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Increase in number of traffic violations

8,153,043 traffic violations in 2022. That’s more than in 2021. In that year, 8,024,118 traffic fines were imposed. That’s an increase of 1.6 percent. The fines were imposed for speeding, running a red light and handheld calling, among other things.

Faulty parking/stopping

In addition to these three violations, there was also a sharp increase in fines imposed for the category of wrong parking/staying. That’s nearly 60,000 more than in the previous year. A possible explanation could be that after the corona crisis, parking in city centers increased again as stores reopened.

Phone use on bicycles

There is another notable increase in the figures for phone use on bicycles: 53,259 in 2022, up from 45,778 a year earlier. That’s a 16.3 percent increase.

Speeding

Most traffic fines are imposed for speeding. Of the total number of fines imposed 8,153,043 were 6,512,086 for violating the speed limit. That is a difference of 129,850 from the previous year. Back then, the number was 6,641,936.

Most of these traffic violations are detected with license plate enforcement. In 2022, 3,014,680 speed fines were imposed after checking with a speed camera, compared to 2,830,213 in 2021. That’s an increase of about 6.5 percent. Also, 1,340,692 speeding violations were detected with mobile radar sets, up from 1,509,650 a year earlier.

Decline in route control systems

There is a decrease in the number of speeding violations with section control systems. At the route controls, the total number of speeding violations detected decreased from 2,103,772 to 2,026,939 in 2022. That is a decrease of 3.7 percent. One possible explanation for this is the outage of some route control systems due to road works, and the congestion on the highways forcing motorists to adjust their speed.

Flexflash

In November 2022, a new enforcement tool came into use: the flex flash. A movable speed camera that stays in one spot for about 2 months. By 2022, the first 10 flex flash units were installed. The number of violations per flex speed camera is listed separately in the overview of violations per speed camera.

Average fine amount

The average fine amount for a traffic violation in 2022 was 84.16 euros and for a speeding violation specifically was 62.88 euros. In 2021, it was 81.15 and 63.60 euros, respectively.

Foreign traffic offenders

In 2022, 874,539 of the traffic fines imposed were imposed on a driver of a vehicle with a foreign license plate, up from 784,421 a year earlier. This is a significant increase and probably explained by more people revisiting our country after the corona crisis. Most traffic fines were imposed on vehicles with German, French or Belgian license plates.

Source: CJIB