It is a simple black box placed behind the guardrails of the national road 137 leading to Rennes. Firmly anchored to its concrete base, this new radar has just been installed to monitor the number of occupants of each vehicle traveling on the brand new carpool lane. Opened on Tuesday in Rennes, this former emergency lane was initially reserved for public transport, in order to facilitate their circulation in the event of traffic jams. Since Tuesday morning, it has also been open to all people sharing their vehicle. According to a study conducted by Vinci, more than 85% of motorists are alone in their car in the morning.
The Breton capital is not the only city affected by this new system. This Wednesday, the city of Nantes will also be equipped with it. Authorized by the climate and resilience law, these carpooling lane experiments have or will soon start on ten sites in Strasbourg, Grenoble, Lille and Lyon. Developed by the company Pryntec, this solution uses a thermal camera to check the number of occupants in each car.
Based in Burgundy, the company announces an error rate of 1%, highlighting the effectiveness of its system “day and night” and in all climatic conditions. In Lyon, the metropolis has been waiting for the installation of its new radar for several months. The latter had applied as a candidate considering that it “needs efficient control by radar as a result of observed non-compliance”.
For now, each infraction detected by the thermal camera must be verified retrospectively by a sworn agent. All installed devices are currently in the running-in and testing phase. It is not known when the fines campaign will begin. The Ministry of Ecological Transition specifies that it is up to local authorities to communicate on this point.