Changes needed to Italy's enforcement tendering?

KRIA's co-founder and President Stefano Arrighetti discusses the events which led up to investigations into the fraudulent use of his company's T-RED red light enforcement system and his house arrest. Looking forward, he says, there needs to be fundamental reform of how Italy goes about the enforcement contract tendering process

It's the story which, arguably, has put automated enforcement's cause back by many years: how Italian enforcement system manufacturer 83 Kria's innovative, image-based T-RED red light enforcement system was used by local authorities and private companies in Italy to profit massively from the revenues gained from illegal red light running prosecutions; how this led one local police officer to annul huge numbers of citations; how KRIA, it was claimed, had fraudulently obtained homologation for its T-RED system (an assertion which was subsequently overturned); and how Stefano Arrighetti, KRIA's co-founder and President, was placed under house arrest while the whole affair was investigated.

The shockwaves were felt internationally as the story was reported far and wide. According to Arrighetti, the truth - insofar as it affects him - is rather more prosaic. Here, in his first interview with the industry press since his house arrest was annulled, he talks about recent events.

Scene-setting

Arrighetti starts with a number of assertions: "KRIA operates in the Italian enforcement market as a manufacturer and homologation owner. We have never sold our T-RED system directly to local administrations. We have sold to supply companies but we did not necessarily know where our systems would be installed. And we did not sign any on-site maintenance agreements.

"T-RED systems were leased to local councils with a proportion, usually about 30 per cent, of revenues from tickets passing to the system supplier. In Italy this is the usual tendering procedure; in my opinion, it's perhaps not the most ethically correct way of doing business but it is precisely within the law as it stands at present.

"Supplying companies installed the T-RED system on existing intersections already equipped with traffic light controllers. Public opinion has it that they increased the number of violations by changing the controller signal timings but my opinion is that that was not necessary; if it is true, it happened in only a few cases. I'd rather suppose that T-RED's reaction time was set to zero, which means that T-RED started the vehicle detection just after the end of the amber phase, on the red phase signal rise. That was, technically speaking, the actual reason for the explosion in the number of red light-running violations following T-RED's deployment. Given the incredible and socially unsustainable number of violations issued, the public's interest in T-RED was raised and prosecutors started to look more closely at what was going on.

"Every possible element of the enforcement process involving T-RED has been thoroughly investigated by many prosecutors from different Italian cities; other aspects relating to suspicious tender awards and back office management have also been scrutinised. Milan's Prosecutor in fact found irregularities among tender procedures in many local administrations.

"In my opinion the reason why it was mainly T-RED, among other homologated products, which was investigated is due to the competitive advantage of our technology - such as its detection reliability, its efficiency at night and its virtually unlimited storage capacity - and the relatively high number of T-RED units installed in a short space of time. Investigations verified the system effectiveness and concluded that T-RED had probably been used as a major source of income by some administrations. For many local councils, T-RED-generated citations were in fact the most significant revenue source used to make up shortfalls in budget allocations.

"In our case many prosecutors conducted thorough investigations and deduced that we were not involved in any tender. However, the Prosecutor of Verona examined the T-RED homologation process. But rather than refer to the Italian Ministry of Transport's procedures and technical regulations in force a side-by-side comparison was made with a completely different product involved in the investigation and it was wrongly deduced that we at KRIA withheld information on parts of our system from the Ministry of Transport in order to speed up our homologation procedure and so effect a more speedy introduction to the market."

"We in fact extended our T-RED homologation many times and we always used the same procedure, not because it was faster but because it met the regulations in place.

"My personal feeling is that identifying irregularities in KRIA's homologation applications was simply the easiest and quickest way to address the 'problem' of a sudden and very large increase in the number of citations. It was, shall we say, a very 'Italian' way of doing things and completely failed to address the issues pertaining to poor driving standards among large sectors of the population."

Software-based solution

T-RED, like most of KRIA's products, uses software components running on a standard PC. This is a different and new approach, especially if compared to competitors' traditional architectures, according to Arrighetti. Synchronisation is the core function of any red light enforcement system and there are two input signals: traffic light phase and vehicle position. These allow time-stamping of every image in relation to the beginning of the red phase.

