Taipei's Traffic Police Corps (
The two-week crackdown ran from 9am till 11am yesterday in 34 locations across the city, and mobilized 150 police officers.
A total of 169 violators -- including 23 detector owners -- where caught for infringements, and 43 illegal signal transmitters were detected, that had been giving drivers advance warnings of radar photo traps.
Photos: Chen Cheng-Chang, Taipei Times
Each violator received a fine ranging between NT$1,200 and NT$2,400, as well as having their devices confiscated. They also face a one-month suspension of their licenses, according to article 40 of the "Road Traffic Management and Punishment Law" (
"The message we are trying to get across here is to tell motorists not to buy and use radar detectors, because they're both illegal and useless.
"We also want to say that observing traffic rules is a practice that should be applied anytime and everywhere, instead of at the places where police are watching or surveillance cameras are installed," said TTPC Chief Lu Pi-tsung (呂碧宗), who supervised the operation at one of the scenes located at the intersection of Chung Ching South Road and Ho Ping West Road.
Lu added that radar detectors are useless because they are nothing more than an advertisement gimmick.
"They [detector vendors] install signal transmitters, whose signals can be picked up by the detectors -- in the vicinity of speed traps fit with cameras -- and tell the consumers that the product can pick up the signals from the speeding cameras installed by the police. It's simply a deceptive maneuver," Lu said.
Before any new legal measures are adopted to outlaw the manufacturing or retailing of such devices, however, Lu said that police crackdowns appear to be the only -- and the most effective -- way to stop such practices.
"We've been reviewing the possibility of defining their usage as illegal, because they seem to infringe the law of fair trade, as well as hampering the enforcement of the law. But until then, we need publicity and media exposure to educate people about the scheme and encourage them not to break the law," he said.
TTPC's third section captain, Lin Cheng-hsien (
As of October, the number of such violations has reached 560,000, only 90,000 less than last year's year-end total, he said.
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