Who is in charge of road safety?
In the first instance Rijkswaterstaat, which has three thousand traffic cameras installed along roads and waterways and at tunnels, bridges and locks. With live images from these cameras, employees in a regional traffic control center keep an eye on the current traffic situations. For example, if an accident occurs on the highway, Rijkswaterstaat can immediately close a lane by means of a red cross on a matrix board. Road stewards then take action to close off the road for emergency services and to manage the flow of traffic.
What can Rijkswaterstaat do against farmers’ campaigns?
Not much, a spokesperson said. ‘We can only monitor live images, because by law we are not allowed to store the images. So then it stops a bit, no matter how annoying we find this ourselves. What we can do is call in the police when we see live that someone is committing a criminal offense on or near the road.’ But that won’t happen anytime soon in this case, as camera coverage is lower in rural areas. They hang mainly along busy roads. ‘There is therefore little chance that we will be able to see live how waste is dumped on roads and in roadsides, so that we can immediately report it to the police.’
Rijkswaterstaat uses special cameras that recognize license plates for temporary traffic surveys on certain roads, such as travel times and journey frequencies. But that (personal) data is not kept for long. The Public Prosecution Service may request this data under certain conditions, but by that time the data has often already been destroyed.
And the police?
The police are not allowed to watch the cameras of Rijkswaterstaat, they have their own cameras hanging above the road. “We prefer to catch them in the act,” says a spokesperson for the National Police. That is why the police carry out extra patrols at night on roads in rural areas. ‘We also receive signals that people are organizing themselves online, so we also monitor social media.’ However, there are restrictions on searching on social media. The police are only allowed to look at public group pages. For a look into closed app groups, permission must first be requested from the public prosecutor.
The coverage of the police cameras in rural areas is also lower. According to the National Police, the number of cameras in an area is related to local crime figures, but also to municipal choices.
The impression is that the farmers can go about their business without action being taken. What is true of that?
Investigations into incidents are still ongoing. “Unfortunately, there is now an impression that the police act too little, but a criminal investigation is not ready soon,” says the police spokesperson for the National Police. “That’s why no arrests have been made yet.”
By the way, you do not automatically catch a perpetrator with only camera images, the spokesperson emphasizes. ‘But you can get further with it. After the escalated protests at the home of minister Christianne van der Wal, we put blurred images of the suspects online. We called on them to report to the police, with the warning that we would put the images online after a week without blurring if they did not respond to our call. They quickly showed up.’
How can action be taken against farmers’ actions on the road?
Rijkswaterstaat is mainly dependent on reports from other road users for these types of incidents, the spokesperson said. ‘Because when the police and our road stewards arrive, the perpetrators will be long gone.’
The police are also making an urgent appeal to citizens. Part of a police investigation is collecting images taken by bystanders with their mobile phones or dashcams, the spokesperson said. ‘Citizens can help us by reporting to us with tips, images or evidence.’