Transport Insights

The revelation that thousands of drivers have been wrongly prosecuted because speed cameras on smart motorways and elsewhere had the wrong settings is a major embarrassment for National Highways, which is why it is, typically, trying to play it down.

I’m not sure it will boost confidence that the issue has only been admitted by the government-owned company and the Department for Transport (DfT) after a so-called fix has been put in place, but here is the headline on the National Highways press release:

Fix being rolled out after variable speed camera anomaly

As the Daily Mail points out:

The scandal will yet again raise concerns about the safety of smart motorways, which are stretches of road where variable speed camera technology is used to manage traffic flow and reduce congestion.

It’s fair enough to point out that too rigid enforcement doesn’t put anyone at risk but the story feeds into the general problem that, as the draft of the third Road Investment Strategy put it:

National Highways should not be over-reliant on technology, for example drawing on insights from the use of cameras and stopped vehicle detection when considering driver safety and welfare.

This is code for saying that the technology on smart motorways isn’t up to the job.

While the Daily Mail says:

Astonishingly, the camera fault has been catching out motorists since January 2021 when a National Highways software update introduced a time lag in the interaction between the sign and the camera.

…National Highways and the DfT refer to this monumental cock-up as an “anomaly”.

Another anomaly is that the Mail says:

More than 36,000 speeding cases have been axed so far, with court cases and speed awareness courses cancelled by 22 police forces.

…while National Highways and the DfT refer to:

approximately 2,650 total erroneous camera activations on impacted roads since 2021, which is the equivalent of fewer than 2 a day

I think the explanation is that, as the Mail says:

Police have secretly stopped enforcement ofthe cameras across the UK as the speeding data can no longer be relied on.

If tens of thousands of drivers breaking the law cannot be prosecuted because smart motorway technology is, once again, not up to the job, that is a major safety issue.