Barcelona wants to increase safety with more section speed cameras

Although the largest number of fatal and serious-injury accidents occur on interurban roads, cities also have a high incidence of this type of incident. For this reason, Barcelona has decided to act, according to the words of the deputy mayor for mobility, Albert Batlle, to reduce fatalities and serious injuries in the city.

The Road Safety Plan 2019-2022 presented by the councillor aims to reduce fatalities by 20% resulting from road accidents in the city and serious injuries by 16% caused by them. To this end, the plan presented includes, among other measures, the installation of section speed cameras at points such as the Rovira Tunnel, the Badal Tunnel and the Ronda Litoral as it passes the Moll de Fusta.

Another measure to be taken in this regard is the installation of “educational mobile speed cameras”, which will display the speed at which vehicles are travelling and which should help raise drivers’ awareness of the need to control their speed.

In Barcelona, a city of 1.6 million inhabitants, around 6.1 million daily trips are made, which makes driving a car difficult. During 2019, 19 people died in road accidents in Barcelona and nearly 200 were seriously injured. Of the former, 11 were motorcyclists, 7 pedestrians and 1 car driver.

The goal for 2022 is to bring road fatalities below 18 and to keep serious injuries under 167, although the aim is to eliminate the problem entirely. The Road Safety Plan consists of 95 measures and 122 actions focused on education, correcting behaviour, and assistance and technical measures.

The increase in personal mobility vehicles complicates the situation and raises the risk of accidents. In addition, the Barcelona city council mobility officials have suggested that carsharing platforms and electric scooter rental companies remove from their services users who break traffic rules. The reason is that a high number of users who consume drugs or alcohol before using these shared vehicles has been detected.