Traditional enforcement devices receive the two input signals respectively from the traffic light and vehicle position (determined by a presence detection system such as an inductive loop) and use proprietary hardware. T-RED, by contrast, receives only one input signal - from the traffic signal. Vehicle position is detected by camera image processing, so synchronisation is accomplished entirely by software.

"Our technical relation deposited at the Ministry of Transport explains this in detail," Arrighetti continues. "For this reason the components deposited during the homologation were limited to those in the acquisition unit such as the camera, infrared lighting and associated housings, as the usual procedures required by the Italian Ministry of Transport do not require a standard PC to be deposited.

"Verona's Prosecutor supposed erroneously that a relay mounted between our TTL interface on the PC board and the traffic light controller was dedicated to the synchronisation function. The relay in fact is only a signal-level translator from the traffic light to the PC; it may vary depending on different traffic light types and according to the regulations in force, CEI and UNI, which are the Italian equivalents to European CENELEC and 1701 CEN standards. But it is not part of the homologated product. That was where the fraud charges originated from.

"Frankly, I don't feel at all ashamed or stigmatised by my house arrest. I, my partners and customers are all sure that I've done nothing wrong. However when I think about my partners abroad, I am generally embarrassed by the many 'Italian'-style behaviours which have gone on."

Structural deficiencies

Arrighetti feels that much more needs to be done to address problems with national driving habits and deployment strategies: "Instead of looking to create a monster of automated enforcement, there are several real issues which the general media should be looking at. Drivers should slow down at intersections and stop at amber lights as they do in most European countries but in Italy at amber lights everybody accelerates. Enforcement systems, meanwhile, should be leased on a time basis and not on the basis of the number of offences generated. Installed red light enforcement systems should be indicated to drivers in advance with signage but they are not and indeed devices are often hidden at intersections. Enforcement systems should be set according to a safety programme in order to progressively reduce the numbers of road crashes and victims. They should not be used in a cynical fashion to generate revenues. Furthermore, fines should be delivered within days as they are in countries such as Switzerland, for example. Here in Italy, they can arrive five months later and the same commuter could be detected dozens of times before becoming aware of the enforcement system.

"I also think that by law the enforcement system manufacturer should be involved in the installation and maintenance programmes; this is not currently the case here in Italy. Finally, prosecutors should use consultants with knowledge of homologation procedures and not software experts as they did in my case."

Arrighetti remains very proud of the technological leaps which he feels T-RED and other products developed by KRIA have made. But, he says, without a change in culture any such developments are akin to placing a bomb in the hands of a baby.

"I'd like very much to contribute to achieving safer roads, however the only way to do that is through a systemic approach. Technology, my area of competence, is only a small part of a very large project."

Currently, his house arrest ordinance has been annulled. However, there remains the issue of whether Verona's Prosecutor decides on further investigations.

As a result, Arrighetti says that he has no idea of when legal proceedings might draw to a full and final close. He remains convinced, however, that investigators continue to look in the wrong places.

"About 100 people directly involved in the citation management process, the part of this whole affair which generated millions of Euros, were investigated. No-one was arrested apart from me, a manufacturer, over a €5 relay between T-RED and the traffic light. I can only underline that I had no financial benefit to gain from the tickets issued."

Looking forward

More pressing, he feels, is the need to return to business as usual - albeit with some caveats.

"T-RED is homologated but within the domestic market we have as a precaution currently halted commercialisation. We're waiting for the final judgement and are targeting our efforts on our other products such as T-EXSPEED speed enforcement and T-ID licence plate recognition systems. Needless to say, the whole situation has had an economic impact on the company.

"Looking at things more positively, I'm sure that T-RED will maintain its leadership in the domestic market, however new commercial and system management policies will be required. Some T-RED imitations are now available but they could violate KRIA's international patents; that will be probably another battle we will start soon...

"I was really surprised by the interest in this story beyond the Italian borders but all our new partners in Italy and abroad are now working using ethically correct procedures. I only hope that the interest generated and the willingness of our new customers to adapt to a new way of using enforcement technology can help towards a global ethical change in this strategic field."