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Electronic vehicle identification

Hot on the heels of the successful anti-hijacking unit which has seen this crime drop by more than 30% in Gauteng over the past year, a new vehicle identification system will make life difficult for car thieves.

A recently conceived concept being explored in many countries is that of electronic vehicle identification (EVI) which addresses the need of authorities, law enforcers and other users for a trusted electronic means of identifying vehicles.

The main objectives of EVI are to reduce crime by denying criminals the unrestricted use of the road by providing a trusted, automatic and remotely retrievable identification of a vehicle for roadblocks for example; and to enable other public and private applications, which will make use of electronic vehicle identification data to monitor their vehicles like fleet runners.

The project is a partnership involving business against crime (BAC), the National Vehicle Crime Steering Committee comprising government stakeholders and industry representative bodies.

The technology is commercially available and systems addressing similar objectives have been implemented or are being investigated in numerous international communities.

"This is a tremendous opportunity for the South African government and private industry to jointly exploit the benefits through a bold vision of creating a national EVI infrastructure," says Ian Cumming of BAC.

"BAC was founded on the basis of partnership between government and the private sector to fight crime. These initiatives are already paying off as we have seen with the other projects that we have undertaken. These include the specialised courts, which have streamlined justice systems and have achieved over 90% conviction rates for hijacking cases. These and other projects show the commitment of tackling crime in this country and we are happy with the results. We are constantly working on other ideas to ensure a long-term strategy to fight and minimise crime," says BAC CEO Kenny Fihla.

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