Portable traffic cameras that calculate the average speed of a vehicle to catch speeding drivers will soon pop up in Perth and regional Western Australia, but don't expect to cop a speeding ticket anytime soon.
The moveable point-to-point cameras can also spot drivers on their phones and not wearing seatbelts.
But for police to issue fines, traffic laws need to be updated – a process that could take a significant amount of time.
"The current laws were written in a way that they are constraining as to what type of technology you can use," said Road Safety Minister Paul Papalia.
"It doesn't enable you to use a camera of this nature … so we have to change the law.
"It will take time to draft that and pass through parliament to then enable us to use these cameras to fine people."
Instead, the cameras will be used in a trial mode around the Perth metropolitan area and in regional locations within 200 kilometres of the city.
The cameras will be set up in pairs, measuring the average speed of a driver between two checkpoints to calculate if they are speeding.
The WA government will collect the data to make the case for their effectiveness in improving road safety.
Political deja vu for 'toothless' cameras
The technology is a variation of a permanent set of average speed cameras installed along Forrest Highway between Mandurah in Bunbury in 2016.
Those cameras operated for more than a year without a single driver being fined because the law had yet to be updated by the former Liberal government when they were rolled out.
At the time, then opposition leader Mark McGowan was scathing, calling the cameras "toothless tigers".
"They should have put the laws through parliament before the cameras were put in place, so now they're ineffective," he told the ABC in 2017.
"It's just another example of a dysfunctional and chaotic government.
"It's a toothless tiger and it's [former Road Safety Minister] Liza Harvey's problem."
But the McGowan Government will now have to go through the same legislative process to make its cameras functional.
Road Safety Commissioner Adrian Warner says in the meantime they act as a deterrent.
"We can't have police everywhere. They've got other things to do," he said.
Mr Papalia said he expected some data to be able to be legally used.
"There are no fines attached to the detection of people breaking the law during the trial," he said.
"However, in the event that they identify someone doing something egregious ... and has implications for further safety threats to the community ... then that information obviously can be used by police to investigate."
Mr Papalia said unlike the fixed cameras, people would not know where the cameras are.
"They won't know where the second camera is. It's a big step up in coverage and deterrence," he said.
The government said 166 people died and a further 1,587 were seriously injured on WA roads last year.
