Traffic cameras have been the bane of Britons for many a year now — but our neighbors across the pond have recently upped the battle, and the technology is coming over to America, as well.
According to a Dec. 21 report from NBC News, police departments in the United States have become the latest to use an AI-powered traffic camera system made by an Australian company named Acusensus.
The system, called “Heads Up,” doesn’t just check speed or running traffic lights like in other locales.
Instead, they look for violations, like failure to wear a seat belt or texting while driving.
“The Heads Up cameras take pictures of every vehicle that passes by them, capturing images of their license plates, as well as their front seats. AI analyzes the images and determines how likely it is that a violation occurred, assigning each one a ‘confidence level,’” NBC News reported.
“The cameras have been widely tested in the U.K., where nearly half of the country’s police forces have tried them, and in Australia, where they’ve sparked debates about privacy and drawn media attention. “
Those cameras use the AI technology to send tickets once they’re reviewed by human sources. In the United States, where Acusensus has cameras in Georgia and North Carolina, the systems work a little different.
“The Heads Up Real Time system in the United States sends images to nearby police officers, allowing them to stop drivers before violations occur,” NBC News reported.
“The other Heads Up product used internationally sends the pictures to law enforcement officials as part of an evidence package, and they can mail out tickets to offending drivers. [the company’s vice president of government solutions] said an automated ticketing program, such as Heads Up, would require state legislation to authorize its use. “
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However, don’t think for a second that this hasn’t led to more ticketing.
“The program has seen 6 times more seatbelt violations and 9 times more mobile phone violations per month in the first two months of the program in 2023 compared to the previous years before the program commenced,” Acusensus said of the system’s use in North Carolina in a media release in October.
And this is in spite of the fact that the program is only aimed at commercial vehicles at present.
You can, of course, imagine the usual defenses for deploying this AI technology — namely, if you’re not doing anything, why should you be concerned if Big Brother is watching via artificial intelligence?
“If there’s no violation, we’re not saving the data,” said David Kelly, the company’s vice president of government solutions, according to NBC.
“There’s no data for us to save. And if, when it’s reviewed, if there’s no citation that’s issued, there’s no data that’s saved,” he added.
As for what happens to photos of violations, that’s apparently up to local governments to decide.
“With a ticket in the mail, you get it three weeks later, and you’re like, ‘Wait a second. I don’t remember that,’ but in this instance, you’re able to change that behavior immediately,” Kelly said, speaking of how the system has been implemented in the U.S.
“When we’re talking with law enforcement, that’s something that they like. They really like the ability to be able to engage with the driver and to make that stop and to change that behavior immediately,” he explained.
Translation: You’re able to charge for that behavior immediately, both in terms of a violation and a commensurate fine, which traffic cops in the United States are never known to abuse for monetary gain.
In the United Kingdom, where ubiquitous traffic cameras are a way of life and police go around busting folks who make social posts they don’t like, this is par for the course. In the United States, it’s worrying — and it’s expanding to trials conducted by major colleges, including the University of Alabama and the University of California, San Diego.
Of course, since this is for studies of unsafe driving habits, Acusensus says it’s not sharing personal details with the universities and deleting the photos after the programs are over. George Washington University Law School intellectual property and technology law professor Daniel Solove isn’t convinced.
“There has to be real oversight to make sure they are doing what they say they’re doing and then oversight to make sure that if they don’t do it, [there is] a penalty for not doing it,” Solove said.
“So they say, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ll delete it,’ but will they? I don’t know. I mean, unless there’s accountability, that’s a meaningless statement to me.”
And senior Duke University School of Law lecturing fellow Jolynn Dellinger warned that this might end in “a trade-off between privacy and safety,” NBC News reported.
“As technology becomes more and more powerful, privacy necessarily can shrink in proportion to the power of that technology,” Dellinger told the outlet.
“It may be a case where, in this case, privacy should be compromised for this greater good, but it’s still important to recognize that it is a privacy interest.”
This is, of course, an understatement. Promises from a tech company that’s become enmeshed with law enforcement mean nothing. There needs to be significant oversight of AI-guided traffic camera technology before this is rolled out on a greater scale.
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