KHOBAR: Traffic chief Solaiman Al-Ajlan has told motorists who have wrongly had offenses recorded against them by Saher cameras to take the issue up with the Penalties Department at the Traffic Department's main offices around the country. “The Traffic Department has a commission set up specifically to look at these sorts of cases,” Al-Ajlan said. “We are here to provide a service and our aim is not to catch people out but to rectify driving behavior on the roads.” Al-Ajlan told Okaz/Saudi Gazette that the department intends to open more vehicle periodic maintenance service outlets across the country and hopes to open the field up to greater competition. The traffic chief also said that six new Traffic Department offices would open in the Eastern Province. The “Saher” speed camera system has been widely acclaimed for reducing the number of accidents and related deaths and injuries on the Kingdom's roads. First introduced in Riyadh in April this year and later extended to other parts of the Kingdom, Saher's first four-week period saw a fall from 14,094 accidents to 10,385 in the capital, with a reduction in road deaths from 37 to 20. The first four months saw a drop in accidents of 21 percent, to 40,900 from the 51,959 in the same period the previous year. The cameras, which capture images of the registration plates of vehicles committing offenses such as speeding and jumping red lights and then register fines automatically, have also freed up police for other tasks. Offenses are registered regardless of the social status of the driver or cost of his vehicle, factors which were said to deter police from meting out penalties to certain offenders. Saher has not been without its hiccups, however. Hire car firms have complained that they have been held responsible for the violations of their customers, and only last week the National Society for Human Rights expressed concern that the system failed to observe that different roads have different speed limits. Furthermore, in a bid to avoid the beady eyes of the cameras, some motorists have taken to applying to their registration plates a substance believed to make them undetectable, sparking a lucrative black market in “magic spray”. Others have acquired illegal Gulf plates which are not on the national database. Some parts of cities where the cameras are yet to be installed have been described as “traffic anarchy” zones, reflecting motorists' “fear of being caught rather than any awareness of the importance of complying with traffic regulations”, according to one local newspaper.
