Banyule and Nillumbik highway patrol’s new automatic number plate technology to catch more crooks
Offending drivers have just months to get their act together before a never-seen-before technology hits Melbourne roads, making it a lot easier for police to catch crooks.
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New highway patrol cars fitted with updated number plate recognition technology are being tipped to nab a higher rate of unauthorised drivers across Nillumbik and Banyule.
Victoria Police’s new Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system will allow police to detect suspended, disqualified or unlicensed drivers, as well as vehicles with stolen plates.
ANPR scans number plates and matches them against a database of vehicles of interest.
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Greensborough highway patrol Senior Constable Jason Flinn said the system detected number plates at such a fast rate, it could not be compared to their old system.
“Everything was manual on the old system, this new system is better quality, it’s faster, it has a HD camera and can spot even more offences,” he said.
The ANPR system’s cameras can also record offences, which officers can then show to the offending driver on a removable tablet inside the car.
Unauthorised drivers were at fault in 16 per cent a study of fatal collisions in 2016 found.
About one in five injury collisions involving an unregistered vehicle also involved an unauthorised driver, the same study discovered.
Road Policing Command Assistant Commissioner Stephen Leane said the new technology would make it more difficult for unauthorised drivers to flout the law.
“Unauthorised road users pose a significant threat to themselves and others,” he said.
“These drivers have no right to be behind the wheel, either because of their previous unsafe behaviour or because they are unlicensed.
“We’re determined to detect them and get them off our roads and ANPR is a big step forward in that effort.
“The system will allow us to scan around 5000 number plates per shift, which is a huge increase on what our officers are able to do manually.”
The Greensborough highway patrol ANPR car will be operating and out on the roads in future months, with the full suite of ANPR units rolled out across the state by March 2021.
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