Browse > Home / News / Traffic cameras focus on rego

Traffic cameras focus on rego

Posted on May 6, 2009, 11:11am and updated on May 6, 2009 at 1:10 pm

South East motorists who deliberately flout vehicle registration laws can be caught by road traffic cameras from June 1 under new legislation.

Police will have the power to utilise information gathered from speed and red light cameras to detect unregistered and uninsured vehicles across South Australia.

Before this legislation, the cameras had a single purpose only and could not be used to check on vehicle registrations if a car was caught speeding or running a red light.

Tougher penalties have also been introduced.

South East police operations manager Senior Sergeant Steve Hill said the increased detection capability would help catch more “rego cheats” in the South East.

“We know there are many people who drive unregistered and uninsured vehicles and the more of these vehicles we can get off the road, the better,” he said.

“We are very keen for the new rules to occur; those who drive an unregistered vehicle put other people at risk, paticularly in the incident of getting someone’s particulars after a collision.”

The project was a joint initiative of the Department of Transport, Energy and Infrastructure, the Motor Accident Commission and South Australian Police.

Motor Accident Commission chief executive Andrew Daniels said unregistered drivers generated pressure to charge higher premiums for people who were registered, to cover the cost of personal injury claims.

“The premium for the average car is $410, which is part of the registration fee,” Mr Daniels said.

“Compensating those injured in crashes by uninsured vehicles contributes about $20 to the premium.

Road Safety Minister Michael O’Brien said the number of rego cheats had risen by 30pc in recent years and he hoped raising the monetary fine would deter people who had previously flouted the law to reoffend.

The maximum penalty for failure to register will increase from $750 to $2500, while the fine for failure to insure will double to $5000.

Tags: , ,  

Comments

One Response to “Traffic cameras focus on rego”

  1. Mykln on May 7th, 2009 10:50 am 1

    I understand that the cameras serve an important purpose, and have most likely saved lives.… But…

    The amount for fines is a little err… over the top ?? Its kind of hard not to think they are placed there for revenue raising, when one fine off the thing costs $327 per offence.

    I received a red light camera fine in the mail for the same amount. I paid the fine, but I didn’t go through a set of lights on a red. I did, however, get stuck across the lights because the 2 on coming cars were coming through on a red light, and I had no choice but to give way or there would have been an accident. So the light flashed them as well as myself.

    It doesn’t seem fair, so Im’ avoiding any lights with cameres on them from now on … not worth it the risk of getting stung $327.

Posting of new comments is currently disabled.