‘Smart cameras’ planned to enhance road safety

WELLINGTON: Speed cameras that take two pictures at different spots in order to work out a vehicle’s average speed could be in use within months.

Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency documents say law changes could allow them to be used against more offences including tailgating and seeing inside a car to spot drivers using cellphones or not belted in.

The OIA papers show Waka Kotahi has been working on this and a new highway tolling system that can also be used for congestion charging, for a couple of years.

Its plans say the pointtopoint or averagespeed cameras ‘‘could be a game changer enabling us to manage corridor speeds rather than spot speed’’.

They would be three times better than fixed or mobile speed cameras at cutting the road toll, a business case said.

The smart cameras ‘‘can be used to provide evidence, for example, that a driver is using a mobile phone or not wearing a seatbelt’’.

‘‘Camerabased enforcement can be invasive, as images are purposely taken of the driver and passenger compartment,’’ the business case stated.

A board paper from April said law changes under the Regulatory Stewardship Transport Amendment Bill meant from early 2023 there could be use of pointtopoint cameras, automation of offence processing and fine notices delivered to cellphones.

Already 26 of the new cameras are on order to add to the 142strong network.

The agency is calling them ‘‘safety cameras’’ in a Cabinetordered attempt ‘‘to shift the public away from perceptions that safety cameras are an enforcement, revenuegathering tool’’.

Medium and highrisk roads will be the target.

A camera business case estimates they could save between 1500 and 2400 lives and $1.5 billion across two decades.

The privacy implications are still being worked out with the Privacy Commissioner.

Waka Kotahi refuses to specify the total cost of the camera system and new tolling system, saying this was to protect ‘‘ministers, members of organisations, officers, and employees from improper pressure or harassment’’.

However, just the first phase — choosing the mix of cameras, where to put them and the design of the system — costs $21.6m, which is $10m more than expected, though the documents said that had not impacted the whole budget.

Spanish traffic company SICE won the contract for the cameras and tolling.

The work is being done quickly alongside a review of road offence penalties with the aim of saving 114 lives a year by 2030.

As it stands, relatively few cameras per capita and lack of advanced cameras, along with very low penalties for speeding ‘‘greatly undermine the effectiveness of the enforcement approach’’, the papers say.

In New Zealand the speeding fine for being 1kmh to 10kmh over the limit in an urban area is $30, compared with $370 in Sweden.

Fines are set to rise and demerit points are very likely to be stiffer, and applied for the first time to camera offences.

Authorities see all this as crucial to the Road to Zero strategy, with cameras expected to provide 5% of the 40% reduction in road deaths and serious injuries that is the strategy’s primary goal.

At present there are 142 safety cameras across its road network, an increase of 30 since 2019. Waka Kotahi is taking them over from police, adding to its 2000 traffic management cameras. — RNZ