Over 69 thousand drivers were fined in Spain during one week in August, as part of a special speed enforcement campaign carried out by the Directorate General for Traffic (DGT). The operation took place in the middle of the holiday month, when millions of people travel on Spanish roads, and involved the installation of 3,466 control points throughout the country. In total, authorities checked the speed of 1,037,333 vehicles, with 69,231 drivers being reported for driving above the permitted limits, representing 6.7% of the vehicles checked.
More than half of the reports, approximately 55.3%, were recorded on motorways and dual carriageways, where 38,303 drivers were caught speeding. On conventional roads, 28,599 reports were recorded and 2,329 in urban crossings. Although motorways concentrated the highest absolute number of violations, it was the conventional roads that had the highest proportion of violations, with 7.05% of drivers checked above the limit, compared to 6.37% on motorways and dual carriageways.
Among the cases detected, 19 drivers ended up in court for exceeding the permitted speed by more than 80 km/h, a situation considered a crime against road safety under Spanish legislation. The DGT warned that the number of these serious cases has been increasing progressively and is currently almost three times higher than recorded two years ago.
The Spanish authority considers that the data reveals the persistence of high-risk behaviours on the roads, at a time when speed continues to be one of the main factors associated with road traffic accidents.
