By Michael Hamlyn

New electronic tags attached to vehicle licence discs are being considered by the Transport Department in an effort to get round the burdensome problem of false number-plates

Giving a written reply to a question in Parliament on Friday, Transport Minister Jeff Radebe said that one plan involved the incorporation of a passive tag (which would not require a battery) in the licence disc of the vehicle, which could be read with appropriate readers at the roadside in conjunction with the number plate.

"This technology is favoured because of its low cost and the ease with which it can be introduced to the entire licensed vehicle population within one year," Radebe told Stuart Farrow, of the Democratic Alliance. "However, the technology needs to be enhanced to enable it to read the passive tag at high speed on a freeway."

The idea of an active tag, which does require a battery, is also being considered. This would be used as a method of charging tolls without having to halt at a toll plaza. It would also be used to combat false number plates. Its readability at high speeds is not limited to the extent currently experienced with passive tags.

False number plates a concern

The minister told Farrow that although the number of cases of false plates as a percentage of the overall number of camera prosecutions was still fairly low, false number plates had been a concern to the authorities for a considerable period of time.

Accurate statistics were not maintained by all authorities regarding the incidence of false plates, but Radebe gave figures experienced by the provincial traffic camera office in Pinetown on national routes N2 and N3, as well as the provincial roads in KwaZulu-Natal, saying they were representative of the impact of false number plates on traffic law enforcement countrywide.

The figures showed that 2.9 percent of vehicles photographed had false plates. In the six months from April to September this year 22 628 vehicles were photographed, and 6426 turned out to have false plates in which details of the vehicle in the photograph differed from details on eNaTIS. That is, it was a different type of vehicle, make, model, or colour.

That worked out to mean that more than a thousand law-breakers a month on the roads of one province could not be chased up because they had false plates on their cars.