The road safety partnership covering Devon and Cornwall has published a video explaining the new relocatable Acusensus camera it is using which caught 300 drivers in its first three days.

The system implemented by Vision Zero South West uses cameras and AI to identify mobile phone and seatbelt offences.

The video features Adrian Leisk, Head of Road Safety for Devon & Cornwall Police, who explains that “There are three of these trailers in circulation we can move around the geography. We can go where intelligence tells us where mobile phone uses a problem. We can mix between urban roads between rural roads so we can literally be agile move this move this equipment around.”

In the first 72 hours of deployment, the system detected 117 mobile phone offences and 180 related to seat belts, and Mr Leisk says this really concerns him. “In 2021, in a third of all fatal collisions at least one person wasn’t wearing a seatbelt… This is a real problem,” and he concludes by saying that the new Acusensus cameras “are there to prevent people put themselves additional risk because we know that distracted drivers are involved in fatal and serious injury collisions, and we know that if people aren’t wearing a seatbelt the injuries are so much more severe.”

The system, which is delivered with AECOM, uses AI to flag up potential offences and then all images are subsequently reviewed by a human. If an offence has been correctly identified, the driver can either be sent a warning letter or a notice of intended prosecution, depending on the severity.

Watch the video here:

(Picture – Devon and Cornwall Police/Acusensus)