The decision to entrust this mission to private operators was taken by the inter-ministerial road safety committee on 2 October 2015 to free up time for the police for other controls and “to better enforce speed limits by extending the control periods on the most accident-prone roads”. When asked about the number of cars deployed, the name of the operator who won the contract and the roads concerned in particular, the prefecture had not replied to Paperjam when this article was published.

It indicates in its press release that the itineraries and time slots of control will in any case be “fixed by the services of the state, based solely on criteria of accident-proneness and traffic in the Moselle. In no cases will they be left to the free choice of companies or their drivers”. It also says that the companies providing the service will not be remunerated according to the number of offences detected.

“When the radar car is on the road, the driver is unaware of the offences detected.” The company that won the contract does not have access to the recording of the offences. Rather, the press release continues, the data collected by the cars is “sent in encrypted form to the judicial police officers in charge of the ticketing. These judicial police officers, who record and validate the offence, are the same as for fixed speed cameras and radar cars driven by law enforcement officers: they are police officers from the Centre automatisé de constatation des infractions routières located in Rennes”.

The equipment provides for a tolerance margin of 10 km/h above the authorised speed or 10% above 100 km/h.

This article in Paperjam. It has been translated and edited for Delano.