National Highways uncovers high number of seatbelt and mobile phone offences on the M6.
According to National Highways, it detected more than 750 seat belt and mobile phone offences on one short section of the M6.

It proved to be the highest number at a single site during a study of small sites across the Midlands and South West.

National Highways carried out the study to track offences from drivers on the motorway network.

Just a sample

The Government owned organisation, National Highways, is responsible for the major road routes across the country.

This pilot programme may be expanded to cover more areas of England after the results have been analysed.

At one point, a high-visibility camera was placed in the roadworks south of junction 23 of the M6 at Haydock. This site caught an offence every 90 seconds compared to an average at all other sites of one every six minutes.

Driven by intelligence

National Highways worked with engineering company AECOM on the pilot project. The idea was to collect data on offences in an effort to boost road safety.

The camera system utilises artificial intelligence (AI) to photograph offences. Once captured, it is sent to National Highways and the crime is then verified by at least two people.

Jamie Hassall, National Highways manager for the data collection project, commented: “We wanted to find out whether driving through a substantial section of roadworks with barriers, a reduced speed limit and other traffic management would mean drivers and passengers modifying their behaviour.

“The findings are disappointing to say the least with drivers spotted using a mobile phone almost every five minutes and lots of drivers and passengers simply not bothering to belt up.

Christmas concerns

The study took place over the first two weeks of December as part of National Highways’ commitment to road safety.

It is part of long-term strategy looking to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured on England’s strategic road network to zero by 2040.

Currently, 25-30% of road deaths each year are linked to drivers and passengers not wearing a seatbelt.

Furthermore, over 100 people are killed or seriously injured in collisions every year due to driver distraction.

Dr Jamie Uff, AECOM Technical Director, says that  at “six short data collection sessions” on the southbound M6 found “numbers detected were far higher than expected”.

“People killed or seriously injured as a result of these behaviours remain high. The technology AECOM is deploying makes detection straightforward and is providing valuable insight to the police and policy makers on the current level of road user behaviour.

“Almost 60% of the mobile phone offences spotted were committed by car drivers, while seat belt offences were typically an issue associated with commercial vehicles, with 86% of the offences being committed by van or HGV occupants.”