A grandmother has scaled back her Christmas spending after having to use more than a fortnight of her pension to pay off a fine for breaking a single driving rule.
Maree Bauer, 70, was caught ‘using her phone while driving’ along the Capricorn Highway in Emerald, west of Rockhampton in Queensland, and fined $1,209 in November.
On top of the huge fine worth more than her pension of about $557 a week, Ms Bauer was also given four demerit points.
Queensland has one of the highest fines in the country and is more than double the $410 drivers in NSW have to pay.
A photo taken by a mobile phone and a seat belt detection camera showed Ms Bauer’s thumb resting on the bottom of her phone as it lay on top of her handbag.
But Ms. Bauer said she only touched the phone to make sure it wasn’t moving while she listened to directions from Google Maps.
“I don’t look at that as something that’s on my body. It’s just ridiculous,” Ms. Bauer said Yahoo.
She added another photo to the fine, showing her eyes focused on the road and paying minimal attention to her phone.
A Queensland grandmother got a cut to her Christmas budget after she was caught with her thumb resting on the bottom of her phone and fined $1,209 (pictured)
While admitting she was “not innocent,” Ms. Bauer added that she only used her phone via Bluetooth in her car and thought “this is a joke.”
Just weeks before Christmas, the grandmother now has to reduce her holiday expenses to cover the cost of the fine.
Ms. Bauer said she has now committed to “adding up my change can,” which she adds to throughout the year to see if she can get through the holidays.
‘I just have to deal with it. “I don’t have money to fight it…and besides, you can’t beat it, you can’t win,” she said.
The fine for being caught using your phone while driving in Queensland is significantly higher than any state in Australia, with a $1,000 fine in Western Australia.
The same charge will cost NSW drivers $410, while Victorians will be fined $593 and South Australians $540.
Queensland law states that it is illegal to rest a phone on any part of a driver’s body, even on their lap or just touching their thumb.
A Queensland Revenue Office (QRO) spokesperson said all offenses caught by surveillance cameras are reviewed by officers before a fine is imposed.
“Camera images are initially filtered by Artificial Intelligence software that detects whether there may have been illegal use of a mobile phone by the driver,” he says.
‘If a possible violation is identified, the images will be reviewed by two authorized officers within QRO to determine whether a violation has occurred.’