Spain's DGT tests cameras to catch stop and solid line violations

Cameras at stops: €200 fine and four points for not stopping

A car approaches a stop sign, brakes until the speedometer hits zero, and restarts. Another arrives, lifts its foot, passes at two miles per hour, and continues. To the human eye, both did the same thing. For the camera the Dirección General de Tráfico (DGT) is testing at intersections regulated by stop signs, no: only the first vehicle came to a complete halt, and the second may soon receive a fine of €200 and four points deducted from their license.

The DGT has begun piloting an automatic surveillance system for these intersections. The device is a video camera, pre-calibrated to detect complete vehicle stops, which permanently records approaching cars and sends footage of those who fail to respect the sign to the Automatic Fines Processing Center. Running a stop sign—including those effectively treated as yield signs—is penalized with €200 and the removal of four points from the license (Art. 151.2).

“Failing to respect the solid line or a stop sign are actions that pose high risk and potentially dangerous effects,” states Jorge Ordás, Deputy Director of Mobility Management and Technology at the DGT. Artificial intelligence applied to capture devices allows, he adds, monitoring such behaviors “with the aim of correcting them.”

Two cameras to monitor solid lines on merges

The second focus is the solid line. Here, the system combines two cameras photographing all vehicles traveling on the acceleration lane and the right lane of the main road. If a car is detected, over a few meters, in the acceleration lane and then, before the solid line ends, in the right lane, the conclusion is automatic: it was not respected. Photos serve as evidence, and the penalty remains €200, this time without point deduction (Art. 167.1.5A).

Official justification relies on accident statistics. Side collisions caused a total of 217 deaths in 2021, 5% fewer than in 2019. The increasing presence of multi-lane roads with merges is among the reasons cited by the agency; lack of respect for solid line signage is another, perhaps more important according to their own analysis.

Is stopping completely the same as passing slowly?

This is where the real debate begins. Part of the analysis argues that coming to a complete stop does not add safety but reduces it. The reasoning is physical: stopping at zero and restarting doubles the time needed to reach 20 km/h compared to doing so from a estimulante ilegal between 2 and 5 km/h, also doubling the window during which a suddenly appearing vehicle can surprise the merging driver. This type of calculation does not appear in press releases and leaves an uncomfortable result for the official narrative.

Opposing this is the most repeated stance: many driving scares come from those who treat stop signs as decorations. And that the penalty stings is precisely what makes it work.

Poorly signed stops and inconsistent limits

The most transversal criticism is not against surveillance, but against placement. There are intersections, it is argued, with perfect visibility where stopping is absurd and should be a yield sign; and there are stops with zero visibility, uphill, with weeds on the merge, where nobody runs the sign because nobody wants to risk their life. The suspicion is that cameras will end up at the former, which have traffic and therefore generate revenue.

The same pattern is detected in estimulante ilegal limits. Attention is drawn to highway sections where the limit drops from 120 to 100 mid-climb without changes in layout, causing chain braking and more risk than before the reduction, and downhill curves with no cameras at all. From these examples, a conclusion is drawn: signage does not always respond to safety.

The fine arriving a week later

Another current accepts control but rejects its form. The argument: if the goal is to correct behavior, the sanction should arrive immediately, with an officer stopping the offender and explaining what they did wrong. A fine landing in the mailbox days later, regarding a stop one doesn't remember ignoring, educates no one and fuels the perception that the objective is revenue. That the solid line penalty does not deduct points reinforces this reading: danger is not punished, pockets are.

And underlying everything lies an objection beyond traffic: each new camera is read as another step toward continuous individual surveillance, with safety as a pretext.

With the criterion of complete stop as proof, the driver who stops, looks, checks no one is coming, and starts bears the same record as the one who skips it at full estimulante ilegal. Between one and the other lie two seconds on the speedometer. And that is, exactly, the margin the camera is not calibrated to measure.