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RFID tags on vehicles seen to solve traffic woes

Business Mirror | 09/23/2009 9:16 AM

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MANILA - The Land Transportation Office (LTO) will begin tagging next month all vehicles with radio frequency identification (RFID) labels that will enable it to identify and know everything about a specific vehicle with the speed of electronic computing. By so doing, it hopes to be able to kill several traffic evil birds with one stone.

The sticker contains a microchip storing vehicle information that is reportedly tamper-proof and can only be “read” by authorized scanners of the LTO and the police.

Motorists will pay a one-time tagging fee of P350 when they register their vehicles. The RFID tag is expected to last 10 years.

“We are confident of the enormous benefits this technology will provide to the public, in general, and we enjoin our motorists to have their vehicles tagged with the RFID beginning October of this year,” said Assistant Secretary Arturo Lomibao.

Lomibao said with RFID tags, motorists and commuters are assured of a significant improvement in the efficiency of traffic law enforcement that he expects will lead to much-improved traffic flow with the quick identification of “colorum” vehicles.

Air pollution is expected to be lessened since vehicles with faulty engine systems that result in smoking can be quickly identified and detained, thus discouraging use of these faulty vehicles, especially buses, on Edsa.

This will, in turn, protect legitimate bus, jeepney, and taxi operators and drivers from unfair competition from these smoke belchers and “colorums.”

Lomibao said a very good effect of such RFID tagging may be as a major deterrent to car theft because the police can quickly identify these “hot” vehicles in real time as they pass scanners in police checkpoints along their routes of escape.

“The RFID technology will revolutionize land transportation in the Philippines. This is a great first step in putting order in our streets,” said Lomibao.

RFID tags are radio signal-enabled chips that can be as large as a grain of rice, or even smaller, that interact with a scanner. They can be “read” only from a few meters away at this time of their development. Another government use of RFID is in e-passports, now being issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Lomibao said RFID technology is being used to manage traffic and vehicular registries in the United States, Britain, and other western countries; and in Asia, by Japan and Singapore.