# New speed cameras



## thrax (Nov 13, 2008)

New speed cameras have been installed across Spain and their locations have been published here...

https://www.euroweeklynews.com/news...rs’-installed-across-spain-locations-revealed

BUT. The best way to avoid speeding fines is, wait for it, don't speed. Simple...


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## Gregorians (Oct 18, 2017)

I welcome these and hope there'll be more.


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## Pazcat (Mar 24, 2010)

Like shooting fish in a barrel.


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## Gregorians (Oct 18, 2017)

Pazcat said:


> Like shooting fish in a barrel.


True. I've been visiting Spain for over 30 years and maybe I'm just getting older, but the driving seems to have got much worse. Constant tail gating - the likes of which I got used to in France - overtaking where it's dangerous to do so and too many boy racers. Add any car with aerodynamic fins on the back and you know it's going to be a total idiot behind the wheel. In the UK it's generally just people with "baby on board" labels hanging in the back.


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## Pazcat (Mar 24, 2010)

Gregorians said:


> True. I've been visiting Spain for over 30 years and maybe I'm just getting older, but the driving seems to have got much worse. Constant tail gating - the likes of which I got used to in France - overtaking where it's dangerous to do so and too many boy racers. Add any car with aerodynamic fins on the back and you know it's going to be a total idiot behind the wheel. In the UK it's generally just people with "baby on board" labels hanging in the back.


It is literally everyone around these parts, men, woman, old young, local plates or foreign plates. I can't put my finger on a single demographic really.
It's amazingly bad around Alicante. They installed 3 new cameras on a stretch of the N332 recently and I often see people flashing you to get out of the way as you are going past the cameras.
I don't think they really enforce it properly as some cars would be racking up 3 fines daily on that one stretch.


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## snikpoh (Nov 19, 2007)

Pazcat said:


> It is literally everyone around these parts, men, woman, old young, local plates or foreign plates. I can't put my finger on a single demographic really.
> It's amazingly bad around Alicante. They installed 3 new cameras on a stretch of the N332 recently and I often see people flashing you to get out of the way as you are going past the cameras.
> I don't think they really enforce it properly as some cars would be racking up 3 fines daily on that one stretch.


Interestingly (or not!) I received a ticked through the post today. I was apparently doing 94 in an 80 zone on the N332!

I'm pretty sure it always used to be a 100kph speed limit. 

My tom-tom didn't 'warn' me of the speed camera either.


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## Pazcat (Mar 24, 2010)

snikpoh said:


> Interestingly (or not!) I received a ticked through the post today. I was apparently doing 94 in an 80 zone on the N332!
> 
> I'm pretty sure it always used to be a 100kph speed limit.
> 
> My tom-tom didn't 'warn' me of the speed camera either.


They have changed the whole limit from El Campello to the airport turn off from 80kph to 50kph. Not even the GC or Policia stick to it. lol
Driving at 50 is an experience, you will be the only one until you catch up to some old dear going 30.

I have to update my garmin manually but none of the changes they have made in the last couple of years make it to the map, maybe that is in the paid download. No idea it is pretty old.


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## angkag (Oct 29, 2013)

I actually find the driving in Spain to be pretty good. In Singapore, I'm pretty sure most drivers don't even know where the indicator switch is, and if you DO indicate, its taken as a 'challenge for space' - ie if you indicate to go into an inside lane and there is lots of room, cars behind you in that lane will invariably accelerate to close the gap. so 'winning the space' that you challenged them for with your indicator. Even I stopped indicating after a while in those circumstances so that I didn't have the car behind close the gap down. Driving in Singapore used to stress me to the nuts - here its comparatively relaxing.


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## cermignano (Feb 9, 2017)

Horrible driving in Italy as well. Like Gregorians and Pazcat describe on steroids


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## Alcalaina (Aug 6, 2010)

This doesn't look like a complete list. There's a new one on the exit road to Gibraltar from San Roque, now 60 kph but used to be 80 kph. As we found out to our cost - we were doing 72.


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## Alcalaina (Aug 6, 2010)

Gregorians said:


> True. I've been visiting Spain for over 30 years and maybe I'm just getting older, but the driving seems to have got much worse. Constant tail gating - the likes of which I got used to in France - overtaking where it's dangerous to do so and too many boy racers. Add any car with aerodynamic fins on the back and you know it's going to be a total idiot behind the wheel. In the UK it's generally just people with "baby on board" labels hanging in the back.


There are idiot drivers everywhere. Maybe Spain seems worse because there are fewer cameras, so less chance of getting caught? I believe Britain has more than any other European country.


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## skip o (Aug 1, 2011)

I have rented a car in many countries and no one, I mean NO ONE spends more energy giving out speeding tickets than the US. I have driven 1500 kilometers around western Europe and not seen a single vehicle that is pulled over by the police. In the US, it is not uncommon for me to drive 100 kilometers and see 5 different cars pulled over by police.


