Police around the world are using artificial intelligence-powered cameras to crack down on behavior like texting behind the wheel and driving without a seat belt.
The traffic cameras, which use AI to detect and flag certain driving behaviors, might make it easier to prosecute more people than ever before for driving infractions.
And the use of the cameras is quickly spreading.
Acusensus, an Australian company, has worked with governments in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States to roll out some of the AI traffic cameras. Its camera system, called “Heads Up,” uses AI to catch drivers who are texting while driving or aren’t wearing seat belts. The Heads Up cameras take pictures of every vehicle that passes by them, capturing images of their license plates, as well as their front seats. AI analyzes the images and determines how likely it is that a violation occurred, assigning each one a “confidence level.”
The cameras have been widely tested in the U.K., where nearly half of the country’s police forces have tried them, and in Australia, where they’ve sparked debates about privacy and drawn media attention.
David Kelly, Acusensus’ vice president of government solutions, said that if the software doesn’t detect anything, a picture is deleted. However, if the software does detect a violation, a human officer inspects the image to determine whether it depicts an offense.
“If there’s no violation, we’re not saving the data. There’s no data for us to save. And if, when it’s reviewed, if there’s no citation that’s issued, there’s no data that’s saved,” Kelly said.
Kelly said that local governments decide what happens to photos of violations and that Acusensus doesn’t keep violations data. Kelly said he wasn’t able to share the total number of cameras that have been set up, saying that “planned maintenance” affects the total and that the company defers “to our clients to release that information if they choose.”
A recent news release from Transport for Greater Manchester, where the Heads Up system was going through a two-month temporary trial, reported that more than 3,200 people were found not wearing their seat belts or texting and driving.
In the United States, the cameras function differently from those in the U.K. and Australia. Acusensus has cameras in Georgia and North Carolina that use its “Heads Up Real Time Solution.”
The Heads Up Real Time system in the United States sends images to nearby police officers, allowing them to stop drivers before violations occur. The other Heads Up product used internationally sends the pictures to law enforcement officials as part of an evidence package, and they can mail out tickets to offending drivers. Kelly said an automated ticketing program, such as Heads Up, would require state legislation to authorize its use.
Speed and red light cameras are already familiar to U.S. drivers, capturing license plates and sending tickets by mail. With speed cameras, the devices usually use detectors to measure vehicles’ speeds. If a camera detects that a vehicle is speeding, it will take a picture of the license plate and send a citation to the owner through the mail. Red light cameras work similarly, and photos are usually reviewed by law enforcement officers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
With AI systems like Acusensus’, police officers are able to find vehicles that have violated the law and stop them in real time and detect more complex behaviors.
“With a ticket in the mail, you get it three weeks later, and you’re like, ‘Wait a second. I don’t remember that,’ but in this instance, you’re able to change that behavior immediately,” Kelly said. “When we’re talking with law enforcement, that’s something that they like. They really like the ability to be able to engage with the driver and to make that stop and to change that behavior immediately.”
In the United States, Heads Up Real Time targets only commercial vehicles. First Sgt. Christopher Knox of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety said three mobile cameras are set up in the state, usually in areas with high collision rates, such as multilane highways.
Since North Carolina began using Heads Up Real Time last year, seat belt violations have risen sixfold and phone violations have increased ninefold, Acusensus said in a news release.
Beyond state law enforcement, Acusensus has partnered with multiple U.S. universities to trial the Heads Up cameras, including the University of Alabama and the University of California, San Diego — whose programs are ongoing.
With the UC San Diego program, cameras have been set up in the San Diego area, capturing images of commercial truck drivers practicing “unsafe driving practices,” such as speeding, using cellphones and failing to wear seat belts. On a website describing the program, the university says the technology identifies the behaviors “anonymously.”
At the University of Alabama, Kelly said, the studies focus on passenger cars. Kelly also said Acusensus had a brief demonstration of the cameras at Louisiana State University. According to Govspend, a database of government contracts and purchases, there were eight sites set up in Louisiana.
