Police begin installing TraffiTech-GH speed camera warning signs after Mahama directive
ACCRA, Nov. 14 – Police and road safety agencies have begun mounting large warning signboards along key road corridors to alert motorists to automated TraffiTech-GH speed cameras, following a directive from President John Dramani Mahama that drivers must be told where the cameras are.
Photographs from the exercise, published by MyJoyOnline, show police personnel and technical crews using heavy lifting equipment to put up blue-and-yellow reflective gantries. Some of the new boards carry a camera icon beside a red-ringed “80” km/h speed limit sign, with the inscriptions “24-hrs speed camera monitoring” and “Speed kills, kill it now”.
ACP Alexander Kwaku Obeng, Director of Education, Research and Training at the Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD), was pictured beside some of the signs.
Mahama: ‘Transparency is important’
The rollout responds to complaints that followed the launch of TraffiTech-GH on November 1. Commercial transport operators and private motorists had argued that issuing automated fines without visible warning signs amounted to entrapment, MyJoyOnline reported.
President Mahama, speaking earlier this month on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Antigua and Barbuda, backed the technology as a way to reduce pedestrian deaths but called for advance notices.
“All I will urge is that the police and those implementing TraffiTech should put signs showing where the cameras are, because that is one of the things you need to do if you are introducing this kind of innovation,” he said. “You need to put signposts warning motorists that there is a speed camera ahead. I think that transparency is important.”
How the system works
TraffiTech-GH is operated by the MTTD of the Ghana Police Service and uses fixed, mobile and radar camera sensors to detect speeding in real time. When a vehicle exceeds the posted limit, the system generates an Electronic Notice of Violation and sends an SMS with details of the offence and the fine to the registered owner’s phone.
Road safety officials say the warning signs will be extended to major highways and urban roads nationwide, as authorities prepare to switch on further enforcement modules covering red-light jumping and illegal parking.
Beware of fake fine messages
The Cyber Security Authority (CSA) warned on Wednesday that fraudulent text messages claiming to be TraffiTech-GH speeding notices have been circulating since the November 1 rollout, directing motorists to fake payment portals designed to steal card details, the Ghanaian Times reported.
According to the CSA, genuine notifications come only from the sender ID GPS-MTT, not from ordinary phone numbers. Genuine fines should be paid only through the National Investment Bank payment portal at traffitech-ghpay.nib.com.gh or by dialling *7100#, the Authority said.
Sources: MyJoyOnline, Ghanaian Times.
Featured image: Traffic on a road in Accra. Photo: Matti Blume / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
