Motorists who commit traffic offences will have no place to hide soon as the government plans to install more than 700 surveillance cameras to nab them while committing the crime.

Under a three-phased plan to reduce road accidents and fatalities, these cameras will be installed throughout the country beginning the middle of next year.

Transport Minister Chan Kong Choy said the cameras will be placed at strategic locations and other accident prone areas to catch motorists who commit traffic offences such as beating the traffic light, overtaking in the double line and driving in the emergency lane.

He added that the cabinet has approved his ministry's proposal to install the cameras under the automated enforcement system (AES) to nab motorists. This is part of the ministry's five year masterplan on road safety. The other projects involve programmes in education, enforcement, engineering and environment protection.

"The cameras would be installed at traffic lights, highways, federal and state roads as well as setting up mobile camera surveillance units that would be deployed to certain places," he was quoted as saying in Bernama today.

He explained that under AES, the cameras will monitor every car movement and their speed and then relay that information to the control centre.

At the control centre, all traffic offenders will be identified through their vehicles, he added. Then the offending vehicle owners will be sent summonses through post.

One city, one highway

Chan did not reveal the estimated cost of the project, adding that at the moment his ministry was in the midst of identifying the contractors.

"Cabinet has given approval to install the surveillance camera last month and so far, we have received 10 proposals from the local and international companies that want to provide us with their system (on the AES project)," he said.

He also said that the surveillance project will kick off in one city and one highway before being extended to cover all cities, highways, state and federal roads.. He did not name the city and the highway.

He said such system had proven to be effective in disciplining the behaviour of the drivers and road users in countries such as Australia, the United States, Europe, China and South Korea whereby the figures showed there was a reduction of traffic offences by about 40 per cent.

"This is because every driver knows once they are sitting behind the wheel, there are surveillance cameras monitoring their movement. With this, their awareness of enforcement will automatically go to the very high level," said Chan.

Road fatalities in Malaysia have been on the increase especially during long festival periods. Last year, there were 6,188 road accident fatalities with a ratio of 4.2 deaths for every 10,000 registered vehicles. In the first half of 2006 alone, 3,137 people were killed with 1,818 being either motorcyclists or pillion riders.