An intelligent surveillance system based on visual information gathered by smart cameras, aimed at traffic monitoring with emphasis on traffic events caused by cars, is presented in the paper. The system components and their capabilities for auto- matic detection and recognition of selected parameters of cars, as well as different aspects of system efficiency, are described and discussed in detail. Smart facilities for Make and Model Recognition (MMR), License Plate Recognition (LPR) and Color Recognition (CR), embedded in the system in the form of their individual software implementations, are analyzed and their recognition rates detailed. Finally, a dis- cussion of the systems efficiency as a whole, with an insight into possible future improvements, is included in the conclusion.