Jeffrey Lambe, 65, got a AU$431 (£284) fine for driving 70km/h on a 50km/h road when he was actually picking up passengers at a stop in the Adelaide suburb Tranmere, Adelaide Now writes.
Mr Lambe told Adelaide Now: “My first reaction was I wouldn’t have been driving a bus with passengers at that speed because it’s way too dangerous.”
When the previously never fined bus driver’s boss told him he had been fined for speeding a few weeks before, he asked to see the Transport Department’s footage.
He said: “And the picture shows the bus brake lights and indicator were on.
“How could someone issue a fine based on this picture – if they did their job properly this wouldn’t have happened.”
Mr Lambe, who said he had “lost confidence” in the traffic fine system, said: “This proves innocent drivers can be done over.”
The incident is only one of many where drivers in South Australia have been fined wrongly recently.
Police overturned more than 3,500 fines in the state last financial year because of mistakes, Sunday Mail wrote last week.
One of the many victims were one of SA police’s own employees, who got fined an offence that another driver did.
When discovering the blue Subaru driving against red lights was not the employee’s white Ford SUV, the fine was withdrawn.
The fined employee, who had been working with speed cameras in the past, told Sunday Mail: “When I spoke to someone [at the unit] the day after I received the fine, he told me that clearly the photo is blurry and it was an administrator’s error, and that the plates were not clear.”
Independent state MP Bob Such, who thought ‘hundreds of other motorists’ would had paid fines despite being innocent, said: “ This example shows drivers must check all the details of any offence and ask for photographic evidence if they have any doubt about the accusation.”
Image via Getty.
