As of Wednesday, twelve new speed cameras will be activated in Wallonia to fine motorists without any margin of tolerance, as part of the Federal Government’s new “Slow Down” project, SPF Justice announced in a press release on Tuesday.
The Belgian government says that the project is aimed at “strengthening road safety on our roads and motorways” while noting that Belgium is “not the best pupil of the European class of road safety.”
In 2021, Belgium first proposed the prospect of abandoning margins of tolerance. Back then, five-speed cameras in Wallonia and two in Flanders got rid of their tolerance margins, showing promising results.
The existing margin of tolerance is a tightly guarded secret, but it is known that in Brussels’ 30 kph zone, cars are generally the only ticket for driving at 47 kph or more, De Standaard says.
This new reduction in margins would eliminate the element of tolerance, but will not affect the 6 kilometres per hour “technical correction” margin used to account for potential errors with the camera.
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The 12 ‘no mercy’ speed cameras are part of a trial phase launched by the Federal Government. If the results of the pilot project are favourable, notably leading to a reduction in offences, then the FPS Justice says that “the experiment will be continued and the margins of tolerance will be gradually eliminated.”
As part of the trial project, since the summer of 2022, quotas and tolerance margins are no longer applied to highways across the country.
