The weekend is in full swing and you are driving at full speed on a Doubs departmental road, in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region. On the road, a cow as a decorative element makes you understand that you have arrived near Montbéliard. However, when you pass in front of it at 100 km/h – i.e. 10 km/h more than the imposed speed – it emits a flash. It was not just a cow, but a radar in disguise.
Since 2015, the photo of this radar cow has been circulating regularly on Facebook. The text that accompanies the publication specifies: “Look closely at this cow: it is a radar! And five similar prototypes are currently being tested in the three departments concerned. This one is in the vicinity of Pontarlier (Doubs) and it looks like a Montbéliarde cow. Spin as much as possible”. But this information is false and comes from a satirical media.
FAKE OFF
For several years, the image of this Montbeliard cow used in radar has been circulating on social networks. Frequently, very frequently. However, the information that this cow radar has already been installed in Pontarlier, in the Doubs, seems to be false.
First clue: by performing a reverse image search, we find the same published image on a Polish site, named “Niebezpiecznik” [Danger en français]. According to the latter, the radar cow was this time seen on Swiss roads.
An “agency of almost”
Initially, the information comes of a media called “The echo of the loop”. Published on March 7, 2015, the article revealed that in three departments (Doubs, Jura and the Côte d’Or), the National Gendarmerie would test “a fixed radar particularly difficult to spot”. “As of next week, we will position this radar in a meadow by the side of the road. It will be almost undetectable. Motorists would do well to slow down, ”also specifies one of the project managers, named Commander Zergignac. The article also concludes that the experiment could be extended to the whole territory from 2016.
So why not ? The information would seem plausible at first sight. But you have to wonder about the media on which the news was originally published. On description from the Echo de la Boucle Twitter account, we can read: “The news site that tells you almost the truth. Now an agency of almost”. In the “About” section, the site adds: “The articles published on this site are all written for a parodic, satirical and humorous purpose. Often all three at the same time. It’s all fake and we’re not even ashamed of it.”
Radar, an object to fake news
For the past ten years, the satirical media Echo de la Boucle – a kind of Gorafi on the local Bisontine scale – has been diverting the news through a site that looks like traditional media. In an interview with France 3 Regions last April, the authors even admit that the cow radar is among their best-selling articles.
More generally, the subject of speed cameras fuels many fantasies on social networks. In February, for example, we were interested in the case of an old fake news around a hidden radar. But it was not a radar, but a device to measure the flow of traffic.