In just over a week, the triangles will have said goodbye forever on our roads. Or they should have said it if we take the regulation literally because the DGT itself has warned that we will have a grace period to have the V-16 beacon in our car. An element that arrives with controversy and that has been close to being delayed, according to Pere Navarro, director of Traffic.
“We are considering delaying it”. That is what Pere Navarro, director of the DGT, stated in statements to the program Better Late of La Sexta. The head of Traffic confirmed that they considered delaying the beacon “to July 31, but nothing would have changed.”
According to Navarro, delaying the entry of the V-16 beacon would have led to the same problems and debates but six months later. Come on, we would be talking about the convenience and necessity of beacons in the summer instead of doing it now at Christmas.
“Flexible”. In his statement to the La Sexta program, Navarro confirmed that there will not be any type of extension. It is a position in which Tráfico has remained firm in recent months and of which They already announced in November. “This comes from a Royal Decree of 2021,” Navarro now recalled.
However, according to the Director of Traffic, “agents will be flexible”so a certain grace period is expected before the Civil Guard fines us for not having a connected V-16 beacon. Of course, in his statements Navarro has not said how long this period will last and the truth is that, if an agent fines us, the regulations protect him.
Same, same… In his statements, Navarro suggests that if the implementation of the V-16 beacon had been delayed until next summer, the situation would be exactly the same as at the moment. However, the DGT could have made some kind of communication campaign to the drivers by then, something he has completely omitted this time. One of the most repeated criticisms.
In fact, Montserrat Estaca, head of the Telematics Area of the DGT, in an interview with 20Minutes recognized that there was room to better inform drivers. “We should sing a little mea culpa, either we have not done the job well or we have not sufficiently informed the citizens of this new measure,” Estaca acknowledged.
So? The question is… what will we find on the road on January 1, 2026? According to Pere Navarro, the agents will not start fining immediately for not having a V-16 beacon connected but the truth is that if we only put the emergency triangles we will not be correctly signaling a fault and they can fine us 80 euros for it.
The procedure is clear: we must activate the connected V-16 beacon, place it on the roof of the vehicle and only leave it if there is a safe place to stay. However, there are those who resist throwing away the triangles and we ourselves choose to use it depending on what occasions.
This decision will not entail a fine, according to the DGT. In Xataka We have asked Traffic who assure us that the driver will be able to go out and put up the triangles “at his own risk” but that the Civil Guard will not fine him for it.
Photo | DGT
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