KUWAIT CITY, May 12, (KUNA): The national police have a taken a major step forward in efforts to monitor and track down and apprehend offenders and law-breaking motorists, with deployment of “smart patrols” on the country’s roads.
Efforts in this sector, latest creation for employing all latest electronic devices to enforce law, started in 2009, as a result of cooperation among the information technology sector of the Ministry of Interior, the police and traffic commands, thus the “smart patrols” were launched following a series of tests of state-of-art technology, said Major Mohammad Al-Mansouri, the head of operations of the traffic general-directorate, also supervisor of the project.
A “smart patrol” is equipped with sensors, radar systems and cameras for monitoring all activities and movements around the police vehicle on the roads. The system automatically detects and registers number of plates and scans the car record to determine whether papers’ status is legal or whether the driver’s record is clean or not.
The radar, which monitors speed of passing cars, can observe up to 40 vehicles per minute. Pictures of the occurrences on the roads are automatically transmitted to the operations room of the ministry or any other affiliate facility. Moreover, data in the system attached to the patrol car can be updated automatically every half an hour. And, each car is equipped with a vocal system that alerts the officer about status of a passing car.
Currently, there are 20 of these “smart cars” deployed in areas notorious for recurring problems and law-breaking actions.
Maj Al-Mansouri added that the “smart patrols” of the traffic police registered, during 2011-2012, up to 2,055 cases of insurance expiry and 92 “wanted vehicles.”