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## angkag (Oct 29, 2013)

skip o said:


> I have rented a car in many countries and no one, I mean NO ONE spends more energy giving out speeding tickets than the US. I have driven 1500 kilometers around western Europe and not seen a single vehicle that is pulled over by the police. In the US, it is not uncommon for me to drive 100 kilometers and see 5 different cars pulled over by police.


True dat - I got pulled over in Maine and given a ticket for doing 61 where the limit was 55 - one of the few times I forgot to reset the cruise control to the speed limit to avoid the speed creeping up. Half the problem was the seeming never-ending stretch of open straight road, no traffic in sight for ages, but having to crawl along at 55mph where somewhere like Spain would have a limit of 110kph or 120kph for roads like that.


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## Overandout (Nov 10, 2012)

skip o said:


> I have rented a car in many countries and no one, I mean NO ONE spends more energy giving out speeding tickets than the US. I have driven 1500 kilometers around western Europe and not seen a single vehicle that is pulled over by the police. In the US, it is not uncommon for me to drive 100 kilometers and see 5 different cars pulled over by police.


In Europe, getting caught for speeding and getting pulled over are two totally different things.

No-one really gets "pulled over" for speeding in Europe. In fact, no-one really gets pulled over at all, the police just don't have the resources. It is very common to see vehicles which clearly don't meet the minimum standards required, no brake lights etc. but they stand very little chance of being caught.

Speeding on the other hand is easy. Put up a radar and camera and the revenue pours in.... the lower the speed limit, the more cash they get. Sorry I mean the safer the road..... 

One of my first impressions of Spain was when I was following a car in Madrid, and a local police officer stood out into the road and held his hand up to signal the car to pull over. The driver, however, just swerved around the agent and carried on.

I would like to think that in the UK this would have created a major incident, helicopters scrambled etc.... but not here, the agent turned round to watch the car drive on, shrugged his shoulders, and then just proceeded to stop the next car behind me instead.... I really couldn't believe it.

But now I think that this is just the way it works here. A local glazier in my neighbourhood has an old lorry which I see slowly trudging around quite often and which has had no rear lights at all since I have lived there (nearly two years), so there's no way it has an ITV, but as he only drives it locally, probably never on motorways, he can probably continue like that for years.


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## Alcalaina (Aug 6, 2010)

Overandout said:


> In Europe, getting caught for speeding and getting pulled over are two totally different things.
> 
> No-one really gets "pulled over" for speeding in Europe. In fact, no-one really gets pulled over at all, the police just don't have the resources. It is very common to see vehicles which clearly don't meet the minimum standards required, no brake lights etc. but they stand very little chance of being caught.


Down here in Narco Land we frequently get stopped at police road blocks. Although they are primarily looking for drugs they will also check other things, depending on what mood they are in. We usually just get asked to show the papers, but the car has been searched a couple of times.


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## Overandout (Nov 10, 2012)

Alcalaina said:


> Down here in Narco Land we frequently get stopped at police road blocks. Although they are primarily looking for drugs they will also check other things, depending on what mood they are in. We usually just get asked to show the papers, but the car has been searched a couple of times.


Of course, we in Madrid, don't have those types....:confused2:

Last time I was stopped was because the policeman was in the same classic car club as me and he wanted to chat about my car and speak to me because he didn't know anyone else in the club...


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## baldilocks (Mar 7, 2010)

We have occasionally (last time about three years ago) been stopped between here and Granada but it has usually been because there have been some drug-runners about, usually en-route from Galicia to the costas and the N432 seems to them to be a quiet enough road.


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## kalohi (May 6, 2012)

skip o said:


> I have rented a car in many countries and no one, I mean NO ONE spends more energy giving out speeding tickets than the US. I have driven 1500 kilometers around western Europe and not seen a single vehicle that is pulled over by the police. In the US, it is not uncommon for me to drive 100 kilometers and see 5 different cars pulled over by police.


I agree with what has been said about pulling cars over in Spain - that's not how they get you for speeding here. It's all done with speed cameras. You don't find out that you've been caught until you get the fine in the mail. 

Every summer I spend a month visiting family in the States and driving all over New England, and we are always surprised at how _little_ police presence there is on the roads compared to this corner of Spain. Around here guardia road blocks are a common occurrence. Sometimes they ask to see your papers, other times they search the car, and on weekend nights they usually do a breathalyzer alcohol test. And it's not only on the highways. Just a few weeks ago they were stopping cars on the main road that runs through my little town of 13,000 inhabitants. Who knows what they were looking for.


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## baldilocks (Mar 7, 2010)

There is really no excuse in Spain for getting caught by a fixed speed camera since they are always preceded by a big sign that says speeds being checked by radar. If you see the sign, you can be fairly sure that there will be a camera within the next couple of kms.


