The Brussels North Police zone wrote up over 26,000 official reports and collected almost €69,000 in fines between June and August this year, but that does not mean that the punishment per offence boils down to roughly €2.65.
Even though on first sight, if they were all fined equally, it seems like the fine for each offence would boil down to roughly €2.65, this is not how it works, according to a police spokesperson.
"How big a fine is, depends on what the infringement is. Among those 26,000 reports, many of them are for speeding, and how high the fine is in that case, depends on how fast the person was driving," she said.
"When there are several reports for the same person, they are also referred to the police court, which will then decide on the punishment," she said. This is also the reason why is not yet clear how much those reports will yield in total.
Over the past three months, the police zone carried out 19 major road safety actions, including 14 mobile roadblocks within the framework of specific anti-drunk driving actions.
During these checks, 62 drivers tested positive for alcohol, 13 drivers were in the 'alarm' phase for alcohol and 42 drivers tested positive for drugs. The police also withdrew 65 driving licences for a 14-day period. During the summer months, a total of 228 official reports were issued, and 117 licences revoked for drunk driving.
"We draw up the reports based on our findings on the ground, but we are not the ones who are going to decide how much will be paid," the police said.
Three of these 19 actions were carried out in cooperation with the Customs and Excise Service, which collected a total of €68,409.86 in administrative fines and seized five vehicles.
Additionally, the police zone deployed two operational radar crews to check the speed of 67,613 vehicles, of which 8,947, or 13.23%, were speeding. On top of that, four vehicles were seized administratively because the drivers endangered the physical integrity of other road users.
During those checks, the LIDAR speeding camera and the fixed radars in the zone also checked the speed of 4,168,878 other vehicles, of which 8,489 were found to be speeding. Between June and August, the teams on the site drew up 6,222 official reports for poorly parked vehicles, of which 335 were parked in areas reserved for people with reduced mobility.
Lastly, besides the 14,326 reports for inappropriate speed were issued, 1,191 people were written up for the use of a mobile phone behind the wheel, and 1,007 for non-use of seat belts or badly secured children.
The Brussels Times
