Roads minister Simon Lightwood has claimed that drivers who break the law “can expect to be punished”, despite confirming that tens of thousands of drivers have got away with speeding offences because of National Highways’ latest technology failure on smart motorways.
In written parliamentary statement, Lightwood confirmed, but sought to play down, the fact that an “anomaly” over the settings on variable speed limit enforcement cameras occurred approximately 2,650 times over four years, leading to a similar number of wrongful prosecutions.
But that’s only half the story. As Lightwood told MPs:
Independently, the National Police Chiefs’ Council took action to instruct all affected police forces to cancel wider prosecutions related to infringements in progress, regardless of whether they were impacted by this issue. As a result, tens of thousands of people’s speed awareness courses are being cancelled, and thousands of historic fixed penalty notices and criminal justice prosecutions are being discontinued.
Lightwood also explained why his department had covered the problem up for around three months, without explicitly stating that it had done so:
Throughout this process, I have been clear with all partners that we must ensure our road network remains safe. We therefore took the decision, following a safety assessment from National Highways, not to undermine public confidence in enforcement and risk impacting driver behaviour before we had a solution to this issue approved and ready to roll out.
He ended his statement with an assertion that the facts have proven to be wholly untrue.
Compliance with the law is being enforced in a variety of ways across our roads, as has always been the case. If you break the law, you can expect to be punished.
As I commented yesterday, 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.
Transport Insights 
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