Good question. I don’t know.
But it is obviously not a big source of income compared to, say, Holland.
In any case, I would find it very hard to believe any corporations would benefit at all from ticket money. The question would be, does the money go to either of the national governments or provincial governments or the city governments?
There are speed cameras in some places, more in the country of Flanders, very few in the country of Wallonia (being sarcastic here, Belgium is like two countries in one).
Sometimes a camera car can be seen in the middle median of the motorway, but I see them more on the weekend and holidays. I suspect they don’t want to interrupt the driving of people going to work, since people do drive quite fast during the week. Late for work etc.
I guess they figure weekend drivers are fair game and have more time to go slowly.
Getting pulled over by a police car/motorcycle practically never happens, police don’t cruise here. Don’t cruise anywhere in Europe as far as I see (compared to America).
Although, I have been motioned to slow it down after driving fast (like over 100mph). Got to some slow traffic and the cop car caught me and as we were driving side by side they motioned with their hand to slow it down. Once in Belgium and once in Holland, both on the motorway.
The greatest, by far, way to get a fine here is from a speed camera. Luckily I live in Wallonia, where there are very few cameras.
Last I heard, here you don’t get any points on your licence for any infractions.
They do sometimes have drunk driving controls were they stop everybody. Happens to me about once a year. But it is not to ticket, it is for papers, I know this because once I came screaming around a corner and had to break hard to stop at the control. The cops actually jumped away, like in a movie. :biggrin: They checked my papers but only commented that I should slow down a little….
They generally check insurance and papers, sometimes with a breath test, then you go on your way. It’s possible to drive really quickly after that, because you know where all the police are!:wink:
In these situations sometimes cops are standing around with machine guns and assault rifles and flak jackets while normal nice police check papers. Considering there are so few guns here, I guess they just want to get their cool cop equipment out of the closet…
Some controls have only a few normal cops there.
Police on the beat here still don’t wear flak jackets, I see that in England they seem to now wear these. They are mostly for knife attacks, not gun attacks as I understand it. But the police still don’t have guns there, only special armed units.
It’s all very different here, lots of differences between a small area. France is only 2 hours south, they are having riots there. Holland is 1 hour, lots of speed cameras, but no riots. Germany is 1 hour away, no riots and a few cameras, lots of very fast cars. UK is 2.5 hours away, no guns more than a few speed cameras, no riots. Luxembourg is 1.5 hours away, they have a mixer of very slow drivers and very fast. No riots, and very few cameras, if any.
Very different.
I guess tickets are not the thing here, compared to the States.
Any Belgians on Prime have some info on this? What happens to the money here?
Anyway I would certainly get shot, tasered, and thrown in jail if I came to the States. :biggrin: But I thought I might visit Canada next year, its been some years since I was last there.
