10th speed check 'marathon' on Belgian roads this Wednesday

Police with mobile radars will be out in force on Wednesday for the 10th edition of Belgium's speed check "marathon".

Starting at 6.00 on Wednesday morning (17 October), federal and local police will spend 24 hours recording vehicles' speed at unannounced locations on motorways, regional and local roads.

During the last speed check marathon, on 18 April, almost 1.4 million vehicles were checked, of which 35,158 were over the legal speed limit.

For this latest edition, members of the public were invited to suggest the locations where they did not feel safe crossing the road. Almost 12,000 people responded.

According to Belgian road safety institute Vias, speeding is the direct cause of about a third of fatal road accidents, and is responsible for 200 deaths per year.

Most of the money collected from speeding fines goes into a dedicated Road Safety Fund, which distributes the funds to the federal police and 186 local police divisions to finance road safety awareness campaigns and operations.