A four-day deluge of letters and SMS messages sent out late last month by Access Canberra ahead of an extended automated number plate scanning program has revealed the startling number of unregistered vehicles on ACT roads.
Between July 25 and July 31, around 60,000 vehicle owners whose ACT rego had lapsed for between 14 days and 2 years were sent a tersely worded "courtesy letter" demanding owners to "register your vehicle - or risk significant fines".
The blanket mailout - together with 46,034 SMS - came as the government flagged that from August 27, it would trigger the capability to detect unregistered and uninsured vehicles through its mobile phone detection, red light and speeding cameras.
"If you have recently registered your vehicle, please disregard this letter," the government correspondence stated.
What happened next was significant.
Within days of the letters and SMS going out, around 1600 more vehicle registrations - in addition to the ACT average of 12,400 regular weekly renewals - suddenly landed at the Access Canberra inbox.
Around 250 extra notice of vehicle disposals also arrived.
"This means an additional 1600 vehicles on our roads registered and insured," an Access Canberra spokesperson said.
But it also provided a telling insight into how many of the ACT's road users - deliberately or otherwise - are driving without registration and third party insurance, risking a crash which injures another person and a crippling financial penalty.
The ACT ceased producing paper registration labels on July 1, 2013, transferring the onus of responsibility to the vehicle owner/operator to ensure their rego and compulsory third party insurance was up to date.
The ACT also does not require regular roadworthy inspections. Across the border in NSW, almost all light vehicles over five years old require an annual roadworthy test in order to be registered.
The number of unregistered and uninsured vehicles on Canberra's roads has been a long-running policing and transport issue.
For years, police consistently see links between those who deliberately choose not to pay their rego and the increased likelihood of other risk-taking road behaviour.
Back in 2010, unregistered vehicles were an issue of such significance in the territory that ACT police formed a dedicated six-member team known as RAPID (Recognition and Analysis of Plates Identified) under Detective Superintendent Mark Colbran.
Within the 12-month period that followed, 1771 unregistered, 780 without CTP and 474 unlicensed, 57 disqualified and 148 suspended drivers were detected by the team, as well as 1213 defective vehicles. The roadsides to major thoroughfares around Canberra became littered with temporarily abandoned unregistered vehicles, parked up with their number plates confiscated, waiting for a tow truck to arrive.
Ten years on and the problem persisted. Between January and October 2020, police fined 1056 drivers of unregistered vehicles - almost twice as many as the whole of 2019 - as well as 1052 fines to unlicensed drivers.
The arrival of more compact and sophisticated ANPR (automated number plate recognition) technology has now turned every ACT Road Policing vehicle - including the BMW motorcycle fleet, including a "unicorn" with three cameras - into a mobile number plate scanning tool but these focus on stolen vehicles, not unregistered.
Far more widespread and powerful detection began this month as every red light, speeding and mobile phone camera in the ACT - the so-called "road safety camera network" - became extra tools in the validation hunt, with all infringing drivers double-checked as to whether their rego is also up to date.
The fine for driving an unregistered vehicle in the ACT exceeds $700.
