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How do the cameras designed to catch people using their mobiles while driving work?

How do the cameras designed to catch people using their mobiles while driving work?

It's the old rubbing your tummy while patting your head thing: Fundamentally, it’s quite difficult to do two things at once. Moreso if they’re abstract pursuits. And, on the basis that you wouldn’t try to juggle kittens at the same time as you were attempting to cook dinner, or you wouldn’t begin reading a book while riding a bicycle, neither is it a wise move to combine driving a car at the same time as operating a mobile phone. No, we shouldn’t need to say it, but the sheer number of people caught using a mobile phone while driving suggests otherwise. Those same people are also the one who show up in large numbers in road-crash statistics.

The government message on using a phone while driving is pretty clear, and the penalty for using a mobile phone while driving can range from hundreds of dollars to more than $1000, and up to six demerit points on your license. Often both. And yet, the problem of people texting and checking their phone while driving persists. So now the police have adopted a new measure to stop the practice.

They’re called mobile phone detection cameras and while they don’t replace the previous method of police officers in traffic watching what you’re up to, they add another string to that bow. States such as Victoria, NSW and Queensland are already using these new cameras which basically give the law-enforcement agencies a new angle (literally) on spotting the wrong-doers.

These new cameras don’t use radar or lasers or anything else designed to detect who’s doing the wrong thing. Instead, they’re perched high on poles or gantries and peer through the windscreen of every car that passes under them. A high-speed camera then takes a photo of every car.

So how do they sort the legal drivers from the law-breakers? Each photo is scanned by the camera’s computer using artificial intelligence to match the image with an algorithm of what a driver on a mobile phone looks like. Each image that is deemed a likely suspect is then sent to head office where it’s viewed by a human who ultimately decides whether or not to issue a traffic infringement notice. Once an image has been discarded as not worth pursuing, the officials assure us that image is erased and can never be accessed again by anybody.

If the idea of having somebody photographing your lap while you’re stopped at the lights or beetling down a freeway, seems a bit creepy, you’re not alone. And just like toll-road collection agencies, there’s a possibility that the invoice sent out won’t always match up with what really happened or who was involved. That’s when you will need to defend yourself. But as the law is written, it becomes your problem to prove that either it was something other than a mobile phone you were touching, or it was somebody else in your car. This sems to go against the basic premise that you are innocent until proven guilty, but that’s the way modern, owner-onus traffic laws are being written.

Bear in mind, that even touching a switched-off phone to move it from your pocket to the centre-console while you’re in a car with the engine running (even if you’re stopped in a car-park) is, according to the legislation, the same offences as texting your mate, hand-held while roaring down the highway at 100km/h. So this is serious stuff, and it could be argued that common-sense seems to have been misplaced somewhere along the way. But one thing you can’t argue is that using a mobile phone while on the move is a dangerous game to play and mobile phone fines are here to stay.

Fixed mobile phone cameras on freeway gantries can’t be moved easily, but there are also mobile set-ups that can be parked in hot-spots and then moved to other locations quickly and easily. The phone cameras are not easy to pick from a speed or red-light camera either, so there’s no real way of knowing what a particular camera is checking as you whizz past it. The best advice, then, is to keep your phone in your pocket or the glove-box and leave it there until you’ve safely arrived at your destination.

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