Offending drivers on Ghana's roads pass through a hectic process to fully settle the fines imposed on them.

Traditionally, offenders' vehicles are seized and taken to the nearest Police station, which in some cases, may be far. 

The offender follows up and pays necessary fines and sometimes, is arraigned to determine the amount to be paid as a fine. 

This conventional process has been identified as time-consuming, energy-intensive and retards record keeping. 

The Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) in October 2021 alone recorded 573 road traffic offences. 

A total of GH¢236,030 fines were generated from those road traffic offences.

Offenders were found to be speeding, drunk driving, using worn-out tyres and with no belt or helmet. 

Others possessed fake drivers licenses and expired documents, among others. 

To improve on this manual offence punishment system, students at the Department of Computer Science, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Clifford Osei Asibey and Felix Gyabaa have developed a traffic offence monitoring and payment app called the "Traffic Police App."

The mobile App seeks to digitalize the physical reporting system of the MTTD. 

"We built a traffic police App which focuses on digitizing the manual reporting system of the MTTD. When one violates rules on the road, his car would be impounded and sent to the Police office to make payments of any penalty. This approach takes and wastes time. Our system can report the incident and determine the fine at the instance, the same as the payment," they explained.

The App will assist the Police and aid payment procedures for traffic offence penalties. 

How the system works

The system takes a video/picture of the incident and selects the type of offence. 

Upon taking a video and uploading it, the Police officer will enter the offender's car number and mobile number. 

The particular type of fine, the place of incidence and the required amount would show up automatically, and the App would send an SMS message to the offender. The offender may follow the SMS to pay the fine via Mobile money or the traffic Police payment App.

To learn more about the App and join the waitlist for its release, partners, stakeholders, or investors can visit https://csapps.knust.edu.gh.