Granfoss tunnel, Photo booths | The Granfoss Tunnel in 5th place: Here are Norway’s greediest photo booths

(THE ONLINE NEWSPAPER) If you are caught speeding in a traffic light, it will cost you. But the good news for those who like government income is that great speed brings ringing coins into the treasury.

Ten photo booths brought in a juicy NOK 156 million in 2023, or NOK 156,553,000 to be exact.

In total, the state received NOK 334,548,700 in 2023 from drivers caught driving too fast.

The four most profitable photo booths are located in Oslo – with the photo booth in the Vålerengtunnelen in the direction of Drammen at the top, according to the police.

The photo booths in the capital brought in a total of NOK 128,667,450. And some more than others. The Vålereng tunnel brought in the most with NOK 26,860,600 million.

– Is it because the drivers in this district drive too fast?

– It is related to the amount of traffic. There is a high density of cars and traffic there. Oslo people are no worse than others. But some people drive too fast, says head of the police’s center for automatic traffic control, Vivi-Ann Haukås, to Nettavisen.

You have to pay this if you drive too fast

If you drive too fast where the speed limit is 60 km/h or lower:

Even 5 km/h over the speed limit: NOK 1,100
Even 10 km/h over the speed limit: NOK 3,000
Even 15 rpm over the speed limit: NOK 5,400
Even 20 km/h over the speed limit: NOK 7,800
Even 25 km/h over the speed limit: NOK 12,100

If you drive too fast where the speed limit is 70 km/h or higher:

When the speed limit on a motorway is 90 km/h or more:

36 km/h up to and including 40 km/h: NOK 15,100

The country’s most profitable photo booths

As many as 26,037 people were photographed by speed cameras while driving too fast, according to statistics sent to Nettavisen earlier this year. 482 people had their driver’s license confiscated, 2,299 received a report and 86,196 had a simplified notice dumped in the mailbox after driving too fast past a speed camera.

Here you can see how much each photo booth brought in.

Reduces the number of accidents

Speed camera controls reduce personal injury accidents by somewhere between 12 and 22 per cent, according to the Transport Economics Institute (TØI).

The number of seriously injured and killed is halved with the use of speed cameras, according to the same evaluation from TØI. They fully expect that the number of people killed and seriously injured will be reduced by between 49 and 54 per cent. However, it emerges from the new national transport plan that new evaluations of traffic safety measures must be carried out.

The government’s revenue from traffic fines in 2023 was NOK 1.1 billion. That is almost 170 million more than in 2021. In percentage terms, the increase was 18.2 per cent, writes VG. Increased uptime at speed cameras and higher fine rates are a large part of the reason, according to the newspaper. In 2023, 379 million came in from speed cameras, compared to 223 million in 2021.

– A sufficiently high level of reactions that contribute to more people complying with the rules is therefore positive for traffic safety, says State Secretary Tom Kalsås (Ap) in the Ministry of Transport.

The photo booths have an uptime of around 90 percent. In 2023, they checked over 288 million vehicles, 18 percent more than in 2021.

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