High-Tech Cameras To Compensate Cops In Traffic Control

All traffic signals will be equipped with high-tech fixed-motion surveillance cameras to identify and control the movement of vehicles and people, and all violations will be recorded electronically, as an alternative to the functions of the public security services of national security.

Transport and Public Works Ministry concluded an agreement with the National Defense Ministry to create a company for the completion of video surveillance systems to provide them with automatic control cameras on all light signals that are located on the main roads of Algerian cities.

Echorouk sources said that the installation of these cameras on the traffic signs aims to work on monitoring all axes and fields to monitor traffic violations, traffic accidents and malfunctions that cause the obstruction of traffic, to coverage all the various crimes, and record all events that control stolen cars and send their numbers to the operational rooms that are located at the state security headquarters level.

These cameras will also reduce traffic accidents, as they provide reading systems that allow each camera to read more than 10,000 car number plates and the capacity to accommodate 96 hours each with identifying all vehicles’ data.

In a related context, official sources in the Transport and Public Works Ministry told Echorouk that the supply of traffic lights with the surveillance cameras coincided with the end of the Transport Ministry’s project to prepare the withdrawal of the security services in charge of regulating the traffic and compensating them with the operational services that will monitor the traffic on the roads, in order to eliminate the phenomenon of traffic congestion, and the decoupling of roads, especially in the major cities.

Same source explained that the purpose of the withdrawal of the police and gendarmerie authorities, which are responsible for regulating road traffic, is to facilitate traffic to the citizen and to secure the roads, especially since the drivers live daily nightmare of “choking” traffic, in a scenario that begins when leaving the house in the morning whether on a car or a public transport to reach any place, and ends up returning home wit the feeling of anxiety and tension of nerves.

Police and gendarmeries services have filed a black report on traffic congestion including the capital Algiers, Constantine, Oran, Annaba, Setif and Blida, and uncovered a set of violations that were committed by the Transport Ministry.

According to the same report, the rapid development of the car bazaar is the first major cause of congestion, as the number of vehicles in the last 10 years has increased from about 4 million and 482.000 vehicles in 2004 to about 7 million and 500.000 vehicles in 2013, to reach more than 8.5 million vehicles in the current year.