Clever Cheats Vs. The Congestion Charge

In February 2003, the London local body introduced a congestion charge of £5/- to be paid by vehicles for entering the centrally located, heavily congested parts of London from 7.00 hrs. to 18.30 hrs. Monday to Friday. The intention was to reduce traffic congestion in central London, raise resources for supporting road projects and encourage people to use mass transport. Latest state-of –the art cameras were installed at entry points and connected to a central computer with a data bank. Motorists purchase congestion charge tickets and the transaction details contain the related car numbers and descriptions. This information is conveyed to the data bank. As soon as a vehicle enters a congestion zone, cameras photograph the car and the number plate and feed the information to the data bank, which verifies it with its record. If the comparison reveals that the charge has not been paid, a printout goes to the police and a fine is imposed on the owner. The relevant photograph accompanies the notice for payment. This system is also used to detect over speeding or occupying lanes reserved for buses. The computer network and the software were designed and installed by Indian IT professional firms.

Within two months of introduction of the scheme, the targetted percentage for diverting traffic to mass transport was achieved. Recently, however, the scheme has run into trouble because a number of innocent motorists have protested that their vehicles were nowhere near the spot from which a default report was sent by the camera. When police investigated these cases, they were baffled because the relevant photographs did, in fact, show vehicles of that type and number breaking the law. At first, therefore, the police rebuffed these motorists. Then one citizen, Mr. Marcos Lokesann, who was saddled with a hefty, multiple offences fine, decided to play the detective and spent quite some time in finding out who and how someone cloned his number plate and committed the offences. What he found out was that criminals seem to go around car parks and car show rooms noting down the numbers appearing on the number plates of cars of identical make and colour as theirs. They then simply paste this number on their own car plate and roam about freely, doing their jobs, convinced that someone else would pay for their defaults. The police have now admitted that this has indeed happened in a number of cases.

The incidence has created a major problem because, as of now, the police do not have the resources to go into every case of default to find out if it is a genuine offence or a case of cloning. The only way out is to develop “intelligent” number plates, which will give a lot more information than at present. But this is expected to take quite some time and would certainly cost a sizeable amount to the motorists who are bound to protest.

It remains to be seen how well the local body solves this problem. Or will it be the proverbial continuous chase of the system cheats by the system makers?

S.M.Singru