Greg Murphy calls for immediate fines as NZTA trials new way to catch people using phones while driving

A trial using cameras to record how many people use their mobile phones while driving or don't wear their seat belts started yesterday in Auckland.

Waka Kotahi is running the six-month trial across two Auckland state highways and one local road.

Waka Kotahi said no enforcement would be taken during the trial; motorists would not receive infringement notices, warnings or any other communication from the transport agency. All images collected would be deleted after 48 hours, except for a "small number of anonymised images" kept for reporting purposes, Waka Kotahi said.

But Kiwi racing icon and road safety advocate, Greg Murphy, is calling for fines to be handed out immediately.

"I think the idea of bringing in this technology is actually very good," says Murphy. "I don't think we need to do a trial because all you need to do is stand on any street around New Zealand… to see excessive use of people driving with cellphones in their hands. You don't need a trial to know that driving behaviour is pretty abysmal and the prevalence of cellphone use is absolutely enormous."

Yesterday - on the first day of the trial - an NZ Herald reporter standing at a busy Auckland intersection noted 14 people using cell phones behind the wheel over a 30-minute period.

The Automobile Association's (AA) road safety spokesperson Dylan Thomsen says statistics indicated a driver was around four times more likely to be involved in a crash when using a phone and distracted.

"These cameras, assuming that the trial proves that they work really well, are a tool that we think could be used to help enforce and get people to make sure they're doing the right thing without having to have officers' time used up."

AA's general manager of motoring affairs, Simon Douglas, says the association was "very supportive" of the trial.

"Phones have become such an important part of our daily lives that we find it difficult to almost function without them. It's almost not that phones have become a part of driving, it's that driving is interrupting our continual linkage to the world through our phones and it's a habit we just need to break because when it comes to driving you need to be 100 per cent focused."

Earlier this year, NZ's Transport Minister, Michael Wood, said the Government would take a tireless effort to reduce the country's road toll. 

In February, the Government launched its 'road to zero' campaign, with the goal of reducing the road toll by 40 per cent by 2030 before achieving no deaths or injuries on New Zealand's roads by 2050. 

"We know it's realistic with some hard work because we've seen it done in other countries," Wood said at the time. 

Waka Kotahi director of land transport, Kane Patena, says that eventually, the plan will be to use the camera to issue fines to those caught using their mobile phones while driving.

"We want to understand how the technology works in a New Zealand context because it could well be that it's used as a monitoring and enforcement tool in the future," he says. "It's a technology that could do a number of things rather than just simply one thing. First and foremost, it will detect whether you've got two hands on the steering wheel or one, but the technology's pretty good - it will also detect whether you're carrying something in your hand."

Murphy described distracted driving in New Zealand as an "epidemic".

"Distraction is just horrid," Murphy says. "It should be a minimum $500 [fine] and if it was my way it would be $1000, and police would have the ability to confiscate people's devices. I don't know why people can't be sent warning letters from this trial - if we are going to go through with it - to actually tell them and let them know that they've been spotted using a phone. Why not use the trial in a more effective way rather than gathering data and checking the technology?"

Fines for using phones while driving are currently $150 and Patena agreed they need to be increased.

"We can only do what the law allows us to do and, currently, we can't send out any infringements for people who are detected through the use of this particular camera system," says Patena.

"If there are changes to the legislation that allows camera technology like this to be used for enforcement purposes, then the trial gives us a really good understanding and confidence that we can rely on the technology for infringements in the future. There's no question that the level of fines in New Zealand is significantly less than in other countries - you only need to look to the state of Victoria in Australia… There's no doubt in my mind the current level of penalties is way too low."  

Waka Kotahi would not disclose the locations being used in the trial as motorists may behave differently if they know where the cameras are.

In a tweet, the agency said it had worked with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner to "address all privacy matters".

Patena says if a picture of a driver was taken and there was no evidence of distraction, the image was automatically deleted after 15 minutes. He says the aim of the trial is to understand the scale of the problem of distracted drivers and then determine what the next step should be to tackle it.

"We know that it contributes to a significant proportion of deaths and serious injuries on our road."

In 2020, there were 24 fatal crashes and 111 serious injuries where distraction was identified as a contributing factor, says Patena.

The results of the trial – which the agency said was the first of its kind in New Zealand - would be published in a report after the trial had been completed.

According to Waka Kotahi, on average, one person is killed every day on New Zealand roads and another seven are seriously injured.