Moscow driver fined for shadow from his car

Photo: d2boy

On Thursday, August 25, 2016, the driver of the Honda CR-V GRAY i-VTEC car named Evgeny left the Moscow Ring Road to Lipetskaya Street, without violating the rules and high-speed mode. Nevertheless, a few days later he received a receipt for a fine for crossing a single solid marking line - with clear evidence of this “violation”.

The frame clearly shows that on a bright sunny day, the machine vision system took a thick shadow from the car for its dimensions. The intruder number was recognized two seconds later.


Photo: d2boy

Earlier, the same camera on the exit from the Moscow Ring Road to Lipetskaya recorded a violation of the solid line (roadside) of a car that had left the lane due to a breakdown and turned on the emergency light.



These are far from the first errors of the traffic police machine vision systems when processing video from road cameras. Just a week ago, a driver in Nizhnekamsk was fined for speeding . According to the document, the Hyundai car driver drove along Magistralnaya Street at a speed of 82 km / h with a permissible speed of 60 km / h. The machine vision system did not notice the tow truck.



Statistics show that in places of installation, the number of traffic violations is significantly reduced (even taking into account shadows and tow trucks), and the speed of vehicles increases by 11% .

There is another important plus. Automatic fixing of violations with semi-automatic fines has become a new unprecedented source of income for the city budget. Investments in the installation of each new road camera pay off after a few months, and then they work in a clean plus.


Installing a road camera. Photo: Vyacheslav Prokofiev / TASS

In May 2016, authorities began installing 600 new cameras , so that by September 2016 their number in Moscow will increase to 1,400 units, and in the future - up to 2,000 units . Each of the cameras daily generates cash flow, without requiring excessive maintenance costs. In addition to stationary, road cameras for fixing violations are also installed on the front and rear windows of 110 buses .

Modern cameras and software recognize 17 types of violations, including:

• speeding;
• exit to the lane for public transport;
• roadside traffic;
• violation of restrictions on the maximum permitted mass;
• the passage of freight vehicles to areas where its movement is limited;
• Departure for a prohibition signal of a traffic light in a lane of reverse traffic;
• exit to the intersection in case of congestion;
• Driving on a prohibitory traffic light;
• Departure for a stop signal of a traffic light for a stop line;
• violation of the marking and sign rules (turn is not from that row, etc.).

The traffic police have already abolished the fine issued to the car owner on the tow truck. The driver of the Honda CR-V GRAY i-VTEC, who was fined for the shadow of his car, wrote a complaint on the traffic police website. The story received a wide response in the media, so that the traffic police promised to cancel this particular fine order even without a trial. Other injured "because of the shadow" drivers are not so lucky .