By: William Narh

Imagine you sold your old Corolla two years ago. The buyer paid cash, you shook hands, and neither of you went to the DVLA. A day or two later, an SMS arrives from a sender called GPS-MTTD. Your former car was caught speeding on a road you have not driven in years.

You have 14 days to pay or contest the offence.

That case is hypothetical, but it exposes a real weakness in any enforcement system built on vehicle records: the camera may identify the car correctly while the system identifies the wrong person. Whether such a case ends in a quick correction or a month of frustration will depend on things that have little to do with the camera itself.

That is the real test facing TraffiTech-GH.

What changes on 1 November

TraffiTech-GH is the Ghana Police Service’s automated traffic enforcement programme, operated by the Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD). Cameras, sensors, laser speed devices and handheld units will record traffic offences. Staff will review the evidence and match vehicles against records held by the DVLA and National Insurance Commission.

Where an offence is confirmed, the registered owner receives an SMS containing details including the ticket number, location, time, vehicle registration, offence, amount due and deadline.

The owner then has 14 days to pay or contest the notice. Payment can be made through official channels, while a contest begins online and proceeds to a hearing at an MTTD regional station.

The programme is designed to change something fundamental about traffic enforcement. Instead of relying primarily on an officer stopping a driver at the roadside, the state can detect an offence, preserve evidence and begin enforcement through a digital system.

That has obvious advantages.

It can reduce human discretion. It can make enforcement more consistent. It can extend coverage without putting an officer at every junction.

And in a country where 63% of respondents in the latest Afrobarometer survey said most or all police officials are corrupt, there is a particular appeal in removing opportunities for roadside bargaining.

But removing the officer from the encounter does not automatically create trust in the institution behind the system.

A camera may not take a bribe. The system still has to prove that it is fair.

Cameras can work. The system around them has to work too

There is no serious argument against using technology to address dangerous driving.

A Cochrane review of 35 studies found that speed cameras reduced average speeds. Ghana’s own road-safety figures also make the case for stronger enforcement. The National Road Safety Authority reported 2,949 road deaths from 14,743 crashes in 2025, with deaths increasing from the previous year. The MTTD says speeding contributes to 62% of road-crash deaths.

So the question is not whether Ghana should enforce traffic laws.

It is whether automated enforcement can be introduced in a way that people understand, trust and can challenge when something goes wrong.

That distinction matters.

The international evidence tells us that cameras can change behaviour. It tells us much less about what happens when the technology is introduced into a system with imperfect road signs, incomplete vehicle records, limited digital access and low institutional trust.

Ghana therefore has to answer four basic questions.

Can the system prove the violation?

A speed limit is not merely a number stored in a database. It is a rule communicated to a driver through signs, road markings and traffic signals.

If the driver cannot reasonably see the rule, enforcement becomes difficult to defend.

CUTS International has identified locations where signage and markings could create precisely that problem, including parts of the Nsawam–Accra Road and other enforcement locations. It has called for clearer speed-limit signs before cameras and wherever speed limits change.

This is not an argument against enforcement. It is an argument for making the rule visible before punishing people for breaking it.

The same principle applies to the technology itself.

Who certifies that a camera is accurately calibrated? How frequently is equipment tested? What happens when a device malfunctions? How is the original photographic or video evidence preserved? What standard must that evidence meet when a driver disputes a ticket?

A credible automated system should not simply tell citizens that the technology is accurate. It should have a process for demonstrating that accuracy and independently checking it.

The public should know that a ticket is not treated as infallible merely because a machine produced it.

Can the system identify the right person?

This is where the Corolla problem becomes more than a hypothetical inconvenience.

The immediate recipient of a notice is the registered owner, regardless of who was driving. If a vehicle has been sold but the transfer was never completed, the former owner can become the person receiving the notice.

The same problem can arise when vehicle records contain an old telephone number or other outdated information.

The legal responsibility to update records may rest with the owner. But the state controls many of the moments when updating could be made easier: vehicle transfers, insurance transactions, roadworthiness processes and licence renewals.

That creates an important policy question.

If government knows that outdated records can undermine automated enforcement, why wait until a fine is issued before confronting the problem?

A public campaign to update vehicle and contact records, combined with easier changes during routine transactions, would prevent many disputes before they happen.

Automated enforcement is only as reliable as the records underneath it.

