The Melbourne engineer who co-developed the technology behind the mobile phone detection camera has strongly endorsed the ACT government's "anytime, anywhere" deployment strategy for the devices when rolled out across Canberra in 2023.
The three mobile cameras, all on trailers, will be shuffled randomly between around 200 identified crash-prone locations every three days.
Alex Jannink, the managing director of Acusensus, said the experience from Queensland and NSW - the other jurisdictions which have adopted the technology - was that being able to deploy the cameras quickly was a strong driver of behavioural change.
Work on the overhead gantries for the ACT's two new fixed mobile phone detection cameras - one on the traffic light-controlled intersections on Hindmarsh Drive above the Monaro Highway and the other at Gungahlin Drive and Sandford St - will begin early in 2023, with the mobile trailers to roll out after that.
Canberra's cameras will start issuing infringements in October next year, with warning notices going out in the three-month period before that.
Each infringement will incurring the loss of four demerit points and a $481 fine. The demerits will double during the customary periods declared by government.
The deputy-director general of Transport Canberra, Ben McHugh, said his researchers had full access to the NSW and Queensland historical data. When NSW first rolled out the unique Australian technology as a pilot in 2019, around 1.2 per cent of motorists were in breach, representing a hit rate of one in every 82 drivers.
This has since declined in NSW to around 0.25 per cent.
"From a road safety perspective, that's exactly the behaviour change you want to see," Mr McHugh said.
There will be no warning signs of locations on approach or departure, but there will be signage on the trailers to identify their purpose as drivers pass by.
Using an infra-red flash, the mobile phone cameras operate in all weathers, night and day. Three images are taken per vehicle, regardless of the vehicle speed or traffic volume.
The third and most critical image is the one which looks down into the cabin and reveals whether a driver has a device on the knee or lap, and is texting or surfing the net.
To counter public issue about privacy, the Acusensus artificial intelligence discards those images which do not detect an offence. In Queensland, the technology is also used to detect seat belt offences, but not in the ACT.
The ACT government conducted a three-month trial of the technology on the Majura Parkway before signing a lease agreement with Acusensus.
ACT traffic police say the illegal use of handheld devices by ACT motorists is endemic, with well over 1000 infringements per year in the pre-COVID years, only falling away when traffic volumes declined during the pandemic.
The cameras are also big revenue generators, generating $56.4 million for the NSW community road safety fund over nine months of the 2020 calendar year. In the ACT, all monies raised from the technology will go into consolidated revenue.
The ACT Traffic Camera Office, which currently processes the speed camera infringements, will also take the processing of the mobile phone infringements.
"There's a first-pass digital evaluation of the image. That then is given a human validation of the offence, and then we give it our own internal validation so there's effectively three checks [before an infringement is issued]," Mr McHugh said.
