Speed trap concern was just a cabinet joke

CABINET concern that speed-trap cameras photographing the fronts of cars might catch male drivers with their mistresses was “just a joke,” one minister said yesterday, but the joke will be on speeders if the cameras bill passes the Parliament.

Police Traffic Superintendent Alecos Michaelides yesterday said that the Council of Ministers on December 22, 1999, approved a bill that would permit installing cameras to catch speeders on highways, and signal-jumpers at city traffic lights.

The measure, long advocated by the police department, now goes to the House of Representatives for approval as law.

Reports this week suggested some in the Council of Ministers were concerned, lest placing the cameras so they photographed the fronts of vehicles might photograph a driver out with his mistress, and so suggested the cameras be placed so they only photographed vehicles from the rear.

“It was a joke,” the minister said yesterday. “Somebody said that with the installation of these cameras, people who were driving with a girlfriend might be in trouble. It was not an objection” to their installation, “not at all,” the minister said, adding the measure “went through fully.”

If the measure passes the House, cameras on highways or at traffic lights will photograph the license plates of offending vehicles; the police will then mail the photograph to the driver, along with a ticket for speeding or signal-jumping and a £50 fine.

The system is in wide use across Europe and in the United States.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.