REGINA – Saskatchewan Government Insurance (SGI) is trying to improve road safety by investing in automatic licence plate readers for the RCMP and municipal police forces.
The licence plate readers use infra-red technology to scan license plates and alert police when a plate has been linked to a stolen or unregistered vehicle, a suspended driver, or even a report of an impaired driver.
“The automatic licence plate reader has been beneficial in larger settings, like the Craven Country Jamboree, where quite often we’ll get a report of a possible impaired driver,” said Constable Kaufmann with the White Butte RCMP.
“We can input the licence plate number into the system and then use it to find the reported impaired driver and actually apprehend that driver while they’re on the road to prevent further incident.”
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“Licence plate readers help keep Saskatchewan roads safe for all residents by identifying drivers that may be high risk,” said Andrew Cartmell, President and CEO of SGI.
“Implementing technology to make roads safer was one of the recommendations made by the Special Committee on Traffic Safety in its final report, and that’s exactly what SGI is doing by funding these devices.”
There are currently 13 police cars in the province equipped with automatic license plate readers.
“The benefit of this technology is that it helps get the high risk drivers off the road,” said Constable Kaufmann. “We’ve gone from manually checking about 10 plates every 15 minutes to checking 10 plates in 10 seconds with the automatic licence plate reader.”
SGI has currently invested about $485,000 in this technology and plans to buy more devices in the future.
The video below will show you how the technology will work
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