For thousands of Western Australian motorists, a camera designed to make roads safer has instead become a source of anxiety, financial pressure and questions about basic fairness. Since the introduction of AI-assisted road safety cameras in October last year, more than 81,000 seatbelt-related infringements have been issued in Western Australia. Many carry a $550 fine and four demerit points.
But hundreds of those prosecutions are now being abandoned by police.
The reason is not that the cameras necessarily failed to capture an image. In many cases, the image appears to show a passenger whose seatbelt was incorrectly positioned. The problem is more fundamental: can a driver fairly be punished for something they could not reasonably have known was happening? That question goes to the heart of procedural fairness and the principle that a person should not be penalised without sufficient evidence that they were responsible for the alleged offence.
The experience of drivers such as Lisa Taylor illustrates the problem.
Taylor was driving on the Kwinana Freeway after a family holiday when an AI camera photographed her 10 year old daughter with the seatbelt sash underneath her arm. Taylor says she was travelling in stop-start traffic and was concentrating on the road.
"I did not in that moment have control over my child, as my eyes were on the road," she said.
She contested the infringement. More than eight months later, it was overturned.
A police prosecutor subsequently told her there were no reasonable grounds to prosecute.
That outcome raises an uncomfortable question: why was the fine issued in the first place if the available evidence could not establish that the driver had knowingly or reasonably allowed the breach to occur?
The issue becomes even more striking in the case of Emily Esplan and her husband.
An AI camera captured Esplan after her seatbelt had slipped from its proper position while she was reaching into the back seat to give her four-year-old child a bottle of water.
Her husband, who was driving, received the infringement.
The couple were warned that if they challenged the matter and lost, they could face legal costs in addition to the fine.
For an ordinary family, that prospect can make exercising a right to contest a penalty feel like a gamble.
"My husband wanted to pay the fine and get it over with," Esplan said. "The thought of having to go to court was very scary."
That is where the controversy moves beyond the question of road safety.
A justice system depends not only on laws being enforced, but on people being able to challenge allegations against them without being placed under disproportionate pressure to simply accept punishment.
If a $550 fine and four demerit points are imposed automatically, and the prospect of challenging that decision carries the possibility of additional legal costs and court proceedings, the practical effect may be to discourage people from exercising their right to contest an allegation. For people with limited financial resources, limited legal knowledge or significant anxiety about appearing in court, that burden may be particularly acute.
The Western Australian Police Commissioner, Col Blanch, has acknowledged that police prosecutors are withdrawing hundreds of these matters because there is "no reasonable prospect" of conviction.
He has also said prosecutors have heard "reasonable defences" from motorists and do not want to waste the courts' time pursuing cases they cannot win. This admission is significant. It suggests that the automated detection process can identify a potential infringement, but the camera image alone may not establish the circumstances necessary to fairly prosecute the driver.
An AI system can see an incorrectly positioned seatbelt.
It cannot necessarily see what happened seconds beforehand.
It cannot necessarily establish whether the driver knew.
It cannot determine whether a child moved their seatbelt after the driver checked it.
And it cannot automatically determine whether the driver had a reasonable opportunity to intervene without compromising their own responsibility to safely operate the vehicle. Technology can dramatically increase the capacity of authorities to detect alleged offences. But increased surveillance and automated enforcement should not come at the expense of the fundamental principle that punishment should follow proof, not simply detection.
There is, of course, a compelling argument on the other side.
The Road Safety Commission says the cameras have changed driver behaviour and potentially saved lives. According to the commission, the rate of seatbelt and mobile phone infringements detected by the cameras fell by 76 per cent between September 2025 and August 2026. Seatbelt compliance is not a trivial issue. The commission says that historically about 20 per cent of motor-vehicle occupant deaths involved people not wearing seatbelts, with the figure falling to 13.8 per cent in 2025.
There is therefore a legitimate public interest in effective enforcement.
But public safety does not remove the requirement for fair enforcement.
The central concern is not whether people should wear seatbelts. They should.
Nor is it whether drivers should be accountable for deliberately allowing passengers to travel unrestrained. They should.
The concern is whether an automated system is capable of distinguishing deliberate or reasonably preventable behaviour from circumstances where the driver could not reasonably have known or acted. The fact that approximately 5,700 infringements, around 7 per cent of those reviewed, have reportedly been overturned makes that question harder to ignore.
Every overturned fine represents a person who was initially placed on the wrong side of an enforcement decision.For some, the matter ends with a letter saying no further action will be taken. For others, it may come after months of uncertainty.
And for those who cannot afford to challenge the allegation, the outcome may simply be payment of a fine they believe was unjust.
That creates a troubling imbalance.
The state possesses the cameras, the data, the enforcement machinery and the prosecutorial resources. The individual driver is left to prove, or at least explain, why the automated allegation does not tell the whole story. The burden should not quietly shift from the state proving an offence to the individual proving their innocence.
That is the broader rights issue at the centre of the controversy.
AI can make enforcement faster. It can make enforcement cheaper. It can make enforcement more comprehensive. But speed and efficiency cannot be the only measures of a successful justice system.
When hundreds of prosecutions are abandoned because police themselves conclude there is no reasonable prospect of conviction, the lesson should not simply be that police are sensibly exercising prosecutorial discretion.
It should also prompt a deeper examination of whether the system is generating allegations faster than it can fairly establish responsibility.
Road safety deserves strong enforcement.
Drivers deserve strong protections too.
The challenge for Western Australia is to ensure that the pursuit of safer roads does not produce a system in which ordinary motorists feel compelled to pay first and seek justice later.Because when an automated camera can trigger a $550 penalty and four demerit points, the crucial question is no longer simply "What did the camera see?"
It is: "What can the state actually prove? And was the person being punished given a genuinely fair opportunity to contest it?"
