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You know the drill.

You check out the locations of speed cameras along the way to your destination and then slow down considerably, with one eye on the speedometer as you slide on by.

Failing this, you could find yourself in a moment of weakness with your foot resting just a little too heavy on the accelerator, and a fine waiting for you at the end of the road.

Speed cameras aren’t always in the right, though.

Justice Project South Africa (JPSA) recently sent out a warning, asking all motorists to please check any speed camera-based traffic fines they receive:

JPSA chair, Howard Dembovsky, said so-called ‘capture errors’ were causing motorists to be incorrectly charged with infringements and criminal offences they didn’t commit.

“In one recent case, a motorist faced a criminal charge because the location of the infringement was incorrectly recorded.”

In that particular case, the motorist was driving at 134km/h in a 120km/h zone and should have received an infringement notice for going over the 120km/h limit by 14km/h.

Instead, the location recorded for where this was supposed to have taken place was an urban area with a speed limit of 80km/h.

“Using the incorrect location, the motorist was no longer alleged to have been just 14km/h over the speed limit, but a massive 54km/h over it. Exceeding the speed limit by more than 30km/h in an urban area is automatically classified as a criminal offence and triggers a mandatory court appearance,” Dembovsky explained.

“For this reason, it is essential that the authorities record the location of an alleged violation correctly, both to prevent spurious criminal charges like in this case, but also to ensure genuine traffic offenders are brought to book.”

The last thing you want is a judge staring at you while you count the hours as your attorney’s or advocate’s fees get higher and higher.

Camera violations are meant to be reviewed by a traffic officer before the fines are issued to prevent this sort of thing from happening.

But, the JPSA doesn’t seem convinced that these reviews are taking place.

Better safe than sorry – check everything twice.

And stick to the speed limit – that’s really the best way to avoid any trouble.

[source:jpsa]