Summer Departure Operation: the DGT has 34 new camouflaged motorcycles

The first Summer Departure Operation of 2022 has already begun, as millions of drivers start their holidays and travel to other places on the peninsula. For this reason, the special traffic deployment has a new feature: the DGT has added 34 new camouflaged motorcycles.

This deployment will run until 00:00 on Sunday 3 July. For this weekend, more than 4.5 million road trips are planned. However, more than 44 million are expected during the month of July. This year, moreover, the Strait Crossing Operation returns; it had been suspended during the pandemic, which means that more than 700,000 vehicles coming from other European countries will travel on Spanish roads, bound for their countries of origin in Africa.

First Summer Departure Operation of 2022

The crossing to Portugal is also expected to be complicated, as the DGT, in collaboration with the Portuguese authorities, will handle 250,000 vehicles. The most unfavourable hours to start the journey are between 15:00 and 23:00 today, Friday, and during the morning of Saturday, when traffic will be heavy, especially on the exits from the large cities.

On Sunday afternoon, with many citizens returning to their places of residence after the weekend, traffic entering urban areas will also be more intense, lasting until late at night.

The DGT has launched a major deployment of resources, which includes the 34 new camouflaged motorcycles. These are camouflaged motorcycles from the Traffic Group of the Civil Guard, which will travel on the roads with the highest motorcyclist accident rates with the aim of reducing accidents and checking that driving is responsible. In addition, the DGT will have the following resources:

• 780 fixed speed radars, 92 of which are section control.
• 545 mobile radars.
• 12 helicopters.
• 245 mobile phone and seatbelt cameras, 29 more than last summer.
• 39 drones for regulation activities, 23 of them with the capacity to issue fines.

All this deployment is complemented by a special campaign to monitor compliance with speed limits starting next Monday and lasting seven days. During that period, Traffic will step up monitoring on the roads to check that the limits set on each road are being respected. As was announced at the beginning of the week, surveillance will be increased with mobile radars mounted in marked and camouflaged ATGC vehicles on motorways and dual carriageways, due to the increase in fatalities on these roads.