Overview
- National Highways says a timing anomaly between variable speed limit signs and cameras led to about 2,650 erroneous activations since 2021, representing under 0.1% of roughly six million activations on affected routes.
- The issue, linked in reports to a roughly 10‑second lag after limits changed, affected parts of England’s motorways and major A-roads covering around 10% of the Strategic Road Network.
- Officials confirmed those wrongly penalised will be contacted, reimbursed for fines, and have licence points removed, with police forces pausing new penalties from the affected variable cameras.
- National Highways has developed a technical fix and introduced data checks to prevent incorrect prosecutions, while apologising and working with police on implementation.
- Press reports cite about 154 impacted HADECS 3 cameras on smart motorways, and policing bodies say other enforcement such as mobile units, patrols and average-speed sites continues as a compensation scheme is prepared.