Belgium wants to check for tailgaters with cameras

Keeping sufficient distance from the vehicle in front is essential to be able to react in time if sudden heavy braking is required. Otherwise, things can quickly go wrong, especially in heavy traffic. The Dutch rule of thumb is that you should keep a distance of two seconds. That corresponds to about 55 meters distance at 100 km/h. In practice, many motorists do not adhere to this, often to the annoyance of the vehicles in front (which may or may not be unnecessarily driving on the left). In the Netherlands you can be fined up to more than €600 if you are caught, depending on the speed and distance. However, the chance that you will be caught is not very high. After all, enforcement does not happen automatically here. In Germany yes and soon possibly also in Belgium.

Following the example of our eastern neighbors, our southern neighbors also want to use cameras to check for tailgaters. We read that The newspapaer. “We will check whether we can use cameras or radars to determine whether sufficient distance is being maintained. Initially we check the safety distance of 50 meters between trucks. In the second instance, the test will focus on passenger cars,” said a spokesperson for the road safety institute Vias. According to him, one in three accidents in Belgium is a rear-end collision and this is usually the result of not keeping enough distance. As many as six in ten drivers in Belgium would not keep enough distance. Reason enough for Vias and the Belgian government to experiment with automatic enforcement.

As mentioned, this already happens in Germany. There you have been caught as a tailgater on the highway for years, because Germany has cameras that can detect this. In Belgium too, people are focusing on tailgaters on the highways. A practical test with the cameras will begin in the second half of this year.