The new AI camera catching out drivers in Cornwall

• Watch the AI camera positioned and ready to catch out drivers in Cornwall

An artificial intelligence road safety camera on one Cornwall's busiest roads has caught out 1,500 drivers in just two weeks.

The camera on the A30 near Launceston is the first of its kind to be used in the UK.

Around a third of the offences are related to mobile phones, whilst the remaining two-thirds are seatbelt offences.

The camera caught 300 drivers in just three days when it was first installed.

Last year, Vision Zero South West conducted a 15-day trial of the camera system. The trial detected 590 seatbelt and 45 mobile phone offences across various roads in both Devon and Cornwall.

The new system can be easily moved and therefore used at various locations across Devon and Cornwall, providing 24/7 monitoring.

Although the camera uses AI to detect potential offences, all images are reviewed by a human. If an offence has been correctly identified, the driver will either be sent a warning letter or a notice of intended prosecution, depending on the severity.

Adrian Leisk, road safety head for Devon and Cornwall Police, hopes the cameras will cut down on people putting themselves at a heightened risk.

“There are three of these trailers in circulation. We can move them around the geography. We can go where intelligence tells us, where mobile phone use is a problem.

"We can mix between urban roads, rural roads. We can be agile and move this equipment around.

“It still really concerns me that over half of the offences we’re catching on these devices are people not wearing a seatbelt.

"In 2021 in a third of all fatal collisions, at least one person wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. This is a real problem.

“They are there to prevent people from putting themselves at additional risk. We know that distracted drivers are involved in fatal and serious injury collisions and we know that if people aren’t wearing a seatbelt, the injuries are so much more severe."