h on all roads in the European Union, it is estimated that 2,200 road deaths could be prevented each year.
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