[Image: PICRYL]
Cape Town drivers are learning the hard way that Big Brother doesn’t blink, even when it comes to seatbelts – but the jury’s still out on whether the city’s camera system is playing fair.
News24 spilt the beans after local motorist Amaan Sayed found himself R500 lighter, courtesy of a fine for supposedly ditching his seatbelt on Nelson Mandela Boulevard.
Interestingly, the offence happened back in January, but the fine only popped up on his radar in March – not by mail, not by SMS, but when he logged into the City of Cape Town’s online fine portal to settle a completely different speeding ticket.
While clearing his digital rap sheet, Sayed spotted a rogue charge he swore he’d never seen before. Unlike the usual lineup of fines – complete with a paparazzi-style photo spread showing the car, the number plate, and sometimes your guilty mug – this one was suspiciously slim on evidence. Just the number plate. No smoking gun, no beltless selfie.
‘I was shocked. I had no idea about this fine and there was no image proving I wasn’t buckled up,’ Sayed told News24. ‘They claimed there was a picture showing the passengers, but it wasn’t attached to the fine. How can that be fair?’
And fair it wasn’t. When Sayed called up the City’s traffic hotline, an official casually confessed that – surprise, surprise – there was indeed an image of the car’s occupants, but even they couldn’t tell if anyone was actually belted in. To top it off, the phantom image wasn’t even available for Sayed to see.
Armed with nothing but sheer persistence and a healthy dose of suspicion, Sayed contested the fine, called out the dodgy process, and, in a rare plot twist, actually won – the fine was scrapped.
This little saga has pulled back the curtain on Cape Town’s automated traffic enforcement, which has been quietly patrolling the streets for years without most drivers even knowing they were under surveillance.
City Traffic Services’ Maxine Bezuidenhout didn’t shy away from confirming that these eagle-eyed cameras are indeed out there, scanning for slack seatbelts like traffic cops on steroids. She also made it clear the whole setup had the NDPP’s blessing, and the fines don’t even come straight from the City – they’re dished out via an external service provider.
‘The fine for failing to wear a seatbelt, whether driver or passenger, is R500,’ Bezuidenhout said. ‘If a child is not strapped in, that penalty jumps to R1000.’
The intention, of course, is to save lives, not just pad the city’s wallet – but as more drivers like Sayed start asking questions, the spotlight’s now firmly on whether these systems are dishing out justice or just robotic guesswork.
Civil liberties types are already poking holes in the whole process, arguing that a single grainy snapshot isn’t always enough to tell if you’re strapped in or just wearing a dark shirt on a sunny day.
For now, the City’s smart enforcement crusade marches on, but Sayed’s bumpy brush with the system is adding fuel to the call for proper oversight and a little more respect for good old-fashioned due process, so law-abiding drivers don’t end up paying for a crime they didn’t commit.
[Source: Cape{Town}etc]
