A single automatic traffic control (ATK) vehicle, which was set up on the Helsingør motorway between Sandbjerg and Vedbæk heading towards Copenhagen, caught 402 speeders in just one hour last week.
The stretch is currently the site of roadworks and the speed limit is accordingly 50 km/h.
All 402 drivers were snagged driving at a speed of 59 km/h or more. In total, over 1,600 speeders were caught during a five-hour period.
Two drivers lost their licences outright, 190 were given a conditional suspension and forced to retake their driving test, and 209 drivers were given points on their licence.
“It’s completely insane,” Kim Sørensen from North Zealand Police told Frederiksberg Amts Avis.
“I have been a policeman for many years, and I’ve never seen anything like it. It is a record in Denmark and not a good one.”
4 million kroner in fines
Fines are doubled in roadwork areas, and there is a 500 kronor surcharge added to each ticket, so the minimum fine was 2,500 kroner, meaning that the 1,635 drivers nabbed by the police will be paying around 4 million kroner in total.
“We are not here for the money,” said Sørensen.
“We are saving lives. We were approached by the company doing the road work, because its workers repeatedly had to jump for their lives because of the number of people driving too fast.”
Sørensen said police will continue to monitor the motorway.
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“I have no words to explain this – it’s sad,” Per Lundbæk Nielsen, the head of the traffic division, told Frederiksberg Amts Avis.
“I have no reasonable explanation to explain why so many drive so fast – particularly when they are endangering the lives of those workers.”
