In all emerging economies motorised mobility has increased with economic growth. Simultaneously road safety has suffered dramatically. Expansion of the police force in line with the enormous increase in vehicles in order to maintain adequate enforcement levels is no longer feasible. This encourages these countries to incorporate automated traffic enforcement into their road safety strategy. Moreover, traffic police forces, as an essential, qualified, costly and limited resource should focus on tasks which cannot be automated. This policy paper does not present research results with conclusions. Rather, it presents recommendations to policy makers based on the various multi-disciplinary aspects of the “enforcement chain”. In particular with automated enforcement (e.g. speed and red light cameras) this chain concept is crucial: if one link is not effective or efficient, enforcement and road safety are compromised. The enforcement chain consists of a dozen links from detection and measurement to fine collection and court proceedings. Many counties struggle to get the wide range of multi-disciplinary aspects of the enforcement chain right and are thus not able to optimise their automated enforcement to further improve road safety. Key bottlenecks in the automated enforcement chain can be found e.g. when: 1) political and administrative support for automated traffic enforcement are wavering, 2) the legal and operational framework and its processing capacity are not geared to dealing with automated traffic enforcement and the resulting increase in the amount of traffic violations, 3) the license plate/vehicle owner and/or driving license administration are not in order, 4) inadequate requirements for the legal integrity of evidence and equipment homologation, 5) ticket processing, issuance and fine collection are ineffective and inefficient, 6) authorities argue over ticket revenue and funding of road safety investments e.g. enforcement and processing equipment, software and maintenance, 7) public support suffers because the background, results and road safety benefits of enforcement are not sufficiently published in various media and fines could merely be seen as a tax or revenue generator for the government. Recognising the various actions required to create the proper preconditions and optimise the enforcement chain can prevent inefficacies and inefficiencies and make automated traffic enforcement what it can be: an effective tool to improve and maintain road safety in emerging economies. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting