AI road camera trial flags 19,000 offences, review underway

The West Midlands Combined Authority is weighing how a two-week artificial intelligence trial, which flagged nearly 19,000 potential driving offences, might be turned into a permanent enforcement capability. The move follows a warning from the region’s first road safety commissioner that the results expose a deeply rooted problem with driver behaviour on the region’s roads.

The trial, funded by the WMCA and run in partnership with the police and fire service, deployed AI-powered cameras at two locations: outside Ladywood fire station in Birmingham and at Fallings Park in Wolverhampton. The cameras were trained to recognise certain patterns, such as drivers who appear to be using mobile phones, and also captured images of motorists failing to wear seatbelts. No enforcement action was planned as a result of the exercise. It took place in March and was, according to the road safety commissioner, stopped earlier than planned because of the sheer volume of potential offences being detected.

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The figures behind that decision are stark. At Ladywood, the technology identified 11,045 potential seatbelt offences and 1,163 potential mobile phone offences. At Fallings Park, it recorded 6,030 potential seatbelt offences and 757 potential mobile phone offences. In total, the trial uncovered close to 19,000 potential offences in a fortnight of limited deployment.

Mat MacDonald, the region’s first road safety commissioner, said the findings pointed to a widespread culture of dangerous driving behaviours. “What this trial has shown to me more than anything else, is we have a huge problem with these potentially lethal behaviours behind the wheel,” he said. Among the images captured, one appeared to show a driver drinking from a bottle of wine, while another showed a child sitting unrestrained on a front passenger’s lap, an image MacDonald described as particularly shocking. The cameras also recorded people appearing to inhale from balloons while driving.

On the prevalence of mobile phone use, MacDonald said he was disturbed but not entirely surprised. “I travel by foot a lot and it is almost impossible to get as far as the end of your street without seeing someone who is dialling and driving,” he said.

What happens next now sits with the region’s policing leadership. Simon Foster, the West Midlands police and crime commissioner, previously described the trial’s findings as deeply concerning. “We are closely evaluating these trial results to consider how this advanced AI technology can be deployed for future police enforcement,” he said. That evaluation places the decision squarely within the mandate of the commissioner’s office, which must determine whether, and under what conditions, the technology moves from a funded pilot into operational use.

The stakes are underlined by national road safety data from 2025, cited by the WMCA, which showed that mobile phone use was linked to 32 deaths on UK roads, while unfastened seatbelts were linked to 133 deaths.

MacDonald, a former chairman of the campaign group Better Streets for Birmingham and an NHS doctor, said he was working to see the technology become a reality on the region’s roads. “Hopefully this is the first step towards something that will enable us to start getting a grip of these types of behaviours, which can end lives and ruin people’s futures,” he told the BBC. He stressed that he was keen for the trial to amount to more than an interesting experiment, and said talks were under way about what resourcing would be needed to make the technology viable.

For MacDonald, the measure of success would ultimately be a reduction in enforcement itself. “Ultimately, we don’t want to fine anyone. Ultimately, we want the number of fines and activations on these cameras to be zero because then we know we’ve done our job,” he said.

Independent academic assessment suggests the trial’s scale should prompt a reassessment of how widespread risky driving actually is. Dr Christophe Bastien, associate professor of Transport Safety at Coventry University, with more than 25 years of experience in transport safety, said the technology offered an objective way of understanding how motorists behave. “The fact that 19,000 offences were identified during a relatively limited deployment suggests that actually, risky behaviour such as mobile phone use and seatbelt non-compliance, remain more common than many people think,” he said.

Dr Bastien argued the cameras could help authorities target intervention where it is most needed, while cautioning that AI systems are not always perfect. In his view, the technology should support existing enforcement methods rather than replace them. “I think in some respects, you still need the police to make the call,” he said. “The idea is not to punish people. It is the way people drive.”

The trial’s legacy now rests on institutional decisions rather than the technology itself: whether the WMCA and the police and crime commissioner can secure the resourcing and legal framework to move from a pilot to a permanent programme, and whether oversight arrangements can ensure the cameras are used to change behaviour rather than simply to penalise it.