The City of Cape Town has launched a new 24/7 Highway Patrol Unit.
The vehicle fleet is equipped with Automated Number Plate Recognition dash cameras and will patrol the City’s main arterial routes on a 24-hour basis.
Authorities say the dash-cam system will assist officers by automatically tracking motorists with outstanding warrants, identifying duplicate or cloned license plates and alerting them to stolen vehicles.
Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis says staff will also receive body-cams.
“It’s integrated with our highways cameras. All of it is controlled from our Traffic Management Centre in Goodwood. It’s integrated with the dashboard cameras in the vehicles with the wanted vehicles, any SAPS alerts that come through. So, we will be able to pick up vehicles as they go around on any of our highways and pull them off immediately. In fact, if the person is listed as dangerous for example it will alert the officer in the vehicle they should wait for a backup before they could pull over that particular vehicle.”