Kelly said that no colleges’ programs involve law enforcement and that the programs are focused on collecting data about unsafe driver practices. He added that Acusensus is confirming the violations it has found and is preparing a report for the researchers. He said the company isn’t sharing violation images with UC San Diego or the University of Alabama.
Kelly added that for the college programs “all data is deleted at the end of the program” and that no personally identifiable information is collected.
Acusensus’ website says it has multiple measures to protect the privacy of those captured in the images, including a “secure network architecture that heavily restricts and traces all access” and the blurring of parts of images that will be presented for humans to review. Acusensus also encrypts the images, making them accessible only to the government agencies receiving them. It also said its AI system is trained to learn how to detect violations without storing past images.
Acusensus’ privacy policy reiterates that “our access to and use of personal information is fairly minimal and limited to that required for our part of the operation of the overall solution” and that “our solutions operate with privacy protections as agreed with our clients (typically government or enforcement agencies).”
However, when it comes to ensuring people’s privacy isn’t violated, Daniel Solove, an intellectual property and technology law professor at George Washington University Law School, is skeptical of Acusensus’ model.
“There has to be real oversight to make sure they are doing what they say they’re doing and then oversight to make sure that if they don’t do it, [there is] a penalty for not doing it,” Solove said. “So they say, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ll delete it,’ but will they? I don’t know. I mean, unless there’s accountability, that’s a meaningless statement to me.”
In Queensland, Australia, where Heads Up is being used, the government insists that its residents have nothing to worry about when it comes to privacy. On its website, the Queensland government has disclosed that “two privacy impact assessments have been independently undertaken by an external service provider,” and it has made the reports open to the public.
Acusensus said in a news release that in a trial in Queensland in 2020, more than 15,000 people were detected using their cellphones and over 2,200 people were detected not wearing seat belts. The Queensland government reported that since it set up the cameras, road deaths have gone down by 7.1%.
Knox said that in North Carolina, when an image is found to have recorded a violation, it will be kept to be added to an investigative file and that when a case is dismissed, images are disposed of. He said the only people who have access to the images are the prosecutors and the investigating officers. Knox said the images aren’t shared externally in any way but added that he wasn’t sure whether any external agency or organization enforced that provision.
“We’ll [sic] admittedly hear some folks raise some privacy concerns, because these cameras are set up at an angle to be able to [look] into the cabin of a truck, but I think folks generally understand and appreciate that distracted driving is an issue,” Ben Greenberg, president of the North Carolina Trucking Association, told Fox News.
Jolynn Dellinger, a senior lecturing fellow at Duke University School of Law who specializes in privacy law and policy and tech ethics, said there may be a trade-off between privacy and safety when it comes to enforcement systems such as Acusensus’.
“As technology becomes more and more powerful, privacy necessarily can shrink in proportion to the power of that technology,” Dellinger said. “It may be a case where, in this case, privacy should be compromised for this greater good, but it’s still important to recognize that it is a privacy interest.”
She added that it is important to remember that the technology can provide a more efficient way to enforce the law. In every state except Montana, texting and driving is illegal, and depending on the state, it can even be illegal to simply have your phone in your hand while you’re driving, regardless of whether it’s being used.
Failing to wear a seat belt isn’t as heavily punishable, with only 35 states having laws for seat belts that allow officers to issue tickets solely because of the lack of seat belt use. All states where Acusensus has installed cameras have primary laws for seat belt use. Although the use of seat belts is high, with 91.9% of drivers using them last year, commercial truck drivers are less likely to drive with them on; 14% of commercial motor vehicle drivers say they don’t wear them, according to a 2016 survey conducted by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
Texting while driving is a growing concern in the United States. According to a Pew Research study, drivers distracted by their phones while driving was people’s No. 1 concern when it came to road safety, with 78% of people finding it a major issue. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that over 3,000 people died in vehicle crashes that involved distracted drivers in 2022.
