All Spanish cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, in theory, have launched their Low Emission Zones in 2023, limiting the access of the most polluting cars to these limited areas. A control that is carried out, in many cases, by means of cameras: The ITV of Madrid want to take advantage of these devices to control that the vehicles that circulate in the capital of Spain have passed this mandatory inspection.
According to the Association of Entities for the Technical Inspection of Vehicles of the Community of Madrid (AEMA-ITV), the absenteeism of Madrid cars regarding this procedure is close to 40%. With the aim of reducing this figure, some measures have been proposed to the community and among them is the use of the cameras that control the Special Protection Low Emission Zones (ZBEDEP), which correspond to the Central District and Plaza Elíptica, and the ZBE ( M-30 and the interior of the M-30 itself).
A request that comes from afar
In Madrid, since January 1, the restrictions for category A vehicles (those that do not have a DGT sticker) have increased: they cannot enter the M-30 and cannot drive on the ring road itself. The entrances inside the M-30 are monitored through 111 devices and 44 more cameras had to be added to them whose mission is to examine the accesses to the road. They have not arrived on time, although they should be installed by the end of March at the latest.
AEMA-ITV wants the control of these cameras to go beyond the environmental badge of each vehicle: they want them to check if they have the inspection in order. This demand is not new: was raised, in 2022, by the Spanish Association of Collaborating Entities of the Administration in the Technical Inspection of Vehicles (AECA-ITV) before the Road Safety Commission of the Congress of Deputies.
They allege that the process would be simple because the devices that monitor the interior of the M-30 and will do the same with the ring road in a few months, have a high degree of automation. This feature allows you to cross-reference the information obtained from the images with the data from the DGT’s General Vehicle Registry. In this way, in addition to checking whether they can (or not) enter, it is possible to take advantage of the license plate recognition to check if the vehicle has the ITV.
Safety and sustainability
With this proposal, AEMA-ITV has also wanted to remind the Madrid authorities that these reviews have a fundamental role both in safety and sustainability: They not only identify faults in the vehicles, they also check that emissions do not exceed the limits set by the applicable regulations.
The latest study carried out by the Carlos III University of Madrid on the contribution of the ITV to road safety and the environment, reveals if all the vehicles that do not attend this mandatory appointment had done so, they could have been prevented, at least, 207 deaths. And he adds one more piece of information: inspections prevent, each year, 575 premature victims of polluting emissions.
