An Almaty resident, Sanzhar Narubayev, ran into an error with the Sergek photo-enforcement system: cameras took his BMW for a bus and issued four fines for driving in the bus lane, the website infohub.kz reports.
The man described the situation on Instagram. According to him, he had recently received four citations for entering the public transport lane, even though he was not the one committing the violations captured in the images. The photos and videos from the Sergek cameras show a bus, while the fines were sent to a BMW.
The Almaty resident suggested that the license plate recognition system may have confused his car's state registration plates with those of the bus because of similar characters.
"I have already received 4 fines recently — for driving in the bus lane (the latest one came today at 09:14). The video and photo evidence shows a bus. The only thing is, I have a BMW. Unfortunately, our plates are very similar and Sergek's artificial intelligence is not always able to tell the plate apart, so the fine comes to me," Narubayev wrote.
According to the man, the erroneous citations force him to spend time contacting the police and appealing the fines. He also said he intends to send an official request to find out why the system allows such errors.
The Almaty Police Department commented on the situation. "The Almaty City Police Department reports that the citation against the BMW vehicle was registered erroneously as a result of incorrect recognition of the state registration license plate. Due to the absence of an administrative offense, the citation was terminated on the basis of Article 741 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Republic of Kazakhstan," the statement said.