After a year of watching and waiting, Canberra’s mobile phone detection cameras are about to strike.
Drivers snapped with a phone on their lap or in their hands by the overhead-mounted cameras will be issued an infringement and demerit points from Tuesday next week (20 February).
Pretty much. I don’t like how many people are on their phones while driving (particularly when I’m on the bike) but am also not a fan of reversing the onus of proof just because you want to use cameras to enforce rules instead of police.
At least the cameras aren’t particularly hidden so it’s more of an attention test than anything - if you don’t notice the mobile ones you probably were paying too much attention to your phone.
How does this reverse the onus of proof? The cameras are pretty excellent quality, the photo of you holding the phone is the proof of the offence of holding a phone.
The problem is that the photos are often not of sufficient quality to prove the object being held is a phone, so you end up with situations like how NSW amended their Road Transport Act with the stated intention to “establish a presumption that an object held by, or resting on, the driver of a vehicle in a photograph taken by an approved traffic enforcement device that is approved for mobile phone use is a mobile phone for the purposes of a mobile phone offence, unless the driver satisfies the court that the object was not a mobile phone”.
There was a case in Queensland early on where the driver claimed it was an iPod touch.
It ended up being the case that it was actually an iPhone, but the judge found that the driver was honest in his claims that it was only being used as an iPod (because it did not have a SIM card at the time). The law was quickly amended to fix this loophole.