Skip to main content

New hand-held technology to bolster traffic enforcement in South Africa

Provincial Traffic Officers in South Africa have been issued with new hand-held devices by the Department of Transport and Public Works as a fast, information-verifying tool that will assist enforcement. These devices have been entirely developed and tested over the past two years by the Department and will be in operation across the Western Cape; a first of its kind in South Africa.
December 22, 2015 Read time: 2 mins

Provincial Traffic Officers in South Africa have been issued with new hand-held devices by the Department of Transport and Public Works as a fast, information-verifying tool that will assist enforcement.

These devices have been entirely developed and tested over the past two years by the Department and will be in operation across the Western Cape; a first of its kind in South Africa.

The devices allow traffic officers real-time access to the automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) camera system, which is linked to the eNaTIS database where all vehicle and driver information is stored.

The cameras read  the number plate of a passing vehicle, immediately relaying details of that vehicle’s make, class, registration status, roadworthy status, offences, warrants, and ownership to a central back office. This information can then immediately be relayed via a 3G link back to traffic officers in the field, positioned close to the ANPR, allowing them to stop a vehicle that has been flagged by the device for having offences attached to it.

The device also allows traffic officers to scan and read vehicle licence discs and drivers licences to verify their authenticity, as well as to pull information relating to past offences and possible warrants of arrest.

The system will also serve as an information gathering tool for traffic management component, assisting the Department to plan resource deployment better in areas where it is needed most.

Related Content

  • Motown morphs into Mobility City
    August 7, 2018
    Detroit was once a byword for urban decay – but ITS America recently held its annual meeting there. This gave David Arminas a chance to assess how fast Motor City is moving down the road to recovery. Motor City, as Detroit is still called, was on its financial knees only five short years ago. The future looked bleak as the city and greater urban area bled jobs and population. It was on 18 July 2013 that Motown, as Detroit is also known, filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, the
  • Tags or communication based toll payment systems?
    January 20, 2012
    Midland Expressway Ltd's Tom Fanning discusses deployment of Near Field Communicationbased payment on the M6 Toll facility The M6 Toll's introduction from early next year of Near Field Communication (NFC) is a pragmatic response to the relative scarcity of tolled facilities and the concomitant low levels of tag take-up in the UK, according to the road's operator, Midland Expressway Ltd (MEL). Nevertheless, Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC)-based tags operating at 5.8GHz are still a key part of the
  • Acusensus phone-detection units arrive on English roads
    August 1, 2023
    Australian road safety company says trailer units will be positioned on selected highways
  • Driver with 51 penalty points still allowed to drive
    January 12, 2016
    Three drivers with more than 40 points on their driving licences are still allowed on the road, according to a Freedom of Information request to the DVLA by the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM). The enquiry also found that 13 people in Britain currently have 28 or more points on their driving licence, the worst of those amassing 51 points. In addition, the numbers of drivers with 12 or more points has gone up by nine per cent in just seven months between March and October 2015 – from 6,884 to 7,517.