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Staff Reporter DRIVERS had better control their speed as the General Traffic Department (DGT) will be carrying out a special campaign against speeding from tomorrow until 24 April, which will include installing 16 speed cameras in the Balearic Islands.

The motto of this campaign is “Roads are not racetracks. Control your speed”, and will double the amount of speeding controls that are found in Spain, said a spokesperson from DGT.

The main aim of this campaign is to make people aware about how dangerous speeding is. In fact speeding accounted for 23.3 percent of road deaths last year, this means that 700 out of the total 3'036 road accidents, where 3'511 people died on Spanish roads, were caused only because drivers can not control their speed.

This campaign will be installing speed cameras on 1'912 roads in Spain, where the Traffic department of the Guardia Civil will be assessing the speed of on average 100'000 vehicles a day. In this way around 1.5 million vehicles will be watched during the duration of this initiative.

Signalling panels on the affected roads will advise all drivers of the locations of these speed controls. Furthermore announcements will be made to the communication centres in Spain in order to advise drivers about the speed controls.

The DGT has invited the town councils for regions that have more than 5'000 inhabitants, such as the Basque Country and Catalonia, to take part in this campaign and install speed cameras on their relevant roads.

In total speed cameras will be installed on 1'912 Spanish roads; 119 will be in Madrid, 331 in Castilla-La Mancha, 105 in Extremadura, 206 in Andalucia, 137 in Valencia, 45 in Murcia, 16 in the Balearic Islands, 64 in Aragon, 20 in Navarra, 31 in La Rioja, 302 in Castilla y Leon, 54 in Asturias, 15 in Cantabria, 383 in Galicia and 84 in the Canary Islands.

A similar campaign was carried out last August, whereby the General Traffic Department intensified speed controls in Spain. During this one month campaign over 100'000 vehicles were found to be driving above the speed limit. There were 1'700 speed cameras installed during this campaign.

Inadequate speed when driving was the second biggest factor for road accidents in Spain in 2004, according to the statistics collated by DGT. The first cause was distracted drivers which accounted for 26.9 percent of all road accidents last year.

Other reasons for road accidents include unnecessary manouevres, pedestrians stepping out onto the road and tiredness.
The statistics also showed that speeding is on the increase, as there has been a 3 percent increase since 2003. If speed limits had been obeyed by all drivers in Spain during 2004, then at leat 1'000 people would still be alive today.