Hungary saw a spike in speeding during quarantine

Car going 98 km/h instead of the required 50 km/h. Photo: police.hu

A record amount of speeding was recorded in the first six months of 2020: 312,000, with 10.9 billion forints (approx. €31,614,786) in tickets. Speeders seemed to have taken advantage of the empty streets during the nine weeks when the majority of people stayed home.

Exactly 312,236 instances of speeding were recorded by the police in the first half of 2020, the National Police Headquarter’s data revealed. This is a 7.5 per cent increase since last year’s first six months when 290,203 instances of speeding were recorded, Vezess reported.

This increase was despite the majority of people staying home for roughly two months out of six due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the traffic decreasing drastically, by 50-80 per cent, in April compared to last April

245,000 tickets out of the 312,000 cost 30,000 forints (approx. €87), which is the least amount of money on a fine.

Most instances of speeding were recorded by speed cams fixed in the same place the whole year, as well as 160 mobile speed cams, which recorded more severe instances of speeding, resulting in tickets costing 45,000 to even 300,000 forints (approx. €130-870). A small portion of the incidents was caught by police officers, pulling the perpetrators over to the side of the road. This is very rare, usually only 4-5 per cent of the total yearly speeding recordings.

Last year, out of 290,000 instances of speeding, only 42,000 received a check costing HUF 45,000 or more. This year, despite less traffic, these instances increased considerably, to 67,000.

Going 78 km/h in a 50 km/h zone, 124 km/h in a 90 km/h zone, and 170 km/h in a 130 km/h zone will get you a ticket of 45,000 forints (€130) in Hungary, which is quite low compared to other places.

The total amount of money paid for fines increased largely as well, to 10,881,855,000 forints (approx. €31,559,080), while it was HUF 10,054,865,000 (approx. €29,160,370) last year, which is an 8.2 per cent increase.

“The police are constantly analysing the road safety situation and evaluating the measures. We use our findings in preventative work and in planning the measures,” the police stated.