The Justice Department has started sending fines when drivers of company cars fail to identify themselves in the event of an offence. In recent years, this obligation was violated on a large scale, often going unpunished.
In recent months, the department has cracked down on traffic violations following an increase in operational speed cameras last year.
If a traffic violation occurs with a company car, a company has been obliged to identify the driver since 1996, so that authorities are able to identify the driver to follow up on offences and deal with repeat offenders.
Credit: Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga.
Despite this obligation, two in three traffic offences in a company's name are not identified, according to the Justice Department. Last year, more than 685,000 offences were committed.
Digitalisation brings systematic changes
Until recently, hardly any additional fines followed that. "Although it was possible to follow up those offences, there was a lack of capacity to enforce them effectively and consistently," said Sharon Beavis, the FPS Justice spokeswoman.
This is gradually changing. "Thanks to digitalisation, negligent companies can be caught in the crosshairs faster than before," explained Beavis. Since January, 10,000 fines for identification violations have been issued.
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"That remains proportionately few, but systematically that is being expanded," Beavis said. The prosecution only sends a fine to companies that repeatedly failed to comply with compulsory identification.
They are usually fined once for a breach, even if they failed to identify the driver in several files. From next year, however, violations will be systematically prosecuted.
