Surveillance camera to catch road offenders

Categories: Malaysia

Malaysia plans to install a digital camera system to catch speedster. It plan to installs such cameras along accident-prone areas along trunk-roads and highways and certain road junctions in urban areas. What is noble about this plan is that this camera work will be carried out by a private company who will be paid by a commissions for each motorist fined. The installation and maintainance will entirely be carried out by the company. A case of something from nothing! If all goes according to plan, the cameras will be up by next year.

By privatising the camera system, the government will be freed from paying for the set up and it maintainance. This means the setup is fairly cheap for the government. Having already alloted a large sum of money for the Ninth Malaysian Plan, any savings from such an important program is certainly welcomed. By paying the company a commission for the booking of any errant motorist will also ensure that the system is self-paying.

This system also relieve police personnel from doing this labour intensive job so that they can better be utilised to far more important assignment such as preventing and solving crime. This automated systems also can help to reduce corruption as the errant motorist are not booked and fined on the spot which creates a window of opportunity for corrupt practices.

Although this system is good, potential problems should be looked into. Will there be any double-booking - traffic infringements captured by the camera with the same offence summoned by a police personnel? Is there a way to prevent this from happening? And if this happened is the offence to be fined twice?

Because the camera system only capture the number plate of the offending car, who will take the rap for the offence? How to ensure that the fine is paid by the offending driver? This is important because the person who paid the fine may not be the person who committed the offence in the first place. And given that the demerit point systems had failed, what is there to prevent the abuse from happening?

In Malaysia there are numerous cases of fake number plates being used especially in the rural areas where checks are difficult. If such cars were to be caught, is there a way to trace such number plates? What happens if the rightful owner of the 'captured' number plate was summoned? Is there any appeal system for such cases?

What about change in address that was not reflected with the Road Transport Department (JPJ) database? How to ensure that such change in address is captured by the department?

The are many foreign cars using the Malaysian roads. Under the current system, foreign offenders are usually booked on the spot and they are to pay the summons at the nearest police stations or traffic police booth setup at designated shopping complex. Sometimes these foreigners crossed the border without paying the summones. Although the authority had said that they will check for any cars with outstanding summons at the checkpoint, this had not been the case. So with the camera systems, foreigners who flout the road rules will still be able to avoid paying for the summons. Until this is looked into, the system will seem very unfair to the locals.

Therefore although installing the cameras seemed a very good idea, the problem with the high accident rates on Malaysian roads is not one of lack of rules but one of lack of implementation. As long as poor implementation is not rectified, no matter how much technologies or manpower is utilised, the road offences will remains.