More than 90 per cent of adult front seat passengers and drivers wear seat belts. While these figures suggest that compliance with the UK law is high, it does of course reveal that ten per cent of front seat drivers and passengers are not abiding with the law and are putting themselves in danger of injury and a penalty.
Since the law to wear seat belts in the front seats of a vehicle was introduced in 1983, front seat belts are estimated to have saved 50,000 lives. They have also prevented 590,000 serious casualties and 1.5 million minor injuries.
As a result, forces across the country are keen to ensure drivers and passengers realise the dangers and belt up. However until now monitoring and issuing penalties has been reliant on manually spotting offenders. To help alleviate this problem, StarTraq has launched brand new functionality that will provide Police Authorities with the ability to prosecute offenders who have been captured on camera who are not wearing their seat belts.
Now StarTraq’s new unique system, available with Teletraffic’s new DVD camera, can capture images of drivers not wearing seat belts while driving and process the offence, in the same way that speeding offences are managed. The offence will be captured utilising StarTraq’s StarVision.
The image of the DVD will be identified to determine if it is a speed, seat belt, red light or mobile phone offence. It will then provide the verifier with the image to determine if prosecution of the violation should proceed.
An operator on the side of the road will spot a vehicle where the driver is not wearing a seatbelt. They will press a trigger which will capture the details and denote that a violation has taken place. When this is processed through StarVision the operator will identify what type of offence is being captured rather than speeding and will send it down the appropriate predefined workflow path.
In many police forces, seatbelt offences are only enforced when officers manually stop vehicles to write out a ticket, which leads to the problem going largely untreated. In forces such as Bedfordshire, safety camera photographs are used to prosecute motorists who are not belted up (as well as speeding or jumping a red light). In both cases, the new StarTraq/Teletraffic system could dramatically reduce the time spent on this activity by police officers and staff, releasing them for specialist police work. The ability to prosecute larger numbers of un-belted motorists will lead, as with speeding, to a real deterrent, increased compliance and safer motoring for all.
Drivers and adult front seat passengers in cars must wear a seat belt, unless they have a medical exemption certificate. Adults travelling in the rear of a car must also use seat belts, if they are fitted. It is the responsibility of the adult passenger (not the driver) to ensure that they are using the seat belt. Seat belt offences are generally punished by a £30 fine although if the case goes to court then it can result in a fine of up to £500.
Startraq provides traffic offence processing systems designed to automate the task of reading and managing traffic offences.
For more information call Startraq on 0845 072 0333
