No Cameras or Police Cars, Speeding Freely? ... A Speeding Ticket Arrives Days Later

Speeding Detection Equipment in Undercover Patrol Cars
First Introduction Possibly This Month... Preventing 'Kangaroo Driving'

Undercover patrol car stock photo.

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Gwan-joo] Speed enforcement equipment will be installed in the highway ‘undercover patrol cars’ operated by the police. It is expected to prevent so-called ‘kangaroo driving,’ where drivers only slow down in front of unmanned speed cameras, and to raise drivers’ awareness of speeding.

According to the National Police Agency on the 10th, the police will introduce ‘vehicle-mounted speed enforcement equipment’ that can directly enforce speeding while patrol cars are in operation as early as this month. The speed enforcement equipment will first be installed on 17 undercover patrol cars operated by the highway patrol unit for pilot operation.

The biggest feature of the newly introduced speed enforcement equipment is that it uses video and radar detection technology to automatically measure and display the speed of vehicles ahead and enforce speeding violations. It can detect vehicles in at least two or more lanes, and the speed limits and enforcement speeds can be set according to the road. It also includes functions to automatically save and transmit enforcement information and to identify and transmit real-time location information. Simply put, patrol cars equipped with this device can automatically enforce speeding violations of vehicles ahead while moving.

Until now, police highway speed enforcement has mainly relied on fixed unmanned speed cameras. However, since the locations of the cameras are all known, drivers tend to slow down only at enforcement points. To supplement this, section control is also conducted at certain points, but there have been voices that this is insufficient to raise awareness of speeding. Accordingly, the police have been actively developing enforcement equipment that can be mounted on patrol cars to detect speeding unexpectedly while on the move since early this year.

The police plan to deploy the equipment first on undercover patrol cars on major highways, where speeding is easy, to enforce speeding violations exceeding the speed limit of 40 km/h. The fact that the fatality rate of highway speeding accidents over the past three years is four times higher than the overall traffic accident fatality rate (6%), averaging 25%, is also cited as a reason for prioritizing deployment on highways.

A National Police Agency official said, "We believe it will help raise drivers’ awareness of speeding and suppress the tendency to speed." The police plan to continuously improve and supplement the functions through pilot operation and also promote adding automatic enforcement items and expanding the number of equipped vehicles.