It was announced by the General Directorate of Transport (DGT). will deploy five drones to monitor traffic on conventional roads from next friday. They will do so as part of a special road monitoring device in the summer, a period when the country’s roads support 89.3 million trips.
As Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Markasla explained, these devices will “complement” the work of agents of the Civil Guard’s traffic group. No fines will be issued through your imagesbecause as we could confirm after talking to the DGT, drones will only perform surveillance and control tasks.
Four of the five drones will be deployed “preferably” on peninsular roads, only regular roads with one lane in each direction and where 80% of accident deaths occur, according to Minister Grande-Marlasky. Meanwhile, the fifth drone will be destined for the Canary Islands.
Five #drones will fulfill the tasks of supervision and regulation in #CtrasConventionales within the operation #SummerDGT2018.
It aims to facilitate security and fluency #traffic. #WeWantYouBack pic.twitter.com/wwWVgUrjrL— General Director of Operations (@DGTes) June 26, 2018
According to the DGT, drones are part of the Strategic Plan for Air Media of the General Directorate of Transport, thereby complementing tasks in the field of traffic surveillance and regulation. Furthermore, looking to the future, they have currently trained 12 drone pilots through the Traffic Helicopter Unit, a pilot training organization that issues basic and advanced drone piloting certificates.
“Because we have to evolve,” a DGT spokesperson explained to us when we asked the reason why they decided on these drones. “These are new technologies that can be applied to road safety,” he adds. They also confirmed that drones will always be placed on the sides of roads and will not fly over vehicles.
When asked about the quantity chosen and why only 5 devices were chosen, DGT assures that this will only be the beginning. They give examples of fixed radars and traffic cameras: they were also few in the first tests and are now present on many roads.
“It won’t just be in Madrid or Seville, where they are supposed to be, they will beapart from the Basque Country and Catalonia, as they have transfers in terms of traffic’, they also told us that the tracking system would rotate.
This is just a pilot test at the moment
DGT did not want to say anything about the models drones they use or their specs as we are only pilot testing at this point. All they told us is that there are a few prototypes and that they will provide information when they have the final models to use.
The current one is the second test the DGT has carried out with drones on roads following the test they carried out over the last May long weekend. While they announced at the time that they would be using the Phantom 2, Phantom 4 Pro, Matrice 200 and two S900 units, DGT has not confirmed to us that these are repeat models.
So we currently do not know what type of drones DGT uses. But what is clear is that if this pilot test goes well, in the medium term we should start preparing to have traffic monitoring drones in addition to radars, cameras and helicopters, even if they are not preparing for this at the moment, who knows if they will also give fines.
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