The police will be using digital in-car radar and Intelligent Compound Online Payment System (iCOPS) for traffic law enforcement during Ops Selamat 17, with the theme “Safe Home, Safe to Destination”. The operation will run between 28 January and 6 February in conjunction with the upcoming Chinese New Year celebration.
According to Deputy Inspector-General of Police Razarudin Husain, this will be the first Ops Selamat implemented in two years. The in-car radar will be used to detect vehicles going over the speed limit while iCOPS will be used to detect traffic offenders with outstanding summonses, traffic arrest warrants, and stolen vehicles.
Enforcement using the radar and iCOPS will be done by the Police Highway Patrol Team along national highways and PLUS expressways. “Both equipment are very helpful in storing and building vehicle profiles systematically for Police analysis records, for now, and in the future,” added Razarudin.
iCOPS uses Automated Number Plate Readers (ANPR) technology to recognise number plates and reference them against a database to check for any outstanding summonses and reports of stolen vehicles. It has been in use in Malaysia since 2015, initially with just 20 ANPR cameras.
The Traffic Investigation and Enforcement Department (JSPT) added 20 more iCOPS units to their arsenal in 2020 and planned for nationwide deployment in January 2022. As of October last year, the database had more than four million vehicle profiles, with an estimated six million profiles by the end of 2021.
PLUS chairman, Mohamad Nasir Ab Latif, said that the PLUS expressway is expected to see a 17.4% surge to 1.6 million vehicles on the road during the festive season. To prepare for the increased traffic, 264 PLUSRonda teams will be deployed with a higher patrol frequency to help highway users who are facing problems. On an unrelated note, PLUS had recently integrated ANPR technology into its RFID toll payment system.
(Sources: NST, Utusan Malaysia)
