Portugal’s traffic policing tactics are paying off with the authorities’ focus on ‘helping people with their journeys,’ yielding double the number of fines last year, than in 2016.Having stopped and ‘advised’ 32,000 drivers in 2016, the figure went up to 62,000 last year with traffic police keen to reach their targets.
On the plus side, such is the chaos of the judicial system, thousands of drivers are going unpunished due to endemic delays in processing their cases.
The Portuguese Highway Prevention Office warns of the need to reduce the time between handing out a fine and actually receiving it.
Carlos Barbosa, president of the Automóvel Clube de Portugal, said there has been an increase in the number of fines but a decrease in the number of people employed by the State to process the cases.