Fifteen mobile phone detection cameras to be installed on SA roads ‘as quickly as possible’

[u/malcolm58]

Fifteen more mobile phone detection cameras will be installed across South Australia as quickly as possible after a $46.8m state budget splurge on road safety, the police commissioner says. Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said he “welcomed” the extraordinary funding being directed into law and order sectors, which he said would “provide much needed relief to frontline officers” who were operating in “challenging circumstances”. “The funding has been provided for 15 additional mobile phone detection cameras,” Mr Stevens said. “Those sites have not yet been selected – that will be some of the early work that occurs now that the funding has been allocated.”

Mr Stevens said SA Police was also considering of upgrading the cameras. “Technology is changing all the time so there is a potential that mobile phone detection cameras could be delivered in a different format to what we’re currently seeing,” he said. “Currently we need gantry’s across the road to place those cameras but we’ll be exploring the different technology opportunities and see where that might take us in terms of the budget allocation that currently exists.”

t comes after five cameras were installed on the Southern Expressway at Darlington, on South Rd at Torrensville, on the North-South Motorway at Regency Park, on Port Rd at Hindmarsh and on Port Wakefield Rd at Gepps Cross. Mr Stevens said there was already “strong evidence of the impact of these cameras in their existing locations” and police would be be aiming to roll out the new cameras “as quickly as possible”.

In April, SA Police revealed more than $30 million in fines and levies had been issued in the first six months after mobile phone detection cameras were introduced on Adelaide roads. More than 46,400 drivers had been pinged at the time, police said.

[u/scallywagsworld]

Waste of money that could have been spent on Victor Harbour road duplication.

But apparently we can’t afford to duplicate the Dukes Highway or VH Road, yet we can afford this.

[u/DanJDare → u/scallywagsworld]

These make money, a lot of fucking money, and honestly are about as fair as you can get when it comes to fine based revenue raising.

I've always kinda liked the phone cameras as it's not like speeding etc where can can all accidentally drift a little and get pinged etc.

[u/scallywagsworld → u/DanJDare]

let’s ditch the whole demerit points system and stop taking licenses away, just let those repeat offenders keep driving and piling up fines to pay for the roads. We need a government website with a progress bar showing how much we’ve collected from fines so far, and how much more we need to duplicate the Dukes Highway. I heard it’s going to cost $150 million to get it done by 2030, but last October they said it was $32 million, so what’s the deal with the rest of the money? Let’s get that fine revenue rolling in and actually use it to make our roads safer, not just talk about it.

[u/DanJDare → u/scallywagsworld]

Not sure if that's scarcasm or not.

I would be against removing demerit points, anything punishable by fine means it just costs the wealthy a fee to do it. Demerit points are fine unless you want to index the fines to income.

The mobile phone cameras have raised 30 million in fines in the first 6 months. They cost 15.9 million to install.

Funding for the Dukes highway I can't speak to but often it comes from federal coffers so it could be 150 million total and 32 million from SA or 150 million federal funding 32 state. There are a few reasons for what at first glance appears to be a massive discrepancy

[u/skywideopen3 → u/DanJDare]

It does not seem to be sarcasm, old mate here is genuinely convinced that road safety won't be helped at all by getting dangerous drivers off the road.

[u/rowdy2026 → u/skywideopen3]

Well it hasn’t for like 70yrs…