Creep of Traffic Cameras
[From theNewspaper.com Photo Ticket Cameras to Track Drivers Nationwide]
The vendors of red light cameras and speed cameras are planning to add more features that expand the ability to track motorists. Redflex is planning to add OCR to their cameras in the next few months, which is also known as automatic license plate recognition technology. This could allow them to keep tabs on every car that passes through a particular intersection. “Imagine if you had 1500 or 2000 cameras out there that could look out for the partial plate or full plate number across the 21 states where we do business today,” Elsadek said. “This is the next step for our technology.”
The article also points out that these technologies can be abused. A recent example the article mentions:
In the past, police databases have been used to intimidate innocent motorists. An Edmonton, Canada police sergeant, for example, found himself outraged after he read columnist Kerry Diotte criticize his city’s photo radar operation in the Edmonton Sun newspaper. The sergeant looked up Diotte’s personal information, and, without the assistance of electronic scanners, ordered his subordinates to “be on the lookout” for Diotte’s BMW. Eventually a team of officers followed Diotte to a local bar where they hoped to trap the journalist and accuse him of driving under the influence of alcohol. Diotte took a cab home and the officers’ plan was exposed after tapes of radio traffic were leaked to the press. Police later cleared themselves of any serious wrong-doing following an extensive investigation.
Hi Rajiv,
Any information on if this can work technically. I have seen a number of these cameras and they are generally positioned high (10 feet or more above the ground) and far from the car (30 – 50 feet away).
Those logistical conditions are generally poor for performing LPR as the application demands a high number of pixels for the image and a low angle of incident to the numbers.
Best,
John
For the speed cameras, there are already systems that utilize LPR. I don’t have any technical info, but it would be a great feature to have for red light cameras. Think of how much time could be saved in processing tickets! (Along with the added surveillance capability). I will keep poking around and keep you updated.
Here is one company that is claiming LPR with red light cameras.
http://www.unicam.cz/underwood/download/files/unicam_RedLight.pdf
Thanks for sharing that. It looks like you need to use multiple cameras at each intersection to achieve this (an overview plus detail cameras for lpr). From what I have seen in the US, they usually only have 1 camera per intersection. As such, I do not believe they could simply add this software on to existing cameras. They would need to roll out more cameras. See excerpt below:
“The overview camera detects and documents the phase of the traffic light as well as records the situation in the intersection and the motion of a
vehicle into the intersection. The high-resolution detail cameras are recording the vehicle at the stop-line, the entire driving lane including its boundaries (necessary to record vehicles traveling between driving lines), the license plate and the driver‘s face.”