The Police announced a pilot e-Ticketing program today which digitalises the current hand-written process to enhance accuracy.
The “e-Ticketing Pilot Scheme” starts in Wanchai, Tseung Kwan O and Sham Shui Po police districts on 16 March, 2020 and will initially only apply to fixed penalty parking tickets.
Traffic wardens will use a mobile application to capture the data of offending vehicles, and print fixed penalty tickets with portable printers.
The accuracy of the new scheme will be enhanced with the addition of an encrypted QR code imprinted on vehicle licences to facilitate the extraction of a vehicle’s data.
No information was provided as to how the public’s privacy will be protected with a car owner’s personal information simply scannable from the vehicle licence whether they have committed an offence or not.
To issue a ticket, traffic wardens can scan the QR code or input the registration number manually to extract the particulars of the offending vehicle. The App will then imports information such as date, time and the issuing officer’s details whilst a GPS location is generated automatically.
The issuing officer can also take photos to capture details of the offence for evidential purposes before printing an e-ticket at scene.
It’s not mentioned how quickly the thermal printed paper will fade in the sun, or whether a physical or digital ticket will also be sent to the vehicle’s owner by post/email.
In digitalising the existing manual processes the intent is to reduce human error, eliminates the difference in handwriting interpretations and obviously generate more revenue.
One can only hope that in making the ticket issuing process quicker and easier that all offending vehicles will be targeted. Rather than the selective ignoring of many illegally parked vans and cars. An this might, just might reduce congestion caused by illegal parking.
