UReflection is underway within the Ministry of the Interior in order to no longer deduct points from the driving license of motorists guilty of “minor speeding”, Agence France-Presse learned on Wednesday May 25 from the Place Beauvau. “We will hit much less on small speeding tickets,” said a source at the Ministry of the Interior.
“The idea is that you no longer lose a point if you are 5 km / h above” the authorized speed, added the ministry. The latter taking care to specify that the fines sanctioning these offenses would, on the other hand, be retained. For the time being, exceeding the authorized speed costs a motorist between 68 and 135 euros depending on the place of the offense. At the same time, a point is deducted from your licence.
The driver’s license and the gray card will be “also completely digitized”, explained the ministry, which hopes to implement digitization within “a year and a half to two years”. For the State, the objective is clear: to guarantee that the person sanctioned is indeed the driver at fault and not a third party, underlined Place Beauvau to AFP. The Interior indeed wishes to fight and make impossible the false declarations, certain drivers having recourse to this stratagem to avoid the withdrawal of one or more points.
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Defenders and opponents of the measure are torn apart
The track envisaged by the ministry is considered “regrettable”, according to Chantal Perrichon, president of the League against road violence, believing that one must be “crass and hallucinating ignorance to propose this”. “It is by fighting against minor speeding that there will be a drop in mortality,” she insisted to AFP. For Anne Lavaud, general delegate of the Road Prevention association, creating “elasticity at the threshold” can be taken “as an invitation to drive faster at a time when road safety figures are on the rise again”.
Quite logically, the general delegate of the 40 Million motorists association explains that this reflection “is going in the right direction”. “We are finally listened to. It’s a first step. Then, if the figures show that the accidents are not increasing, it will be necessary, in my opinion, to consider adjusting the financial penalties”, he indicated. This point was not mentioned by the ministry. In total, 2,947 people died on the roads of metropolitan France in 2021. A balance sheet which was down 9%, compared to 2019, according to Road Safety.