AI cameras will pick up and fine motorway litter louts

ARTIFICIAL intelligence cameras programmed to catch motorway litter louts and issue them with fines are to be rolled out in the South East of England.

National Highways said it would install the hi-tech cameras in lay-bys in the coming weeks as part of a trial to detect littering.

Unlike traditional CCTV cameras, where enforcement officers would trawl through hours of footage to find offenders, the AI cameras will pick out offences and automatically send them to an enforcement control room.

The control room will be able to review the images immediately and issue a fixed penalty charge of up to £100 to the person registered to the car’s number plate.

The highways body has partnered with East Hampshire county council subsidiary, EHCS, who will manage the cameras. East Hampshire county council will issue the fines as National Highways do not have the power to take enforcement action.

National Highways has comes under increasing pressure to clean up the country’s strategic road network. Last month, Richard Holden, from the Department for Transport, revealed that just under 40 per cent of National Highways roads were graded below B for litter, meaning significant levels of rubbish were found.

Clean Up Britain, a campaign group, said in February that it would launch legal action against the highways body unless it improved the litter situation on the country’s motorways.

The move was backed by a number of politicians, as well as Jeremy Paxman, patron of the campaign group, who claimed that the country had turned from “a nation of shopkeepers, to a nation of litter louts”.

National Highways and East Hampshire Council would not disclose the company behind the AI cameras. They were also unable to reveal exactly where the cameras would be situated. However, The Daily Telegraph understands that they will be set up in lay-bys across the South East of England.

The AI cameras are just one of the new approaches being taken by National Highways to try to stamp down on the growing litter problem.

Freda Rashdi, head of customer journeys at the National Highways, said: “Littering is a social problem across the country and we’re working hard to tackle it on our roads ... But if people don’t drop litter in the first place, it wouldn’t need to be picked up”.