WARNING WITH RISK – The Highway Code prescribes that the driver of a broken down vehicle must wear a high visibility jacket and place the reflective triangle 50 meters from the stationary vehicle to signal its presence. The operation is not without risks and in fact in Spain 42 people lost their lives getting out of their car between 2018 and 2020, but things could soon change thanks to the V16 beacon.
Before discussing it in detail, we would like to point out that the traffic regulations in the Iberian country establish that if the stationary vehicle – or the missing load to report – is on a two-way street, the driver must place a second triangle 50 meters in front of the vehicle to warn the oncoming traffic. In this way, however, the motorist risks twice and therefore the Spanish Government has taken measures by approving a new law that will replace the triangles with a flashing orange light to be positioned on the roof of the car simply by extending the window arm, without the need to get out of the vehicle.
FROM 2026 WE CHANGE – The possibility of using the flashing light instead of the triangle came into force in Spain from 1 July 2021, although both signaling systems will be legal until the end of 2025. However, the Dirección General de Tráfico (DGT) has already planned the next steps, making the new connected V16 flashing lights mandatory from 1 January 2026. However, V16 devices are already on sale (this is their official name as it appears in the Reglamento General de Vehículos, the text governing approvals) which also have geolocation and connectivity, via a data SIM.
However, these advanced devices will be the only ones allowed from 2026 onwards: Spain will therefore say goodbye to the triangle and the unconnected V16s without GPS. Connectivity and satellite positioning are functional to the connection with the DGT 3.0, i.e. the cloud of the Dirección General de Tráfico which will be used to improve road safety. The signal of vehicle breakdown, or missing load and the like, emitted by the V16 will in fact arrive, via the cloud, both to the other connected vehicles and to the control rooms of the road network, which will update the variable message panels of the roads in to make information available to everyone.
> However, getting out of the car to position the classic triangle involves some risks.
We note that Spain’s initiative is isolated and was not born within the European Union: wouldn’t it be appropriate to extend it to the whole EU? All in all, these devices have a low cost: around 25 euros for the unconnected version and around 50 euros for the advanced one, whose data SIM card must be able to connect to the network for at least 12 years.
