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But what are scan vehicles anyway?

Scan vehicles are essentially traffic wardens. Rather than walking through the streets to check vehicles for correct parking, they drive through the streets with an ‘all-around camera’. This camera records the following data: an image of the parked vehicle, its licence plate number, the location of the vehicle and the time of the check. This data is stored for as long as misdemeanour proceedings are ongoing. If it transpires that no offence has been committed or the procedure has been completed, the data will be deleted immediately.

Vehicle number plates are compared with the parking authorisation on file. The fact that parking authorisations are stored digitally in the municipality is the decisive factor. This enables optimum control of resident parking, short-term parking and special parking.

However, if an offence is committed, it will not be penalised immediately. It is similar to the AI-controlled cameras that will be used on bridges in future to more effectively penalise mobile phone use while driving. The camera takes a picture, which is then checked by an official. If an offence has actually been committed, the responsible officer will issue a fine. The scanning vehicles are intended to simplify and speed up the process as a whole. More licence plates can be checked at a 'camera glance'. The local authority also hopes to save costs, as it would take staff in the public order office considerably longer to enter all the information manually. This means the vehicles can be used not only for parking control, but also for offences such as parking in bus lanes or on pedestrian paths. It is hoped that this will result in fewer obstructions to other road users and thus improve road safety. Cyclists and pedestrians will also be less obstructed.

Incidentally, a condition for using the scanning vehicles is that there is a legal basis for doing so. Baden-Württemberg is currently the only German federal state that authorises the use of these vehicles under its state mobility law, which came into force in March this year. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the Bundesrat initiated a proposal in 2023 that the German Road Traffic Act should include scanned vehicles. However, this was rejected by the traffic light government at the time. There is a need for this in any case, as 542,521 parking offences were detected in Düsseldorf alone in 2024.

Source: Pixabay/stopping-1028237_1280