Automated Licence Plate Recognition

Published by DriveSmartBC –
Police

Ticket WriterAutomated Licence Plate Recognition (ALPR) is a tool that is being used more frequently for traffic law enforcement in B.C. Cameras mounted on police vehicles scan vehicle licence plates as they pass and compare them to a computer database. A "hit" in the database is announced to the patrolling officer and the vehicle will be stopped for investigation.

automated licence plate recognition camera

Automated Licence Plate Recognition is an Effective Tool

It is used primarily for the detection of prohibited and unlicensed drivers. These offenders were usually discovered incidentally during the investigation of an unrelated driving offence in past. Today thousands of vehicles per hour can be checked and these drivers positively singled out.

During 2024 13,233 drivers were charged for driving without a driver's licence or having the wrong class of licence and 560 drivers were charged for driving while prohibited.

What ALPR Will Detect

The detection of stolen vehicles, licence plates and licence validation decals, people with warrants and Amber Alerts are other uses that Automated Licence Plate Recognition may be put to. The most recent published statistics are from 2017:

  • Plates processed: 476,529 in an 11-month period
  • Arrests: 200, of which 151 were for prohibited driving
  • Charges: 137 under the Criminal Code and 202 under the Motor Vehicle Act
  • Arrest warrants executed: 48
  • Violation tickets issued: 634
  • Stolen vehicles recovered: 22 

Information Privacy Rules for ALPR

Since Automated Licence Plate Recognition can be used to store information about when and where a vehicle was encountered, many people have privacy concerns about its use. In British Columbia this information is only stored for "hits" that have resulted in enforcement action. The balance of the data is deleted. The Office of the Information & Privacy Commissioner is the provincial agency responsible for the oversight of Automated Licence Plate Recognition data collection.

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Comments

Published by CompetentDrivingBC – 2021/11/12 - 14:57 | Permalink

... and I'm sure this has been helpful to the police to identify miscreants on the road.

Meanwhile, some lifelong friends of ours were driving their son's car across BC recently (their family moved), and they were pulled over by the RCMP as their son's driver license was prohibited/suspended.

And yet, with all this technology - including police cars that must by now be festooned with technology and cameras and stuff (including those 'laptop' computer devices in their cars, that they're generally so focused on at traffic lights) - there is less than 5% enforcement (with undeniable accompanying video) of drivers tailgating, drivers changing lanes illegaly, drivers turning on red illegaly, drivers failing to give pedestrians right of way, pedestrians failing to give drivers right of way.

It's just stupid, when you consider the technology - and relative cost - of the potential use of these modern electronic tools, to make roads safer.

And meanwhile, there is this vast gulf, it seems, between what the cops are doing, what the highway engineers are doing, and what bad drivers are doing, in terms of reducing the number of bad drivers on our roads.

And, bad pedestrians. And, bad cyclists. And, so on ...