They are the little road safety cameras that could. They went from being the dunces at the worst performing location in Victoria to the highest-earning cameras in the state in the space of just five years.
This heart-warming rags to riches tale begins in 2010, when the cameras were installed at the intersection of Warrigal Road and Batesford Road in Chadstone. It's a reasonably busy spot, taking in Holmesglen TAFE, a Dan Murphy's and McDonald's.
Around that time the speed limit along its section of Warrigal Road was reduced to 40 km/h throughout most of the day. But at this point they only lit up when people ran the red light at the intersection.
As a result, they finished at the very bottom of the Justice Department's road safety camera data for 2011-12, nabbing just 21 drivers and generating a paltry $6711.
It was only in March 2014 that they started strictly enforcing the 40 km/h speed limit in the area, and that was when their fortunes really turned around. Within the space of four months, they had already reeled in a tidy $3 million.
Fast forward to 2015-16, and the cameras had claimed the crown as the state's top earners for the second year in a row. They nabbed 56,828 drivers and pumped more than $13 million into state government coffers.
To put that in perspective:
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It takes them just under five hours on average to earn as much as they did in all of 2011-12.
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Four per cent of all road safety camera fines in the state last year can be traced back to this intersection.
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They earned more last year than the entire speed camera system on City Link ($9 million) and the Hume Freeway ($11 million) and almost as much as the ones on Peninsula Link ($14.5 million).
The government affirms the cameras were put there because there were 19 injuries at the busy intersection over a five-year period, nine of which were pedestrians.
But there is some worrying news for the cameras - the figures suggest they may have peaked and that their best year is already behind them.
Even though they nabbed more than 56,828 people in 2015-16, that's a considerable slide from the 93,511 from the previous year.
If they are unlucky, they could go the way of the Keilor Park Drive Bridge cameras on the Western Ring Road.
Back in 2012-13, these cameras were the star performers. They broke records, scoring $22 million from more than 97,000 fines. But now their star power has dimmed, and these has-beens are lucky to book 3000 people a year, a fraction of what they could achieve in their prime.
Interactive graphic:
This map from Lindsey Abot of Altis Consulting shows the location of the top 50 cameras for fines last year.
