The Government Delegation in Galicia reports the beginning today Monday of a special campaign of the General Directorate of Traffic aimed at the control and surveillance of distractions at the wheel. The campaign will be carried out by the Traffic Group of the Civil Guard, together with the local police of the municipalities that join and will extend until next Sunday, October 13.
It will be reinforced on conventional roads and on the most dangerous stretches and will be coordinated by the Provincial Traffic Headquarters, which will use the maximum number of human and material resources available. In addition, whenever possible, both variable signage panels and alphanumeric displays of Civil Guard Traffic Grouping vehicles in the vicinity will warn drivers of the upcoming existence of controls.
The main objective of this campaign is to raise awareness of the danger of distractions at the wheel, which since 2017 have been the first most frequent concurrent cause in traffic accidents on the roads. According to DGT reports, distractions at the wheel were present in 17% of accidents in 2022; at the same time it was a concurrent factor in 31% of traffic accidents with fatalities, mainly due to the misuse of electronic devices.
Precisely, last year in Galicia 7,801 complaints were registered for distractions at the wheel related to the use of the mobile phone, headphones or other devices, registering an increase of 23% with respect to the data collected the previous year (6,338 complaints). 90% of these complaints were for use of the mobile phone (7,180), followed by the use of headphones/headphones (586), and finally, 35 complaints for use of visual devices such as GPS.
Last year's campaign
In the same campaign last year, held in October, agents of the Traffic Group of the Civil Guard controlled 37,548 vehicles on Galician roads, with 839 complaints. Almost 200 of these complaints were made for detecting irregular use of the mobile phone.