By the end of this year, Flanders wants to install systems with precipitation sensors at 19 locations. These systems should help enforce violations of the overtaking ban for trucks during precipitation. That is what Flemish Minister of Mobility Lydia Peeters (Open VLD) answered in the Flemish Parliament to a question from Annick Lambrecht (Vooruit).
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Since 2004, the federal highway code has included a ban on overtaking for trucks during precipitation. But enforcing that ban has always been a difficult matter. In the past there were plans to work with the ANPR cameras and pluviometers, but that project never really got off the ground.
Minister of Mobility Lydia Peeters now wants to work with new installations. There are two types. There is a type that checks for the overtaking ban in rainy weather as well as for respecting the distances between them, and there is a type that checks for overloading. The aim is to equip 19 locations with these new systems by the end of the year. ‘We will combine all functionalities on a number of installations,’ explains Minister Peeters.
The new systems are already being tested at two locations (Bertem and Erpe-Mere). Whether all 19 locations will be ready by the end of the year will depend on ‘the pace of software development’, according to the minister.
According to Peeters, the enforcement of the overtaking ban in rainy weather will not be ‘fully automatic’. ‘A human intervention remains necessary’, it sounds. ‘The overtaking ban is monitored semi-automatically. The determination itself still has to be done by the police’.
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