Police in New South Wales, Australia, are trialling a new type of camera which spots cars which are uninsured by automatically screening their number plate. As well as detecting uninsured vehicles, the high-tech cameras also flag up vehicles which are unregistered and which have been reported stolen, or wanted for any other kind of serious motoring offence. At present only one new police patrol car has been equipped with this special equipment which uses number plate recognition to screen the vehicles. The advanced technology used in the cameras means that the device is able to read up to 6 number plates simultaneously every second. Cars to the front and side of the police patrol car can be picked up. The mobile camera can be used while on the move, and it can even read the number plates of speeding vehicles up to a maximum speed of 110km/h. A similar type of camera is also being trialled in Europe currently. These static “Big Brother” style cameras can also detect a multitude of vehicle details including whether or not the vehicle has a tax disc, and also whether the passengers are wearing seat belts, or if the car is tailgating the vehicle in front by measuring the distance between the two vehicles. If the tests in Europe on these new style cameras are deemed a success, we could see this technology on UK roads within the next couple of years.