Illegal speed camera means £1.5 million in refunds
It has been revealed recently that around 25,000 drivers are to be repaid a total of £1.5 million in fines as the result of an illegal speed camera that had been in operation for a decade.
Officials now have the daunting task of finding all of the drivers that were wrongly caught and fined as a result of the camera and reimburse them for the fines that they had to pay. Any points that were put on the drivers’ licences will be removed, and if drivers lost their licences or jobs as a result of the incidents they could be up for compensation.
The error has occurred as a result of the paperwork that was used in 1997 to indicate where the camera was actually placed, in the village of Chideock in Dorset, and the placement of the camera was given incorrectly on the paperwork.
This resulted in the speed limit being invalid. The error came to light in 2007, after a judge highlighted it in a speeding case, which the driver subsequently won.
For two years the local authority has been in negotiations with regards to whether this now applied to other drivers that had been fined or received points as a result of the camera error, and it was recently decided that this would be the case, and therefore drivers that had been fined and had points put on their licences would have to be reimbursed and have the points on their licences revoked.
One driver who fell victim to the camera but won his case was a lorry driver, and he said that officials should have admitted to the error sooner but didn’t. He stated: ‘They just didn’t want to admit they had got it wrong.’
Tags: Road transport, didn, lorry, speed camera, Dorset, speed, illegal speed camera, Road safety
