Changes are being introduced in the way police patrols operate both on the highways and in cities.
Shortly after instructing officers not to hide when conducting road inspections, the Traffic Department has been operating with triple patrols for the past three days to make sure drivers do not start speeding after passing the first check.
So far, officers have in fact noticed that, when passing a police patrol, after initially decreasing their speed, drivers would immediately accelerate straight after, thinking they would not find further patrol cars anytime soon.
Here’s how a likely scenario will unfold: there will be three patrol cars, for example on the Nicosia-Limassol highway, all three at different points along the way, so that, if a driver speeds through the first one, he can be easily spotted and stopped by the second or the third one.
The patrol cars will then move to the other side of the motorway to check the traffic going in the opposite direction. In this way, the Traffic Department is hoping to pass the message on to drivers that they must adhere to the speed limits throughout their entire journey and not just when they see a police car on the side of the road.
Two days ago, a driver was reported speeding throughout all three checks.
In the meantime, police officers have also changed they way they conduct traffic checks in cities.
According to the instructions given, drivers will now rarely see police officers at street corners waiting to stop offenders, as they have now started to conduct checks on-the-go.
In just one day under the new traffic policies, 585 drivers in Nicosia and 470 in Limassol have been stopped for various traffic offences.
