The Directorate of Traffic Police have admitted that some motorists are being issued wrong Express Penalty Scheme-EPS tickets after officer’s mistype number plates.
Traffic and Road Safety Spokesperson Michael Kananura said on Monday that the anomaly occurs when an officer feeding a registration number into the EPS system misses a single digit, causing the system to generate a fine against a different vehicle.
The admission followed complaints on various social media platforms including academic and activist Dr Jimmy Spire Ssentongo, who said he was stopped and told he had an outstanding ticket whose time he disputed. Denis Woniala another motorist said his friend who drives a Toyota Spacio UBB 881F received a fine whose attached image showed a Nissan X-Trail with the same plate, and several others.
Kananura said genuine system errors will be investigated and transferred to the rightful violator but noted that many disputed tickets are actually genuine. He advised the affected to report to Room 72 at the Traffic Headquarters in Nateete or call during working hours for verification and correction.
Traffic says that however, there are three categories that tend to experience the same problem especially owners of vehicles bought with pending fines from previous owners, vehicles fined while with mechanics or borrowers who did not inform the owner and fines that delayed reflecting after migration from old to digital plates, which takes about three weeks.
Besides mistyped plates, there is a growing tendency by upright averse to corruption accuse some traffic officers of demanding bribes between Shs20,000 and Shs50,000 at checkpoints and issuing EPS tickets when drivers refuse to pay, issues them fines without clear explanation of the offence.
Other complaints that some tickets bear wrong vehicle images or are generated from locations they never visited, while others wonder about the use of security cameras for traffic enforcement.
In other news, the traffic police has raised alarm over the continued dominance of motorcyclists and pedestrians among road crash fatalities, Boda bodas and pedestrians dominated last week’s deaths at 46% and 30% respectively, bringing vulnerable road users to 76% of all fatalities.
Cited are four fatal crashes in Ggaba, Kakumiro, Sembabule and Buikwe that killed nine people, and were blamed on speeding, dangerous overtaking at bends, overloading, riding against traffic flow and failure to wear crash helmets.
Traffic police say that last weekends’s 92 drink-driving suspects arrested will appear in court today, bringing to 216 the number arrested in two weekends of operations targeting weekend crashes-URN. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com
