Parking officers of Melbourne City offered a stiff opposition to the implementation of a new parking space management system by the Melbourne City Council (MCC).
The new system is capable of automatically detecting vehicles that violate the parking laws. The Australian Services Union planned to show their opposition by instructing its officers to ignore the parking violations and stop issuing fines, if the new technology was implemented.
The sensors would be embedded in 4619 parking bays spread across the city and would issue alerts to the parking officer in case of any parking violation. The council also planned to install high-speed digital cameras, which would capture pictures of the licence plates of the illegally parked vehicles. This technology enjoys the patronage of the Lord Mayor, Robert Doyle.
Igor Grattam, the state secretary for the ASU, warned of resorting to legal methods to fight the injustice that the members would be subjected to through implementing the new sensors. He added that sensors cannot be subjected to legal scrutiny in case of an appeal in court against the issued fine. He also said that the data from sensors was not reliable to support the claim. Parking officers submitted several photographs to The Sunday Age as proofs of the inaccuracy in the sensor system.
However, the MCC maintained that the new technology was capable of providing accurate results. The spokesperson for the council argues that the data from the sensor could be produced as evidence in court. The data from the sensors would have complete details such as the time of arrival and departure of the vehicle; image of the vehicle captured by the camera; the time, at which the vehicle was sighted and the time of issue of the ticket as well.
Source: http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/