Enforcement

French authorities have started sending fines to Belgian citizens for road traffic violations observed in France using roadside speed cameras. Foreigners account for more than 20 per cent of road traffic violations in France but up until recently there was no mechanism for taking action against them once they had returned to their home country. In June 2012, Belgium opened its car registration database to the French, Spanish and German authorities so that violators can be traced and fined.

The Malaysian the government will use over 1,000 cameras to monitor roads nationwide under its Automated Enforcement System (AES) scheme. The programme will see 250 mobile cameras, 566 fixed speed cameras and 265 traffic light cameras being used to monitor the roads. It is claimed that each camera will be able to capture around 600 road offenders daily.

In the Netherlands, TNO, the independent research organisation, has been engaged in a project on behalf of the RDW, the Dutch vehicle registration and licensing authority, intended to look at the feasibility of using electronic means to make vehicle identification more accurate and less susceptible to fraud. Electronic Vehicle Identification (EVI) has been in existence in various forms for several years now but TNO was tasked with finding out whether OnBoard Unit (OBU)-based applications could be complement

Martyn Harriss looks at what we can do to simplify the type approval of enforcement equipment in Europe. I doubt that there are many who can remember the days when policemen hid in the bushes with stopwatches and flags to catch speeding motorists - and I'd suggest that back then there were few who were caught who would have dared question the accuracy of those watches or those who operated them. Probably, fewer still here in Europe could have dreamt that a supranational body such as the European Union (EU)

District 7 of Caltrans has been conducting trials to see whether the use of a single inductive loop to measure vehicle lengths and so identify heavy trucks is feasible. So far, the results have been very promising, according to Lead Transportation Engineer Steve Malkson. Between them, the adjoining ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the US's two biggest, cover some 10,700 acres (43km2) and 68 miles (109km) of waterfront.