Kanagawa Prefectural Police introduced an automated system Wednesday to verify information on driver's licenses brought in for renewal, cutting the processing time in half.

The system, developed with Toshiba Corp. and IBM Corp., automatically collates information on each license, such as the driver's name and address, with the data stored at the National Police Agency.

Kanagawa police introduced 10 verification machines at the prefectural driver's license center in Asahi Ward, Yokohama, at a lease cost of about 90 million yen a year.

They plan to install one machine at the Kawasaki Police Station in April and another at the Odawara Police Station in April 2004.

Kanagawa police said manual verification of a driver's license takes more than an hour when personnel are busy.

The automation of the data verification process would cut the waiting time by around half, officials said.

The machine also updates the driver's photograph simultaneously when the old license is inserted into the computer.