Cyprus police upgrade

Usual gadgets of traffic police around here are the radar, the pen, and the fine form. And the radio. You drive, they measure your speed with the radar, and if it is more then 20 km/h above the speed limit, they stop you and then use a pen to fill in the fine form. If you don’t stop, then they will use radio to complain about you and a whole bunch of cars, bikes, and helicopters will force you to stop and surrender.

Today, Hazard was the unfortunate one to discover that traffic police now has few more gadgets. Apparently, government recognized the century we are living in and decided that computerization is the way to go. So, now instead of using an old-fashioned pen and a fine form, policemen are using a handheld device (visually similar to Compaq Ipaq) to fill in digital form. They than proceed with printing it out using a handheld (or neckstrapped) BlueTooth&tm; printer. The printout looks like a receipt from Woolworth for Chirstmas shopping printed out on a hard paper.

New gadgets must have been introduced very recently, because the policement are extremely slowed down. I haven’t been able to locate any news announcements regarding this issue, so this might as well be a pilot project.

P.S.: Those of you worried about Hazard – he just got the fine of 21 CYP (driving 86 km/h in a 65 km/h zone) and two points to his driving license. Nothing terrible. :)