If you live in the city of Groningen, you may have spotted a new car on the streets: a scanner vehicle which checks license plates in paid parking spaces in the city. The vehicle can check up to 13,000 cars in a single day.
Translation by Traci White
The electric vehicle started making the rounds in December and is capable of scanning between 10,000 and 13,000 automobiles – basically every single car parked in the city – in a day.
RTV Noord reports that the car has a swivelling bay of cameras on the roof which can scan every license plate that it passes. The car is connected to a database of license plates to see if the vehicle in question is parked illegally, be it in a spot that requires a permanent pass or a short term paid spot, or not.
If a car is parked illegally, then an attendant is informed on a tablet and can go and leave a parking ticket on the vehicle. The system does give vehicles a 10-minute window for drivers to obtain a parking pass before notifying attendants that they should be ticketed.
