Vikki Campion: Road safety cameras can’t replace good cops

Cameras can’t warn people or stop them in the act when they are speeding or using their mobile phone while driving. Give us cops over cameras any day, Vikki Campion writes.

One of the greatest things about a free nation is constabulary discretion. Computers and cameras have no empathy — they work for Treasury — not for the people.

Since all but essential travel was banned, our road toll dropped to historically low 1930s levels, yet during “peak COVID” from March to November, the NSW Government skewered motorists with a historically high $53 million for one offence category alone — 500 per cent the annual average.

This offence is “usage” of a mobile phone while driving — including texting, talking, and just holding — as one would a muesli bar.

It’s insincere to say this is just the government here to help you. They are trying to make more money and no better example is this.

Here are the phone fines from cameras from March to November: $49,771,851.

And here are the fines from police: $3,029,379.

Machine-generated fines and fixed cameras are no replacement for good police officers. Picture: News Regional Media

Transport Minister Andrew Constance must be thrilled. Imagine the iconic ferries you can sink with that kind of money.

Before cameras and computers began sending out penalty notices, all mobile phone offences in total generated $10.6 million for the whole year to June 2019.

Another COVID anomaly is parking. Parking “offences”, (it’s ridiculous that something as minor as overstaying a public carpark is deemed an offence) often recorded by automated machine, had no steep drop during COVID, in fact it generated NSW Treasury and NSW councils more than $131 million from March to November — right on track with prior years.

Yet when you look at the penalties for police-issued fines for breaking safety laws, such as seatbelt offences or police-issued speeding fines, there is a sharp decrease for the same time period. How bizarre.

It’s almost as if machine-generated fines aren’t about road safety at all.

From March 1, 2020, just as a global pandemic hit our shores and locked the nation down, the NSW Government’s mobile phone detection cameras began enforcing illegal use of mobile phones, carrying a penalty of five demerit points and a $349 fine.

Red light and speed cameras are not really about road safety, Vikki Campion writes. Picture: Brendan Radke

Transport NSW, which runs the cameras and your registration notices, did not send motorists an update to these laws with their bill.

The good folk at Transport did however, send a brochure to motorists on how to secure a customised number plate — what excellent advice for those unknowingly to soon lose their licence.

They are now removing warning signs for mobile speed cameras in NSW — but not a word of that comes with your rego bill or licence renewal either.

It’s not as if you drive around the state and see signs saying: “This black spot was fixed with parking fines.”

Ministers moralise at the start and then chuck it in their pocket where most fines go straight into general revenue and are spent on whatever blows the government’s hair back.

These decisions are being made by a chauffeured cabinet, some who have not had to drive themselves in Sydney since being made ministers 10 years ago.

There is no more out of touch conglomerate in the state to lecture the public on road safety when they do not have to get behind the wheel themselves. Especially when they leak each other’s driving misdemeanours to the media.

Telegraph columnist Vikki Campion. Picture: Simon Scott

Coalition governments are supposed to be about individual choice. To say we need to fall in line with other states is not a good reason to do anything. In fact in the case of Victoria, it’s a good reason to do the opposite. Yet now we are copying the Victorian model to bring in unmarked vans, a move which Wagga Wagga MLC Wes Fang notes will unfairly discriminate against regional NSW motorists, who have to drive much further to the shops and at twice the speed of Sydney.

Regional motorists have no Uber, train, bus, ferry or tram to rely upon once their licence is gone.

People make mistakes — most often remedied on reflection of what they did — but we are now living in a world where any indiscretion will be monitored, photographed and fined.

Cameras bring surveillance, and it comes down to the government having a higher reason to watch you than you do to be free. If cameras equal freedom than China must be the freest place on earth — they have cameras everywhere.

Cameras can’t warn people or stop them in the act. It’s no replacement for an old-fashioned man or woman in blue on decent roads. And the great thing about NSW Police is they have both brains and empathy.

If the Government is aware enough of a crime taking place to fine motorists, it should also stop it there and then.

Detecting a speeding car by camera that moments later runs over a kid means the government technically knew they were speeding yet did nothing to prevent the death.

Police stop you in the act, a camera lets you know a few weeks later.

Next quarter the NSW Government is set to “explore the development of a supplier panel for Artificial Intelligence assurance”. Give us cops over cameras any day.