MADINA: Authorities have seized vehicles in Madina with illegal number plates from Gulf states that were used in an attempt to fool the Saher traffic-monitoring system, a Traffic Department source said. A special task force has been deployed across the holy city to find the sources of the illegal registered plates and investigators suspect that they are coming from car junkyards, the source said. The Madina Traffic Department has warned motorists against trying tricks to fool the traffic system. Motorists who feel they have been wrongly cited by the system are welcome to dispute the violation, the department said. The Madina Traffic Department has recently intensified its campaign to crack down on people attempting to evade traffic tickets from the system. Some motorists have resorted to tricks such as tampering with the official plate number and painting the plate with a spray that is said to block the system from detecting the plate number. Some motorists have been pulled over for driving with no plates on the front bumper, officials said. In a report in the Arabic daily Al-Hayat, Col. Zaid Al-Hamzi, Director of Public Relations at the Jeddah Traffic Department, said some Asian brokers are selling other countries' plates that were on damaged cars – at prices up to SR1,500. The official told the newspaper that people who are using these fake license plates will be harshly punished under a special law, especially because there is no database for the plates.
