More than 100,000 Aucklanders have been caught on camera using their phones or not wearing a seatbelt while driving in just three months.
The latest update of a trial of two new safety cameras at three locations says they have snapped 96,000 phone offences in three months.
Waka Kotahi said another 8000 people had been snapped not wearing their seatbelt in the driver's or front passenger seat.
The offences cannot be prosecuted - that would require a law change, to bring in charges based on the new cameras that can see inside cars on New Zealand roads for the first time.
Waka Kotahi - the New Zealand Transport Agency - is using the trial to gauge the extent of the risks distracted drivers pose.
The trial that ends in December, so far shows 1.3 percent of drivers are using their phones, and 0.3 percent of people in the front are not belted in.
Waka Kotahi is taking over the police network of speed cameras - which it has rechristened safety cameras - and plans to add another 100 of them in a first phase of expansion, including for the first time ones that gauge if you are speeding between two points.
This expansion would not quite double the number on the network. Plans called for many more to be added up to 2030.
Waka Kotahi pulled back from a "big bang" expansion for fear of alienating people who think the cameras are basically a revenue-gathering tool, when the agency says they are proven overseas as a highly effective tool to cut speeds and save lives - when there are enough of them, operated properly.
Just the basic design of the rejigged system is costing $21 million, which does not count the cost of the daily hire of the cameras from Australian companies.
RNZ
