Early signs are looking good for Jakarta’s new Electronic Traffic Law Enforcement (ETLE) system as it look like the cameras for the new automated policing system are identifying delinquent drivers just as intended.
According to Jakarta Metro Police Traffic Director Grand Commissioner Yusuf, during the first day of the month-long trial of the ETLE in Central Jakarta on Monday, the newly installed traffic cameras managed to capture 232 road violations.
“We’ve only installed two cameras,” Yusuf told Kompas last night.
At that pace, we can only imagine that the number of violations will surge into the thousands on a daily basis when more cameras are installed throughout the city.
Without going into the specifics of the traffic violations, Yusuf said that there was a noticeable drop in violations caught on camera on Tuesday, which he hopes is a sign that more motorists know they are being watched.
The Jakarta Traffic Police are conducting a month-long trial of the ETLE program, which started on Monday and will run through the whole month of October. The trial will utilize up to four traffic cameras, installed on the stretch of road from Jalan Sudirman to Jalan M.H. Thamrin in Central Jakarta, that are capable of identifying traffic offenses including speeding, driving against the flow of traffic, using a phone while driving, and violating the odd-even traffic rule.
During the trial period, traffic offenders will not be fined as the traffic police say they’re more interested in seeing whether or not the cameras are able to clearly capture images of the offenders and their vehicles’ license plates.
Should the trial prove successful, the traffic police are going to officially enforce it soon after, starting on the two aforementioned roads before more cameras are installed throughout the city.
Once official, if the police decide there has been a violation, they will send a traffic ticket to the motorist’s address by mail and/or email. The motorist will then have one week to pay their fine via a partner bank. Failure to do so would result in their vehicle registration being frozen, meaning the motorist couldn’t pay their annual vehicle tax until they paid their fine.
According to early reports, during the initial stages of ETLE, vehicles bearing license plates from outside Jakarta will not be fined under the system as they aren’t in the city’s database. However, it’s likely ETLE will soon be implemented and enforced in other major cities as well.
