Soverato City Council U-turn: “No speed cameras, no video cameras”

John

By John

Good news for motorists, a little less so for those who ask to increase safety conditions in the city. The council takes a step back on the installation of OCR reading cameras and services related to verbalization. The project was born to prevent crimes arising from the violation of the highway code and, to activate the service, the preliminary installation of special cameras for the optical reading of license plates was necessary. A fulfillment of the responsibility of the council which, however, had never given indications on the places where to install the cameras for a service that in fact never started. The circular of the Ministry of the Interior of July 3, 2020 intervened on the executive’s decisions, which clarified that the prerequisite for the deferred contestation is the use of approved equipment and that in the case of the use of equipment that does not possess these characteristics, a deferred contestation is not admissible, but carried out with the presence of municipal police officers who immediately stop the vehicle and contest the infringement. This is a sore point for the Municipality of Soverato which has long suffered from a limited organic endowment in the municipal police sector, such as not to allow the activation of the service with the methods specified by the ministerial circular. The installation of non-approved cameras would have therefore exposed the Municipality to the risk of numerous appeals, with an additional burden on the municipal coffers that was intended to be avoided.