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Scottish lollipop ladies to get hidden cameras in crossing sticks

Lollipop ladies just got a whole lot more badass. Sick of nearly being run over, the school crossing patrollers will have their lollipops fitted with cameras to snare dangerous drivers.

Rory Reid
2 min read

Scottish lollipop ladies just got a whole lot more badass. Sick of nearly being run over, the school crossing patrollers will have their lollipop sticks fitted with cameras to snare dangerous driving on our city streets.

The next-generation sticks, dubbed 'lollicams' -- not to be confused with a lolcam, which is what you use to record your cat falling over -- look almost identical to standard models.

Each is fitted with two discrete cameras trained on both directions of the street and have a digital recorder the size of a large match box atop the pole. The total cost of each lollicam is said to be £1,000 -- five times as much as a standard stick, The Scotsman reports.

Lollicams begin recording whenever the poles are held vertically and placed on the ground, capturing video of cars as they approach the crossing. Any driver that fails to stop for the lollipop ladies is recorded automatically and the subsequent footage can later be used in court to help convict drivers who endanger the lives of the crossing patrollers and the children they help across the road.

Lollicams are already used by several English councils, including Stockport and Manchester, according to the Daily Mail, and will be rolled out in Scotland starting initially with crossings outside Knightswood Primary, St Thomas' Primary in Riddrie and Ashpark Primary in Thornliebank, all of which have a high number of drivers failing to stop for crossing patrollers.

Drivers captured by lollicams face a £1,000 fine and three points on their licence, not to mention a small risk of being exposed on YouTube as child-endangering half-wits.

This isn't the first time lollipop ladies have been armed with cameras. In 2007, some lollipop ladies had cameras fitted to the brim of their hats. In the same year, one lollipop lady was given a digital camera to take pictures of cars persistently parked illegally outside a school in South Wales.

Image credit: Daily Mail