driving
Video surveillance of drivers spreads to over 500 French towns and cities
Hundreds of communes now track driving offences such as speeding and mobile phone use with CCTV
A growing number of French towns and cities are using video-surveillance to track drivers for a large array of driving offences, with those behind the wheel often unaware that they are being watched.
More than 530 such zones, spread across 519 towns and cities, were recorded in a study by French company Coyote, which specialises in driver assistance services.
Zones are located in almost all of the country’s larger towns and cities, alongside a number of smaller towns.
"Beyond major urban areas such as Bordeaux, Marseille, and Lyon, video enforcement is also expanding into mid-sized towns such as Villeneuve-d’Ascq (Nord), Sélestat (Bas-Rhin), and Châteaudun (Eure-et-Loir),” said the group.
Zones are spread across the country but concentrated in departments with larger urban areas, including the Île-de-France region around the capital, which accounts for around a third of all communes using cameras to track drivers (163 overall).
The densest concentration of communes with zones was found in the following departments: Seine-Saint-Denis (with 28 communes), Bouches-du-Rhône (27), and Nord (25).
What are these zones?
These zones consist of areas where authorities track driver behaviour using video camera surveillance.
These live CCTV cameras can track several kinds of offences, including crimes alongside traffic and road violations.
On its website the Délégation à la sécurité routière (DSR), France’s road safety agency, lists 12 offences that can be enforced via the video surveillance.
They are: failure to stop at red lights and stop signs; speeding; not maintaining safe distances between vehicles; illegally entering a bus lane or taxi lane; not wearing a seatbelt; using a mobile phone while driving; stopping or parking in emergency stopping lanes; crossing continuous lines; failure to comply with overtaking rules; stopping in zones reserved for bikes at lights; not wearing a helmet on a motorised two-wheeler; and driving without insurance.
However, this list has since been expanded and now includes offences such as wrong-way driving, level-crossing offences and local safety restrictions on bridges and road access.
Zones can have hundreds of cameras within them, tracking drivers across dozens of roads. In Villeneuve-d’Ascq, a commune with a population of just over 60,000, there are around 400 cameras in the video surveillance zone.
Human agents review camera footage live to confirm offences, before sending out a fine, usually by post. This means the cameras are not fully automated, but rely on human readings.
Agents vary but can come from several groups, including police officers, gardes champêtres (a category of law enforcement officer responsible for policing in rural areas), agents de surveillance de la voie publique (civil enforcement officers), as well as civil servants and local government staff.
With the exception of national police and gendarmes, the agents are appointed by the mayor to review footage.
No data for the exact number of fines sent out by these specific cameras is available, but the total number of procès-verbaux électroniques (electronic fines) sent out between 2024 and 2025, rose by 2.3%, reaching 12.9 million.
This figure relates to all fines that are issued digitally by enforcement agencies, and includes fines issued by officers monitoring CCTV cameras, although no national breakdown is available showing how many tickets originated from video surveillance.
For comparison, speed cameras in France generated 15.2 million fines in 2025.
Note that these video surveillance cameras are different from speed cameras. Despite reports in French media last year, speed cameras that can check for additional offences such as not wearing a seatbelt are yet to be approved in France.
How can drivers check for zones?
All zones where such cameras are installed must be marked, as required by France’s data protection watchdog CNIL (Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés).
However, drivers are often unaware that they are entering these zones, and therefore are not looking for the signs indicating a driver has entered one.
“It creates a mental burden. It’s hard to drive flawlessly; lapses in attention can happen,” said Coyote’s marketing director Stéphane Curtelin to Le Figaro.
No official list of communes using video surveillance for drivers is available, but an unofficial list can be viewed here, although it is worth noting it may not be up to date.
Alternatively, drivers can use apps and devices that inform drivers of the location of these zones, including Coyote, with the group’s software available in English.
However, applications cannot show the exact location of cameras.
