Radar indicator
Radar indicator
Since 1 January 2013, Article 98a of the Federal Road Traffic Act has stipulated that anyone who imports, promotes, transmits, sells, hands over, transfers, installs, carries in a vehicle, attaches to a vehicle or uses in any way whatsoever devices designed to complicate, disrupt or even render ineffective official road traffic controls will be liable to a fine! This provision applies to devices used expressly to detect traffic controls or to disrupt their operation, such as radar signal receivers. In addition, anyone who publicly warns road users of official traffic controls, provides a service warning of such controls for a fee or uses a device for this purpose that is not intended solely to detect official traffic controls as mentioned above, such as a mobile phone, is also liable to a fine. A message is considered to be public if it is distributed or made available outside a private context, i.e. to friends or people linked by a particular bond of trust. Community applications that use information provided by users to indicate the whereabouts of the checks in question therefore fall within the scope of the law, although the threat of penalties seems to be aimed more at those who actively provide information than at those who merely passively follow the information displayed on their smartphones, which in any case seems to be more difficult to apprehend.The remedy you have devised to offset the risk of speeding again may well turn out to be worse than the evil, especially if you have equipped yourself with something that is strictly prohibited, as the law specifies that in serious cases the penalty can be up to three years' deprivation of liberty. So it would be wiser for yourself and others to ease up a bit, both inside and outside the notorious "control zones".
