Filenews 24 August 2022 - byMichalis Hadjivassilis
More than 118,000 violations recorded by the eight cameras during their first 71/2 months of operation, with only half of the extrajudicial documents being sent to those affected.
Although complaints from the photo-tagging system have been reduced to 200 per day, however, complaints from the 1st of the year to August 17 reached 118,056, a number quite large for such a period of time. It is also estimated that with the remaining 16 mobile cameras and the 20 fixed ones that will come at the beginning of January, complaints will skyrocket and the system will be tested whether it will be able to cope.
As mentioned in "F", the contractor company should, with the implementation of the first phase of the system, send the extrajudicial documents five days after their registration. The company is already making efforts to send the extrajudicial documents earlier in order to adapt to this term of the contract. Of the 118,000 registered violations, 60,000 have been sent and the remaining 60,000 will be sent by post soon, after two issues have been clarified, as the assistant head of the Traffic Department Haris Evripidou told "F". The first concerns vehicles that are recorded in violation and are not registered with a driver but with a company. Following an opinion received from the Legal Service, the extrajudicial documents will be sent to the company where the person in charge will undertake to indicate the driver who was driving the vehicle at that time, otherwise the fine will be sent to the company.
The second issue concerns people who hold a driving license of another country and is not registered with the Department of Road Transport. Clarifications were also given for this case so that the company can start sending out of court in these cases as well. Of the approximately 60,000 violations for which no extrajudicial documents were issued, about 10,000 concern 'offences' that should not have been recorded, either because the cameras tested the system, or because the vehicle's registration numbers are not clearly visible or for any other reason.
In the meantime, the company, at the request of the Traffic Police, will prepare a statistical survey concerning the violations. As mentioned by the officer of the Traffic Police, Pavlos Loizou, in charge of the photo-tagging system, the investigation will show the type of misconduct, their frequency, the type of vehicles involved and other evidence that will help the Police in drawing conclusions about the smooth operation of the cameras.
In the meantime, in the immediate future, the Department of Public Works will begin, in consultation with the company, the Traffic Police and Cyta, to prepare the infrastructure for the installation at four points of the 20 fixed cameras (three in Nicosia and one in Limassol).
