Skip to main content

Polish traffic police using long range cameras for driver infringements

Poland’s traffic police have started to use portable long range cameras to spot if drivers are not wearing seat belts, are using cell phones, running red lights, transporting children without car seats, or driving with no visible licence plate or validation sticker. The cameras can be set up and remotely operated and controlled with an in-car laptop and are typically used at 50-150 metre distances. It means that, instead of using binoculars, officers can sit inside a police car, place the equipment on the s
May 14, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
Poland’s traffic police have started to use portable long range cameras to spot if drivers are not wearing seat belts, are using cell phones, running red lights, transporting children without car seats, or driving with no visible licence plate or validation sticker. The cameras can be set up and remotely operated and controlled with an in-car laptop and are typically used at 50-150 metre distances. It means that, instead of using binoculars, officers can sit inside a police car, place the equipment on the side of the road and record offences on the laptop.

The equipment records video in high definition which is then reviewed to select the frame where the offence can best be seen. Polish police officers copied the idea based on similar equipment used by police in Norway, where they participated in the officer exchange within the Lifesaver project.

Related Content

  • Building the case for photo enforcement
    October 26, 2016
    As red light enforcement is returning to some intersections and being shut down at others, new evidence has been released backing the safety campaigners, reports Jon Masters. In 2014, 709 Americans were killed in red-light-running crashes and an estimated 126,000 were injured according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
  • Changing driving conditions need ongoing driver training
    January 23, 2012
    Trevor Ellis, chairman of the ITS UK Enforcement Interest Group, considers the role of ongoing driver training in increasing compliance. It is over 30 years since I passed my driving test. The world was quite a different place then, in that there were only half the vehicles there are now on the UK's roads, mobile phones did not really exist and (in the UK at least) the vast majority of us drove cars which by today's standards exhibited dreadful dynamic stability and were woefully underpowered.
  • Vision 2016 highlights the latest trends and technology in machine vision
    October 28, 2016
    The Vision Show is the perfect venue to catch up with the latest moves, trends and launches in the traffic vision sector, and ITS International editor Colin Sowman highlights a few to start with…
  • ITS need not reinvent machine vision
    October 29, 2014
    Machine vision techniques hold the potential to solve a multitude of challenges facing the transportation sector Optical Character Recognition (OCR), the base technology for number plate recognition, has been in industrial use for more than three decades. It is a prime example of how, instead of having to start from scratch, the transportation sector can leverage and adapt the machine vision expertise already used in industry in order to provide robust solutions with new capabilities. “The real val