Startling stats on traffic fines
OVER half a million speeding tickets have been handed out in the TRNC since 2015, a top cop has revealed.
Traffic chief Şevket Derindağ gave out the startling statistics to coincide with “Traffic Week” in North Cyprus.
Speed cameras were first installed in the country in 2006, when 10,357 speeding fines were issued, Mr Derindağ told Cyprus Today’s sister newspaper Kıbrıs.
When the number of cameras was increased from 11 to 19, the number of speeding offences caught on camera increased nearly five-fold to 46,495, he said.
The approximate numbers were 103,000 in 2015, 87,000 in 2016, 113,000 in 2017, 87,000 in 2018, 73,000 in 2019 and 54,000 in 2020, according to Mr Derindağ. There are now 101 speed cameras on the TRNC’s roads at accident hotspots.
The number of speed camera violations in the first three months of 2021 was 4,598, he added.
Mr Derindağ said that there has been a 50 percent decrease in the number of recorded speeding incidents during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. He stated that the reason for this is a decrease in the number of vehicles on the road.
The police are also able to catch speeding drivers with mobile cameras installed in patrol cars equipped with automatic number plate recognition technology.
This allows police to immediately access records such as the owner of the vehicle and whether or not it is insured and its road tax has been paid. The onboard cameras can measure speeds of up to 280kph.
A vehicle is used in every region and that with the computer system that is installed in the cars they can access information on the owner of the cars as well as the navigation and insurance fee status of the car from their registration plates.
Mr Derindağ stressed that the priority of the traffic police is not to make money from fines but to “ensure the public drive safely”.
In separate comments to the Turkish Cypriot news agency Tak, Mr Derindağ said:
“The cameras are there for a reason.
There are signs showing the speed limit is 50kph in residential areas. The speed limit on highways is 100kph.
“We don’t have any roads where a car can drive over 100kph. If we simply obeyed the speed limits, there would be no need to install cameras and the police would not have to impose fines.
“There is no money in the government’s pocket to install more cameras. The police are not keen on issuing fines on the roads. Whether it’s cameras being installed or the police issuing fines, unfortunately our drivers are the cause. . . If all our drivers obeyed the rules, there would be no problem.”
The installation of speed cameras has led to a “55 to 60 per cent” decrease in the number of accidents, Mr Derindağ added.