Route radar cannot currently be introduced anywhere in Germany

Now that Jenoptik has discontinued the development of its section radar, the technology known as section control is no longer being used in Lower Saxony and plans by other federal states cannot be implemented. This is the case in Saxony-Anhalt, whose state parliament has already voted to introduce section control in 2022. In a response from the state government to a minor inquiry (PDF), it states that no company in Europe currently offers a market-ready system that is suitable for this type of speed enforcement.

In January of this year, Jenoptik told heise online that it did not wish to further develop the technology that had previously been used on the B6 federal highway near Laatzen. The background to this is a technical guideline from the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) on the key length for cryptographic RSA procedures and the specifications derived from this by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) for the approval of traffic monitoring systems in Germany.

"No interest in further installation of the system"

Section Control does not measure the speed of a vehicle at a specific point, but rather the average speed within a section over several measuring points. Vehicles are recorded at the beginning and end of a 2.2 km long measuring field by a time-stamped rear photo (lane camera photo) and stored anonymously for a short time. The average speed value is calculated from the time difference between the time stamps and the length of the measured section of road. This technology has been used in Lower Saxony since the end of 2019 and was discontinued at the beginning of this year.

The response from the state government of Saxony-Anhalt states that "the manufacturer of the only system for section control in Lower Saxony to date stated in the market research carried out by the Central Services Police Inspectorate that it was not interested in installing another system, as the system installed at the time was no longer being offered". Europe-wide market research into manufacturers who would be prepared to have their system approved by the PTB is now required.

The State Ministry of the Interior still thinks the idea is a good one. The new type of controls would be a useful addition to police capabilities and could help to improve road safety, it said. Immediately after the new legal basis under state law came into force, it initiated the police and technical tests and market surveys.

(anw)