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A speeding ticket? But officer, I was at home, asleep

 
7 1,958 views Mar 27, 2009

Emily Davies pulled off the seemingly impossible, getting a speeding ticket in a parked car

Emily Davies pulled off the seemingly impossible, getting a speeding ticket in a parked car

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Another day, another wacky UK speed camera ticket. This time, a young woman was busted for driving 37mph in a 30mph zone. The catch? The car was parked, and the woman was asleep in her house at the time.

After a car triggered a speed camera but wasn't caught in the frame, an operator noted the only license number in the image and sent the ticket out anyway. It almost sounds too stupid to be true, but the Merseyside Police issued a £60 speeding fine, and didn't realize the problem with ticketing a parked car until Emily Davies, a 19-year-old, pointed out the inanity of it all, reports The Daily Mail.

Once made aware of their error, the police fixed the situation and issued an apology. But the underlying problem - speed camera operators with little accountability and no oversight - hasn't been addressed at all.

If the case of Tex O'Reilly and his impossibly fast Lotus Elise didn't call out for a re-examination of the use of the cameras, Davies' case surely does. How many drivers out there have simply paid the ticket, afraid to challenge the summons issued, when in fact they were blameless? Even one is too many, but it seems likely to be a far greater number.



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Comments (7)

  1. ma_gus avatar Gus Chyba Posted: 3/27/2009 5:29pm PDT

    Glad we don't have these here in California. Yet.
     
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  2. ma_sunnysideup avatar sunnysideup Posted: 3/28/2009 3:32am PDT

    Speeding laws are outdated anyway. Here's a site that's dealing with it

    http://www.licensetospeed.org/10010
     
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  3. ma_Quantum avatar Quantum Posted: 3/28/2009 4:58am PDT

    Europe is world champion for those things, we've got them everywhere....they are f***ing effective :p
     
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  4. ma_HECTOR avatar HECTOR Posted: 3/28/2009 5:33pm PDT

    Dude, the only thing these scam-eras are good at is stealing money from motorists.

    Let's just remember these bit and pieces of horror inflicted on our British cousins if any American politico tries to install them in your neck of the woods. This would be one of those *triggers* for me: if a politician is for speed cameras, even if I agree with everything else he says, I'm not voting for him.

    In case you're interested another *trigger* for me is global warming. If believe in it don't bother asking for my vote.
     
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  5. ma_samuelesm avatar samuelesm Posted: 3/29/2009 8:13am PDT

    Probably the camera didn't catch a car's picture, and took a picture of that parked car.
     
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  6. ma_SuperSkyline89 avatar SuperSkyline89 Posted: 3/29/2009 8:13am PDT

    Thank God all we have in Canada are red light cameras. They're pretty lenient too, they don't ruin yellow lights. There's one by the highschool I went to, I forgot it was there once and was the last one through the yellow. I shit a brick when I remembered there were cameras there, luckily I never got ticketed.
     
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  7. ma_gus avatar Gus Chyba Posted: 3/29/2009 8:40am PDT

    Yes, we have red light cameras here as well, but people are always attacking them in court.
    I think it's just harder to pass things like this in the US, we are a bunch of outlaws here... :)
     
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