1,621 penalty notices in three days. Of those, 456 for speeding. If you want one number that explains what Macedonia's roads look like, that is it: every fourth driver fined was fined for driving faster than allowed.

The Interior Ministry published the results of routine traffic checks carried out by officers from every internal affairs sector on roads across the country on 24, 25 and 26 August. The list is long and, read carefully, fairly unpleasant.

Forty-three people were detained for reckless driving. Two of them were driving under the influence of alcohol. Twenty were driving with no licence. Two got behind the wheel despite a previously imposed driving ban. In the same period, 19 vehicles were seized under article 300-b of the Criminal Code.

The small numbers that say the most

385 illegal-parking offences. 28 sanctions for drink-driving. 159 motorcyclists fined for not wearing a helmet. 105 road users not wearing a seatbelt. 17 vehicles taken off the road as unregistered, seven for technical faults, and four drivers fined for tinted windows.

One hundred and fifty-nine motorcyclists without a helmet. In three days. In a country whose road system counts dead motorcyclists every summer, that is not a detail - it is 159 people who knowingly went out with the least possible protection in a fall.

And twenty were driving with no licence whatsoever. Not lost, not left at home - no licence. Plus two whom a court or a misdemeanour body had banned from driving, and who drove anyway.

The checks work. The problem is they have to run constantly

The Ministry said traffic checks will continue in the coming days, with an appeal to all road users to obey the rules.

The numbers show the police are doing their job. 1,621 notices in three days is not a photo-op campaign - it is real pressure on the ground. But they show something else too: enforcement works only while it lasts. The moment the patrol moves on, 456 speeders go back to the same speed.

So it is worth asking something we rarely read in these statements: how many of those 1,621 notices were actually collected? Because a fine that is written but never collected is not a sanction - it is a formality. And as long as a driver under a ban calmly sits behind the wheel, it is hard to argue that the system which imposed that ban means anything out on the road.