Major rule change on Hungarian roads: keep this in mind behind the wheel!

The rules for speeding have been tightened in Hungary since 1 May 2023. Now, even the smallest offence could result in fines.

As we have previously written, many changes have been confirmed in Hungarian everyday life from 1 May. Now, in response to vezess.hu’s question, the National Police Headquarters (ORFK) confirmed that the rules for speeding in Hungary have been tightened.

Lenient speeding rules

Despite the statutory speed limits and existing legislation, the Hungarian police have for decades taken a unique approach to speeding in Europe. The speed cameras had a 3km/h margin of error up to 100km/h, and a further 3 percent from 100km/h.

Now, the ORFK confirmed that this margin of error will be abolished. “The value given by the measuring instrument is to be taken into account without any further correction,” said the statement of the Police Headquarters.

“This cannot mean anything other than a fine for driving at 51 km/h at a 50 km/h sign,” confirmed Ádám Janklovics, a lawyer specialising in traffic cases, when contacted by vezess.hu.

There’s still leeway

However, this does not mean that everyone who has even marginally exceeded the speeding limit, will receive speeding tickets.

As vezess.hu points out, in Hungary, there are two types of penalties for exceeding the speed limit: on the spot or with an administrative fine. The former applies to minor speeding offences and is usually used when speed checks are carried out during stops, mainly in urban areas. For higher speed limit violations (under 100 km/h + 15 km/h, over 100 km/h plus 20 km/h), administrative fines are imposed based on the principle of objective responsibility.

The change in monitoring will give the police a greater scope of action to penalise drivers who were stopped during a traffic stop. But it does not mean that the police will send administrative fees to those drivers who exceeded the speeding limit under the larger margin of error, without being stopped on the spot.

Vezess.hu reminds everyone that speeding is still the paramount source of accidents in Hungary. In 2022, there were a total of 14,679 accidents with personal injuries in Hungary, which averages 40 a day.  A total number of 621,637 speeding tickets were recorded by the traffic cameras. This is an astoundingly high number if we take into consideration that Hungary had one of the most lenient approaches to speeding in Europe.

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