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## Overandout (Nov 10, 2012)

baldilocks said:


> There is really no excuse in Spain for getting caught by a fixed speed camera since they are always preceded by a big sign that says speeds being checked by radar. If you see the sign, you can be fairly sure that there will be a camera within the next couple of kms.


Umm, that's not true Baldi. 

The DGT may normally do that on the national network, but on roads under the control of the Autonomous Communities or local authorities, this is not the case.

Try doing a few laps of the M30 in Madrid at 7 kph above the limit, only slowing down when you see a warning sign....


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## Overandout (Nov 10, 2012)

I heard of an interesting case in the UK about the use of speed cameras rather than real policemen:

A guy got caught by several cameras in a town, within a short space of time, 30 minutes or something like that. And he duly received several fines, one from each device.

So the story goes, his lawyer successfully argued that the court could not uphold multiple sanctions for one single offence. He claimed that his client had actually not slowed down between the first alleged offence and the last one, and had been above the speed limit for the whole time, therefore making it one single offence. 
Had the offender been stopped by an officer at the site of the first camera, of course he would have been aware of his error and would have slowed down, but as with cameras it takes several weeks to be informed of the offence, he was not afforded the opportunity to stop offending by slowing down.

Allegedly he got away with paying only one fine.

I wouldn't recommend trying that in Spain though....


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## st3v3y (Aug 27, 2015)

I use the Waze app. Works well and shows where all cameras are and also incidents that are on your route. Used it between Malaga and Algeciras and up to Seville. Other Waze users post incidents as they see them and I've found it to be very accurate.

Oh, and it's free


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## thenakedsailor (Jul 3, 2018)

Pazcat said:


> It is literally everyone around these parts, men, woman, old young, local plates or foreign plates. I can't put my finger on a single demographic really.
> It's amazingly bad around Alicante. They installed 3 new cameras on a stretch of the N332 recently and I often see people flashing you to get out of the way as you are going past the cameras.
> I don't think they really enforce it properly as some cars would be racking up 3 fines daily on that one stretch.


Those three cameras were installed in the stretch from EUIPO to San Gabrial with a speed limit of just 50km/h. Despite being installed they have not been operational as they are not licenced as yet or they were not at the end of May, that situation may have changed. I was first advised of this by someone from the Guardia National whose advice was just watch out for policia local outside Park Palmeral.


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## geoffafa (Jul 12, 2018)

Please note that these cameras are remote speed trap cameras. This list is probably already inaccurate and needs updating. The Guarda Civil will put them on tripods or attach them to guard rails. The best way to keep up with the ever-changing camera locations is by downloading the Social Drive app.


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## Simon22 (May 22, 2015)

geoffafa said:


> Please note that these cameras are remote speed trap cameras. This list is probably already inaccurate and needs updating. The Guarda Civil will put them on tripods or attach them to guard rails.


FTFY

The best way to keep up with the ever-changing camera locations is by obeying the speed limit!


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## rspltd (Jul 5, 2016)

_I heard of an interesting case in the UK about the use of speed cameras rather than real policemen:_

Urban myth I'm afraid. Jim Davidson was using this as a gag about 20 years ago.


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## Overandout (Nov 10, 2012)

This is from the website of a British law firm who claim to have successfully made this case on behalf of a client:

"For example this month we represented a driver who had been caught twice by different speed cameras, on the A4 West Cromwell Road in West London. The cameras were only half a mile apart and there were only four minutes between the two offences. If our client had simply accepted the two Fixed Penalties the police issued, she would have ended up with six points. Instead, despite police opposition, we were able to persuade the Court to impose only one set of three points."

https://www.richardsilver.co.uk/new...journey-how-many-penalty-points-will-you-get/

@ Mods, feel free to delete the link to the law firm if this is not permitted (I have no connection with this firm), it is just there to show that I am not making it up!!


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## rspltd (Jul 5, 2016)

That goes back to 2015 and was considerd exceptional because of the very short time between offences - perhaps the magistrate felt benevolent that morning but the norm is that they are separate offences?


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## geoffafa (Jul 12, 2018)

Simon22 said:


> FTFY
> 
> The best way to keep up with the ever-changing camera locations is by obeying the speed limit!


I was not saying speeding is a good thing and you should go speeding while looking out for these roadsides cameras. I was just correcting the misinforming published article the OP shared.


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## Overandout (Nov 10, 2012)

rspltd said:


> That goes back to 2015 and was considerd exceptional because of the very short time between offences - perhaps the magistrate felt benevolent that morning but the norm is that they are separate offences?


And your point is what?

I only posted a factual link because you suggested that what I had posted was a Jim Davidson joke.... wouldn't you defend yourself from such an insult!!!

I never actually suggested that it could be used a real defence, it was just an anecdote.Lighten up.

And, just for the record, maybe you could let me know at which point between 2015 and now the case passed from being fact to urban myth?


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