SGI to fund more licence plate reading technology to help track stolen vehicles

Saskatchewan Government Insurance is putting money behind licence plate reading technology for the RCMP and municipal police agencies.

The automatic licence plate readers use infrared technology to scan licence plates and alert police when the plate is linked to a stolen or unregistered vehicle, a suspended driver, a reported impaired driver, or even a person wanted by police, SGI said.

There are currently 13 police vehicles across the province equipped with automatic licence plate readers. To date, SGI has investment about $485,000 in the technology and it said it plans to purchase more devices in the future.

“The automatic licence plate reader has been beneficial in larger settings, like the Craven Country Jamboree, where quite often we’ll get a report of a possible impaired driver,” said Constable Todd Kaufmann with the White Butte RCMP, located in White City, Sask.

“We can input the licence plate number into the system and then use it to find the reported impaired driver and actually apprehend that driver while they’re on the road to prevent further incident.”

“The benefit of this technology is that it helps get the high risk drivers off the road,” he noted. “We’ve gone from manually checking about 10 plates every 15 minutes to checking 10 plates in 10 seconds with the automatic licence plate reader.”