When passing the Taebla speed camera, it looks as if the camera has been broken, in fact someone has put tapes on the camera. Malle-Liisa Raigla Speed camera in Taeblas. Photo: Malle-Liisa Raigla
The Transport Board will soon start a study on measuring the average speed of vehicles in order to find the best way to improve road safety and to remove serial violators from traffic who threaten safe traffic.
During the project, no penalties are imposed and no personal data is collected, but pseudonymized data is analysed. The goal is to reduce the number of traffic fatalities – it is not possible to reduce deaths and serious injuries without additional measures to improve road safety.
The registration number of the vehicle driving on the average speed measurement test section is recorded by a speed camera, and the registration number of the vehicle is identified with the help of information technology software. The registration plate designation converted to machine-readable form is pseudonymized without human intervention. The depseudonymization key and generated recordings will be destroyed.
The vehicle registration plate is not used to identify the vehicle data and to identify the owner/responsible user of the vehicle. During the pilot project, no queries are made to registers, databases and information systems, and the created recordings are not forwarded to any other databases and information systems. No case is forwarded for prosecution even if speeding is detected.
Four test sections will be equipped with warning traffic signs and the length of the section will also be announced. If desired, it is possible to avoid them. The admissibility of project data processing is checked by the Data Protection Inspectorate.
Speeding is one of the main road safety pain points regardless of the type of road. Even slightly exceeding the speed significantly affects the risk of road accidents and the severity of the consequences. An increase in speed by 1 km/h increases the risk of a traffic accident with a casualty by 3 percent. The possibilities of implementing average speed control were discussed for the first time in Estonia ten years ago, when a study of automatic traffic monitoring based on average speed measurement was conducted.