Local governments nationwide have embraced automated, camera-based ticketing as a means of revenue generation traffic enforcement. Predictably, many of these roll-outs have gone pear-shaped in a hurry, either because municipalities have been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of infractions, or as in this case in Colorado, because automated systems have to rely on not-so-automated humans in order to function properly.
Now the state has to refund more than $1 million in automated speeding tickets issued along a three-mile stretch of Interstate 25 outside Pueblo because somebody screwed up the paperwork.
The cameras were set up to catch speeders in a construction zone, pueblocounty.news reported. Violators were targeted in a corridor stretching from Indiana Avenue north to 13th Street. As the construction progressed, the work zone moved with it, with the mobile speed cameras following it. According to all involved, all speed limits were properly marked and violators were in fact exceeding those limits when they were issued tickets. At first blush, it sounds like a flawless pilot program.
The problem? Nobody bothered to update the legal description of the work zone as it moved down the freeway. Because the locations of the violations didn’t match the filed paperwork describing the location of the work zones, all 27,000 of those tickets now have to be thrown out.
If you received a violation notice, you can now safely toss it in the garbage, state officials said. If you already paid your ticket, a refund will be issued via snail mail with no extra effort required on your part.
Don’t get too comfortable with any perceived lack of enforcement. Once everything is straightened out, CO officials say the work zone cameras will go live once again.
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