Interior Vice Minister Igor Lepekha, speaking at a government briefing, addressed the question of what will happen to fines automatically issued to drivers during a system failure, infohub.kz reports.
Journalists noted that Kazakh citizens have repeatedly complained about unjustified fines issued by automatic enforcement cameras.
"There was such a case, indeed. But it was not widespread—it happened on isolated occasions. Because the number of cameras is growing, the number of notices is growing, while the staff of the administrative police is not increasing. Together with the Committee on Legal Statistics of the Prosecutor General's Office, we switched to an auto-signing mode. That is, whereas previously a notice was generated as follows: a photo came to an officer, he reviewed the notice, and only then signed and sent it, now everything is done automatically. Now the notice goes directly to the owner of the vehicle that violated the traffic rules," Lepekha said.
According to him, the new system was launched on August 13.
"On the first day, failures were indeed recorded. They were recorded in Almaty and Zhambyl regions. We looked into it and figured it out: the notice indicated instantaneous speed rather than average speed. That is, if certain arches are specified in the notice, here it was written that the driver exceeded the speed limit on a particular arch. We are working individually with each driver. If a notice was indeed issued in violation, the money (the fine paid to date—editor's note) will be refunded from the budget," the vice minister explained.
Recall that in August, erroneously issued speeding fines on highways were identified in Kazakhstan. The Interior Ministry stated that they would be canceled automatically, and a refund mechanism is already being worked out.