Can a citizen challenge the state?

This may be the most important question of all.

Receiving a notice is easy. Knowing what to do next may not be.

A person may need to read the SMS, access the evidence online, decide whether the allegation is correct, initiate a contest, understand the procedure and attend a hearing.

For many drivers, that will be manageable. For others, it will not.

Ghana Statistical Service data show that adult literacy is not universal, while significant numbers of adults who struggle with reading still use mobile phones and digital services. That means a system can be technologically accessible without being equally accessible to everyone.

A text-heavy English-language process may satisfy the requirements of digitisation while still leaving some citizens behind.

The answer is not to abandon digital enforcement. It is to build multiple ways into the system.

Notices should be clear. Public information should be available in major local languages and, where possible, through audio and visual formats. There should be telephone and physical assistance for people who cannot navigate the online process.

Most importantly, the appeals process needs visible service standards.

How quickly must a contest be acknowledged? How long should a decision take? What happens if the evidence is inconclusive? Who reviews a disputed decision?

The principle is simple: citizens are more likely to accept an adverse decision when they believe the process that produced it was fair.

A camera is neutral when it detects. It earns trust when citizens can see how mistakes are corrected.

Can people understand and trust the system?

The Police Service cannot assume that a press release is public education.

TraffiTech-GH introduces new rules, new payment procedures, a new type of notification and a new relationship between citizens and traffic enforcement.

People need to know what is being enforced now, what will be added later, how genuine notices look, where payments should be made and how disputes can be raised.

That information cannot live only on websites.

Commercial drivers’ unions, driving instructors, religious leaders, chiefs, journalists and other trusted community voices can help explain the system in places where government announcements may not reach effectively.

But the message has to be consistent. No one should be improvising the rules. There is also a second trust problem: scams.

A system that relies on SMS notifications creates an obvious opportunity for fraudsters. The Police Service has identified official channels and warned the public about suspicious messages. That information should be repeated so often that drivers can recognise a genuine notice almost immediately.

Trust is built partly through enforcement and partly through predictability.

People need to know what the system does, what it does not do and where to turn when something goes wrong.

The technology must be accountable too

There is another issue that deserves more attention: data.

Automated enforcement potentially brings together vehicle registration details, ownership information, telephone numbers, locations, times, alleged offences and photographic or video evidence.

That creates a large body of information about people’s movements and vehicles.

The public therefore needs clear answers about who controls the information, who can access it, how long it is retained and how misuse is prevented.

This does not require paralysing the programme. It requires recognising that technological enforcement creates institutional responsibilities alongside technological capabilities.

The same applies to independent oversight.

The Police Service should publish enough information for the public to assess how the system is performing: how many notices are issued, how many are contested, how many are withdrawn, how often technical or record errors occur and how long appeals take.

Those numbers should not be treated as an embarrassment. They are evidence that the system is being tested.

What Ghana should do now

The practical test is straightforward.

First, activate camera enforcement only where signs, signals and road markings have passed a published readiness check.

Second, publish a clear, dated schedule showing which offences are being enforced at launch and when additional offences will be introduced.

Third, make it easier to correct vehicle and contact records, particularly during transfers, insurance transactions and other routine vehicle processes.

Fourth, publish public guidance in accessible language and formats explaining what is enforced, how notices are issued, how payments are made and how complaints are handled.

Fifth, establish clear service standards for contested notices and provide telephone and physical assistance for people who cannot use the digital process. Government should also consider whether a second-level review mechanism should sit outside the Police Service.

Sixth, publish regular performance data, including errors and withdrawn notices, and conduct a public review after the first 90 days involving road users, transport unions, rider groups and civil society.

That is how an automated system becomes accountable rather than simply automated.

The part cameras cannot do

TraffiTech-GH may well make Ghana’s roads safer.

But a camera can record a vehicle. It cannot make a driver see a hidden sign, correct a wrong record, trust a text message or know where to take a complaint.

That work belongs to the roads, the records, the institutions and the people who explain the system. The technology can detect the violation. The institutions must make the enforcement credible.

If they do, drivers may eventually experience TraffiTech-GH simply as part of a safer road system. If they do not, Ghana will learn the system through its first disputed fine.

And somewhere, that first disputed fine may involve a Corolla its owner sold two years ago.