Sussex Police and National Highways have joined forces to deploy the latest technology in artificial intelligence to test motorists for mobile phone and seatbelt offences. The Sensor Test Vehicle screened over 10,000 vehicles in Sussex, identifying over 200 driving offences at sites on the A23 Hickstead, the A23 Gatwick Link, and at Kingsway, Hove earlier this year.
Equipped with a specialist camera system, the Sensor Test Vehicle is able to filter out possible offences, which are then checked and double-checked by human eyes. Not wearing a seatbelt, and being distracted while driving such as by using a mobile phone, remain two of the most common factors of why people are killed or seriously injured on roads.
Last year, there was a 23 per cent rise in the number of fatalities linked to people not wearing a seatbelt, according to Department for Transport figures. In 2019, there were 420 collisions on British roads in which the driver was using a mobile phone at the wheel. Commercial road users were disproportionately represented, accounting for 32 per cent of mobile phone offences and 82 per cent of seatbelt offences.
Sussex Police Chief Constable Jo Shiner, who is also the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for Roads Policing, welcomed the initiative, saying: “Too many people continue to die on our roads and many more are seriously injured every day. I welcome all initiatives to help raise the profile of dangerous activities taking place on our roads and would urge everyone to wear a seat belt and not to be distracted by their mobile phone.”
National Highways Road User Compliance Lead Jamie Hassall said: “We want to raise the awareness of the small percentage of drivers that put themselves and others at risk with these behaviours that we can now easily detect these offences.”
Dr Jamie Uff, AECOM Technical Director who’s been managing the research and deployment of the Sensor Test Vehicle, said: “Despite the often-reported dangers of distracted driving and failing to wear seat belts, the numbers of people killed or seriously injured as a result of these behaviours remain high.”
Acusensus UK General Manager Geoff Collins added: “The Sussex installations have proved that the combination of AI as an intelligent ‘pre-filter’, supported by independent human review, results in an extremely powerful tool to identify dangerous driving behaviours.”
