If you’re visiting Portugal soon and planning to drive, you may encounter a new technology in speed cameras along the country’s roads: cameras measuring your average speed along a stretch of motorway.
Instead of recording speed at one camera, each car will be recorded passing two different points and have its speed calculated on the average, meaning that motorists who slow down quickly when they spot a camera will no longer get a free pass.
The Notional Road Safety Authority (ANSR) has just spent €5.6 million on twenty new cameras which will operate in pairs at locations around the country selected by analyzing the “level of accidents ixisting in the locations and where excessive speed proved to be one of the causes for these accidents.”
The concept of ‘average speed checks’ is commonplace in the UK. It works on the basis of number plate recognition. That way the average speed can be assessed over any distance: you just need two cameras at either end. Many people find that they spend too much time looking at their speedometer needle – rather than concentrating on the traffic. There is also a widespread feeling that these checks are there merely because the technology exists, and not because there are particular dangers in the areas where they are used.