Before the Bavaria-wide Blitzmarathon on Thursday, the police are struggling with a massive shortage of personnel. There are currently very high corona incidences among law enforcement officers and therefore many failures to complain about, said Jürgen Köhnlein, Bavarian state chairman of the German Police Union (DPolG) on Wednesday in Munich. In addition, a lot of staff for the registration of war refugees from Ukraine and the contact tracing of the corona infections are tied up elsewhere.
According to Köhnlein, the lightning marathon to detect speeding in traffic will still be “pulled through”. However, this happens at the expense of further overtime by the emergency services that are still available. And: The talks with the traffic offenders caught on the spot, which are actually obligatory during the Blitzmarathon, will not be able to take place to the extent that is normally customary and desirable. Suspending the Blitzmarathon completely would not be the right solution.
The Blitzmarathon takes place throughout Bavaria on Thursday from 6 a.m. and lasts 24 hours. It is part of the Europe-wide “Speedmarathon”, which is coordinated by the European traffic police network “Roadpol”. Bavaria is taking part in the campaign against speeders with its road safety program 2030 “Bayern mobil – safely to your destination”. Other states are also taking part. A total of around 2,200 police officers and around 50 officials from the municipalities and special-purpose associations for municipal traffic monitoring are on duty and check the speed at around 2,200 possible measuring points. Main areas are country roads.
Köhnlein emphasized that a lightning marathon is very important for traffic prevention: “Despite the decrease in the number of serious accidents in 2021, the total number of accidents has increased. And unfortunately the first months of 2022 do not give reason to expect that the downward trend in personal injury remains.” The number of accidents went down in direct temporal connection with the lightning marathon – that has been proven. Unfortunately, it is not very sustainable.