PROSPERITY — The Prosperity Police Department is taking steps to handle traffic stops in a quicker and safer manner by implementing electronic tickets, or e-tickets, that will allow officers to print tickets from the car.
“The South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles has implemented a mandate for electronic submissions from the tickets that we write to the DMV. The way our current systems operates is, if an officer writes a ticket on the side of the road, they will issue a copy of it to the violator and they will input the information into our system,” said Prosperity Police Chief David Beddingfield.
Beddingfield said e-tickets would be more convenient for the potential violator, cutting down the amount of time they are pulled over.
The officer would scan the person’s driver’s license, which will put the person’s information into the Department’s system and allow the officer to print the ticket electronically from the car, making the traffic stop much more convenient for both parties.
“If a violator has violated multiple traffic laws, this will also allow quicker operation for issuing out multiple tickets, instead of the officer having to hand-write them. With the e-ticket system, it does require some maintenance, but it does serve as method of convenience by getting the officer and the violator off the side of the road as quickly as possible,” said Beddingfield.
Currently, the Prosperity Police Department is issuing both handwritten tickets and e-tickets to violators. Beddingfield said that for the time being, the department will continue to use the handwritten, hard tickets as backup, but Beddingfield hopes to transition issuing only e-tickets within the calendar year.
Once the officer issues the ticket, the violator can simply pay the ticket or take it to court where they can either plead guilty or ask for a trial.
“For some people, just the thought of having a police officer behind them makes them nervous,” the chief said. “Our officers are trained to know that when they pull someone over that they’re probably going to be very nervous, and that the officer doesn’t like pulling someone over either because they’re nervous too and they know that the driver will be probably be pretty nervous as well.”