From December 1, New South Wales motorists earned a unique distinction; becoming the first in the world to be monitored by cameras for illegal mobile phone use.
A degree of secrecy surrounds the State Government’s roll-out of the cameras, which are either fixed to overpasses or attached to roadside trailers. The total number of cameras currently in operation has not been revealed, nor have their locations. Unlike speed cameras, drivers will not be given any warning they are approaching a checkpoint.
What we do know is that over a six-month trial earlier this year, more than 100,000 drivers were photographed illegally handling their phones while at the wheel. That represented a 1.8 percent non-compliance rate of the total 8.5 million drivers photographed.
The Government aims to dramatically raise its surveillance level to 135 million drivers per year by 2022/23. It estimates that 45 cameras will be needed across New South Wales to achieve this.
Applying the offence rate from the pilot, that would equal 2.43 million transgressions per year!
That presents a potentially crippling load on the New South Wales Local Court system should a significant portion of people elect to challenge the penalty, which will be $344 and five demerit points. The sanctions come into force on 1 March 2020.
This is where it gets interesting. Like speed cameras, the system works on a reverse-onus basis whereby the alleged offender must convince the authorities he or she didn’t commit the crime.
This can be done in two ways:
1. By nominating another offender if they weren’t at the wheel. With mobile phone detection cameras, this could well be a common occurrence as the units take images from above, and don’t often capture the driver’s face.
2. By challenging the penalty in the Local Court.
Offences detected by speed cameras are more difficult to overturn, given they are based on fixed numbers. But images taken from a mobile phone detection camera could be less black and white. The new cameras are guided by artificial intelligence (AI), designed to detect a person holding what it perceives to be a phone.
But what if the item is instead a breakfast bar, or coffee?
The Government has said all images relating to possible offences will be vetted by a human prior to a penalty notice being issued. But as any NRL lover would testify after more than a decade of video refereeing, human review is no guarantee of getting it right!
Tonkin Drysdale Partners has watched the State Government’s mobile phone detection camera roll-out closely. If you feel you have been wrongly penalised, please don’t hesitate to contact us.