Evendays

The freeway between Lausanne and Geneva is a great 4 lane road but very, very busy. The 40 minute trip is often double that because of the heavy non-flow of traffic. The speed limit is 120 kilometers per hour (kph), that’s 74.564543 miles per hour for those of you who speed in the USA.

From January 1 to September 30, 2005, 36 people were killed on that stretch. It was not uncommon to see cars racing at speeds over 160 kph (yep, 100 mph). It was not uncommon to see cars rolled over, crashed into the divider or into a wall.

But now, no more speeding. The Cantonal Police are installing 20 new radars on the freeways, one every +/- 5 kilometers. You can get “flashed” for only 5 kph over the limit since the laser radars are so accurate. Of the 50,000 cars who drove by one of the radars in 8 hours the other day, only 177 were photographed.

There are no fines for speeding in Switzerland, but offenders are charged for the development of the photos. And the faster you drive, the more they charge you…

So, please drive carefully out there today, okay?

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 14th, 2006 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Switzerland, Living in Switzerland, Transportation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.