New gizmo in cops’ cars: official scotches rumours

Manama

Rumours being circulated online regarding a traffic police car apparently equipped with a new technology is false, a senior official at the Traffic Directorate has confirmed yesterday. 

A picture of a police car, which was rumoured to have a built-in equipment to monitor and capture the details of speeding cars, was circulated online last month. Social media users claimed that the device was installed on the front left on the car and it would be able to monitor the speed of cars within its 500-meter radius. 

In the picture being circulated, a red circle was highlighting a device on the body of the car. The object was claimed to be a camera device that would work similar to a radar gun used to measure the speed of moving objects. However, the claims were ruled out by the Traffic Culture Director in the General Directorate of Traffic Major Osama Bahar. He said that the circled object was only a setting to fix a flag. “The object can hold a flag, that model cars have such a feature,” he told DT News. 

He stressed that the Traffic Police is focusing on reducing the number of accidents and not the number of violations caught. “Our objective is to save lives, not to catch violations in order to meet any sort of selfish objectives. Some people like to make it seem like we are just trying to catch violations. That is not an honest portrayal. We do not benefit from catching violations, we are doing it to keep the roads safer. So to say we are taking new technology or measures to catch violations is a wrong statement, rather it should be said that we are trying to reduce accidents,” he added.