Drivers WRONGLY FINED in Speed Camera Scandal: Thousands Have Tickets Scrapped After Four Year Fault
Tens of thousands of drivers have been left furious after being wrongly fined for speeding due to a long running technical fault affecting smart motorway cameras, with the problem dating back to January 2021. The fault was caused by a software error which affected every speed camera linked to variable speed limits on smart motorways, with cameras continuing to enforce the old speed limit for about 10 seconds after the new one appeared. You could be following the law and still get caught. A motorist slowing down to 50mph, as shown on the gantry, could be recorded as speeding by a camera still set to the previous 40mph limit.
More than 36,000 speeding cases have been dropped across 22 police force areas after the fault was uncovered. National Highways estimated that at least 2,656 motorists were wrongly accused of speeding when they were actually driving within the legal limit. In total, 154 cameras have been affected, including all smart motorway cameras and some variable speed cameras on major A roads such as the A14 between Huntingdon and Cambridge. Around 38 percent of all speed cameras on Britain's motorways and major A roads fall into this category.
The issue was caused by a National Highways software update, which created a delay in communication between the gantry signs and the cameras. On 10 September 2025, National Highways informed the Department for Transport of an anomaly on the M5 following a challenge to a speeding offence. What they thought was isolated to one location turned out to be systemic. On 13 October 2025, Ministers were informed that National Highways had identified this was a national issue. Four years of wrongful fines, discovered because one driver challenged their ticket.
Although the cameras cover only about 10 percent of the Strategic Road Network, officials stated the fault affected less than 0.1 percent of total camera activations. That sounds reassuring until you realize critics point out this still amounts to thousands of innocent drivers being punished. Once police realized the data could not be trusted, enforcement from the affected cameras was quietly paused. No public announcement. No immediate compensation. Just a quiet pause while they figured out how to fix what should never have been broken.
A compensation scheme is now being set up for drivers who were fined between £100 and £2,500, forced to attend speed awareness courses, or even banned from driving. Some drivers may also have criminal convictions on their record, which could have affected their jobs as a result of the error. Think about that. People lost licenses, paid thousands in fines, attended courses, possibly lost employment opportunities, all because of a software fault that took four years to acknowledge.
National Highways chief executive Nick Harris said safety is their number one priority and that anyone who has been impacted will be contacted by the relevant police force. Anyone who has been wrongly fined will be refunded and where points on licenses have been incorrectly applied, these will be removed. National Highways said the new checking system will flag around two incorrect cases per day once enforcement resumes. So the system that wrongly caught thousands will now be trusted to catch two errors daily. What could possibly go wrong.
The Department for Transport has instructed National Highways to continue their investigations back to 2019, when the upgrade of cameras began. Five years of data to audit. Five years of drivers who might have been wrongly penalized. The scale of this keeps expanding the more they look, which raises the obvious question: what else haven't they found yet?
