If you are ever flashed by a Gatso camera as you motor along above the speed limit, it pays to have a good hard look at the speeding ticket when it eventually arrives.
In sleepy old Devon, one camera that has been merrily clicking away since 1997, catching 24,259 speedsters in the 10 years to 2007 has just cost the police £1.5million in refunded fines after its location was mistakenly recorded on paperwork.
Its location was noted as being along the A35 near Chideock, Dorset, at a specific distance from Seatown Road. Now, Seatown Road doesn't really exist, it is in fact the local name for Duck Street. So when one sharp-eyed judge noted the error while processing a lead-footed lorry driver then there was only one course of action open.
The camera was deemed invalid. All the fines collected over the 10-year period were returned, deducted points on licences cancelled and a bill of more than £370,000 landed by Dorset Road Safe for the admin costs of sorting out the mess.
All due to one slip of the pen.
tinyurl.com/64bj3hv - www.walletpop.co.uk
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Good. The authorities expect us to do everything completely by the book so when they make a mistake (however small and unintentional) they should be held accountable.
Well done, that Judge.
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why should the name of the street make any difference?
they could of called it henry kissenger boulivard by mistake
but speedings speeding isnt it?
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It's a technicality. The speed limit drops from 50 to 40 to 30, but because the road in question did not have street lighting it needed to be recorded in some legislation as becoming a 30 from x point.
When they checked the legislation the wrong point is called up, so I guess technicaly the road is not a 30 in law.
zookeeper I agree - the sign said 30 - end of.
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It would make a difference if you lived in it and expected your mail to be delivered correctly! I am with badwolf - get the facts right or your prosecutions won't stick!
Last edited by: Meldrew on Tue 20 Sep 11 at 22:28
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I'm surprised these tickets are being refunded because courts often correct simple errors of fact in motoring and other prosecutions.
I've seen it done a few times.
The judge - and particularly the speed camera partnership - will have been aware of the court's powers, so it must be that a correction cannot legally be made in this case.
Or at the very least, the judge has chosen not to exercise those powers.
I remain curious as to why, it may be the judge thought the partnership needed a stiff reminder of the need to get things right.
Last edited by: Iffy on Wed 21 Sep 11 at 06:44
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I may have raised the question before, but not aware of a comprehensive answer.
Is there any scope for recovering consequential loss? There must be people who have lost jobs (as a result of loss of license) or paid increased insurance premiums as a result of these 'wrongful' convictions.
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People who have been wrongly locked up have received compensation for notional losses, so the short answer would seem to be 'yes'.
But quantifying the loss and proving it was a direct consequence of the speeding ticket would be difficult.
Realistically, very few people lose their jobs as a result of a speeding ticket, even if they do lose their licence.
And if the job were lost, in assessing compensation, the court would deduct any earnings/benefits/severance income which the person received from the amount they would have received had they carried on in the same job.
The same applies to insurance premiums, most insurers no longer load for minor speeding offences, and proving the exact amount of increase would be difficult.
There are lots of people effected by this error, but I think very few will have suffered a provable loss of sufficient size to make it worthwhile attempting a claim.
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Would the same principle apply to any crime committed in that street during the past 10 years?
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...Would the same principle apply to any crime committed in that street during the past 10 years?...
In the event of a financial loss caused by crime, the court can make a compensation order against the criminal, in favour of the victim.
The difficulty with that is most thieves and burglars are potless, stateless, and by their nature, not inclined to take notice of court orders, so the victim has an order which is likely never to be paid.
Compensation for injuries is dealt with by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board:
www.cicb.gov.on.ca/en/index.htm
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I am aware of your legal background iffy; maybe this is question of degree? A minor misspelling of a name or a typo in reg no of a car can presumably be corrected and common sense can prevail.
However to transpose Chiltern Road to Beech Avenue (say) is a step too far perhaps?
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...However to transpose Chiltern Road to Beech Avenue (say) is a step too far perhaps?...
Could well be.
Plenty of drivers have thought they could wriggle out of a speeding ticket because their reg number is mixed up on the court paperwork, or the summons addresses them as Mrs instead of Mr.
Those sort of errors are routinely corrected, and the prosecution proceeds.
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I would imagine that it's more a case of the material facts being incorrect.
If the ticket alledges that you were speeding along Chiltern Road, when in fact the correct road name was Beech Avenue then effectively you are being accused of something that you didn't do.
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...If the ticket alledges that you were speeding along Chiltern Road, when in fact the correct road name was Beech Avenue then effectively you are being accused of something that you didn't do...
To use your example, I've seen a couple of cases where Chiltern Road was incorrectly written as Chiltern Street, or Chiltern Avenue.
Those mistakes were corrected administratively and the prosecution proceeded.
Another point is the law applies across the country, but it may be applied differently in one court or another.
There is almost always room for interpretation.
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There's a current thread on pepipoo about correcting incorrect details:
forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showtopic=64970
Some of the posters on there are not as clever as they think they are, so what they say cannot be taken as gospel, but it does illustrate the general point.
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Speeding tickets refunded as street has wrong name - Badwolf
