Crack pipes and road beers: Are these WA’s worst-behaved drivers?

Nursing an unrestrained baby while their partner is driving and checking his phone; checking their phone while holding a beer; and smoking from a glass pipe are just some of the deeds WA’s next-generation road cameras have captured in the past few months.

Police Minister Reece Whitby revealed the latest round of shocking images captured by the new safety cameras in a budget estimates hearing on Tuesday.

He told the committee that from the 25 million vehicles that had passed the fixed safety cameras on the freeway and mobile trailers since January, 130,000 offences had been captured.

Shockingly, 81 of those offences were from the same man.

The offences range from not wearing a seatbelt to using mobiles while driving to more ludicrous things, like a passenger feeding their unrestrained baby while the driver is on their phone.

One image held up by Whitby shows a man smoking from a glass pipe.

“This guy ticks a whole lot of boxes. This guy doesn’t wear a seat belt. I think he’s got his mobile phone in his hand, and he’s smoking a glass pipe, no doubt containing some sort of illicit material,” he said.

Another showed a driver with a carload of people with his mobile phone on his lap while holding a beer in his hand.

One photo shows a P-plater on his mobile while the passenger steers for him.

“If that is the evidence of these new safety cameras, it tells me a couple of things. It tells me that there is a cohort out there of people that do not care, and that extreme offenders, they need to be dealt with,” Whitby said, adding that the man with 81 offences recorded was not the only recidivist offender.

“Extreme serial offending is off the charts, another driver has been caught offending 74 times. Another 52 times, and there are 10 people detected offending more than 43 times,” he said.

“We’re seeing people doing the wrong thing again and again.

“It shows us that in the community, there are people who just blatantly ignore the law, regardless, same people who repeatedly are caught speeding.”

Since their operation in January, the cameras have picked up 12,000 offenders not wearing seat belts and 40,000 people with their phones in their hands.

Currently, the cameras are still being trialled and no drivers are receiving fines. About 50,000 warnings have been sent in the mail.

That will change in October, Whitby said, and he predicted that along with it would come an enormous stream of revenue for the Road Trauma Trust account into which where traffic fines are paid.

However, he said the cameras were not about revenue raising.

“I don’t want to be someone who is going to be involved in massive revenue raising, I want behaviour change, I want people not to offend so they don’t have to pay a fine,” he said.

“But if this continues at the rate we’ve seen, and if we install more of these safety cameras, we are going to see revenue coming rolling in under the road trauma trust fund like we’ve never seen it before.

“I’ll be gladly spending it on more and more safety measures like we’ve never seen before.”

WA Road Safety Commissioner Adrian Warner told the committee the cameras use AI to seek out offences but the ultimate decision to fine someone was made by a human.

“At the moment, we’re saying, ‘when in doubt, chuck it out’,” he said.

The WA budget includes nearly $3.5 million in spending on the cameras over the next two years.

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