Sep 14 2010
The strict approaches of the Finnish police towards speed limit inspection, employing self-regulating surveillance cameras for traffic monitoring, have enhanced public revenues by the imposing traffic rules every year.
The financial penalties forced on speedy motorists produced nearly EUR 42 millions in 2008, while the related sum in 2006 was EUR 25 million only. The figure is estimated to grow by approximately 20 % each year. In 2006, 133,000 speeding tickets were handed out by the police and it out numbered 300,000 by 2009. The initial data collected by the Statistics Finland demonstrates that it will tremendously increase this year.
The National Police Board stated that the enhanced number of penalty is mainly confined to strict inspection and that numerous speed limit monitoring cameras have been installed to serve this purpose.
The police calculate that a speed camera exposes about 2,000 times each year on an average and the penalty imposed is nearly EUR 100. Thus a camera installed on the traffic post can contribute about EUR 200,000, if the police could handle all the speedy motorists. Recently, a total of 950 surveillance camera systems have been fixed throughout the country and in the coming years additional 300 camera systems are likely to be installed.
The exponential increase in the number of penalties does not show that speedy motorists have increased but that the police could interfere with ease than in the previous cases.
Heikki Ihalainen, Superintendent, National Police Board stated that a system to monitor minimum speed is being experimented with and in this system the cameras installed in the poles monitor the average speed between two distinct observation points.
Heikki Ihalainen added that the average rate of speed has reduced and that a caution warning has created awareness among the motorists. Ihalainen remarked that the aim of the police is to generate good driving habits in the drivers rather than imposing greater penalties.