Manama: Saudi social media users have poured scorn on a young driver who pretended he had found a way to dodge traffic speed cameras, but was eventually caught by the keen mechanical eye.

“I have found the best way to beat the Saher anti-speed camera,” the driver said in the 33-second video clip that went viral on the Internet. “You drive slowly, very slowly through the red light and you will see that nothing happens. You cannot be caught,” he said as he was applying his tactics and jumping a red light. However, he could not finish his sentence as the camera flash hit his car, prompting him to acknowledge his scheme failed.

“Thank you for trying to help the needy, but you needed to be slightly smarter,” Citizen, a blogger, said. “It is very hard to beat speed cameras.”

Another blogger, Ahmad, said that the driver was a good candidate for “stupidity awards.”

“This driver should be punished for encouraging young people to jump red lights and not complying with traffic regulations,” Khalid commented.

Saher, a rigorous monitoring system with traffic cameras, was started in 2010 to check speed on highways and to record red light jumping in major cities.

Authorities said that it was part of a campaign to bring order to chaotic driving and boost a more positive traffic culture. They now plan to expand it to all regions of the kingdom by 2018

However, the system has often been resisted by unruly and speeding drivers who at one time sought assistance from religious leaders and requested them to ban it on the grounds that it was robbing them of their savings. Some of the drivers said that it was their right to cheat the system, arguing the resulting fines were taking their hard-won money.

One tactic to avoid the traffic monitoring lenses was to use ruses to conceal car licence plates, making their identification impossible

However, all religious scholars rejected the claims, arguing that cheating the system was not allowed and insisting that all fines had to be paid..

Traffic authorities have recently said that they were installing advanced technology cameras to recognise violators. The locating plate recognition (LPR) system sensors are reportedly able to detect the numbers of the licence plates even when drivers tamper with them or cover them with paint or stickers to hide them.