Finnish police said on Tuesday they have fixed a technical error that affected the processing of speeding violations recorded by automated surveillance cameras.
The error could have to lead to motorists avoiding penalties for offences committed on Finnish roads since 1 June. With this fix, speeding tickets will be processed as usual, police said.
"We tested a newer version of the system on Monday and found it to be working well, and now everything in the system should be ok,” inspector Heikki Ihalainen of the National Police Board of Finland said.
Thousands of cases pending
The error had led to the police sending out a much smaller number of speeding fines for the month of June than usual. Even those sent included incorrect times for when the offences occurred — the time recorded on the notification slip was three hours earlier than the correct time of the incident.
Speeding fines with the wrong time must still be paid, but the person in question can always demand a correction, Ihalainen said.
Currently, several thousand speeding cases are still in the queue, but according to Ihalainen, they will be processed quickly.
Speed camera threshold renewed
Due to the system error, the flash threshold of the automated speed cameras was changed in June, so that they are not triggered by minor speeding offences.
According to Ihalainen, this change remains despite the fact that the error has been resolved.
"This can become a permanent practice. We are monitoring the situation," said Ihalainen.
Normally, more than 20,000 fines are sent out each month from the automated speed cameras, accruing revenues of about 3-4 million euros to the state treasury, or approximately 100,00 euros per day.