Use Cases of Smart Parking-Driven Automated Boot and Tow Management

It is hard to overstate the importance of vehicle and space management, especially in busy commercial districts.

Such zones have the highest number of vehicles as well as spatial congestion, traffic problems, pollution, and, ultimately, accidents and deaths (accidental deaths in US cities grew by 9% in 2022 compared to 2021). Such problems primarily stem from poor parking management and handling of regulation violators. Smart parking facilities and tools employ AI and computer vision in order to assist parking enforcement officers and traffic police with addressing violations. This is similar to how law enforcement agencies use computer vision to carry out smart city policing.

1. Penalizing Parking Violators

Smart parking tech heavily uses computer vision to manage parking in large facilities and streets in commercial districts. This means that smart cameras are installed in multiple places in such zones to monitor vehicular movement, on-street parking, regulatory violations and other actions. Impressively, the monitoring is carried out without the need for human intervention.

An example of parking violation being monitored can be—the detection of vehicles protruding out of their allotted parking slot, vehicles parked in the wrong slot (a sedan parked in a slot meant for hatchbacks), users parking their vehicles in slots meant for the handicapped, and other kinds of violations. Once these instances are detected by the smart cameras in a parking facility, the smart parking system can alert a nearby parking officer about it. Additionally, the system can fine users directly, debiting the penalty amount off their bank account through their mobile app.

The system monitors the number plate of vehicles to verify how long they’ve been parked in a lot. If such vehicles exceed their allotted parking time, they can be penalized. What’s more, this is also useful to detect and penalize users who’ve parked their vehicles on the street illegally.

2. Apprehending Wanted Criminals

The aforementioned smart cameras also scan the number plates of vehicles to verify whether they are on lists such as Vehicles of Interest (VOI) or Be On the Look-Out (BOLO) in criminal records. If a match is found, the system notifies a regional law enforcement department about it as soon as the vehicle is detected. 

In both these cases, the smart parking system can autonomously notify regional boot and tow management bodies about violations or vehicles belonging to criminals. Once the notification is received, such bodies can initiate the towing of such vehicles (and the arrest of criminals) immediately. In this way, unruly vehicle owners and criminals can be brought to book efficiently.