France ramps up speed camera deployment

More than 400 new fixed speed cameras, including 25 radar sections and 90 cameras that can tell the difference between HGV vehicles and cars, will be installed in accident zones in France this year, the French interior minister Brice Hortefeux has said. The police force will be equipped with 326 devices for automatic number plate reading in 2011, and in the first part of the year there will also be a development programme for mounted, mobile radars that can control speed in traffic flow. The French government wants the number of road deaths in France to fall below 3,000 per year by 2012 compared to the 3,994 recorded in 2010, which was a 6.5 per cent increase over 2009 figures.