Residents blame single speed camera for ‘bankrupting’ town
The frustrated residents of this Australian town say a single speed camera has raised hundreds of thousands in just weeks.
A single speed camera is allegedly to blame for this tiny town becoming “bankrupt”.
Residents of Malanda in Far North Queensland say they are getting ready to take legal action after a mobile speed camera issued almost $300,000 in fines in just two weeks.
The locals of the remote town, located 114km south-west of Cairns, have collectively been slapped with hundreds of fines over the space of a fortnight in September.
With a mere 811 households and a population of around 2000 people, the residents of Malanda have been left gobsmacked by how much they may have to fork out to pay for the sleuth of speeding tickets.
Local trainee ambulance driver Lana Miller somehow managed to rack up a total of nine fines in a space of just five days.
The tickets all arrived in the mail on the same day, suddenly leaving her with a gargantuan $7,000 bill.
This came as a huge shock to her, as she told The Guardian that she has seen the speed camera on the side of the road lit up green with a smile, indicating it believed she was going under the limit.
“I try not to speed. I’m 39 years old, and I’ve never had a speeding ticket until this,” she said.
“It’s extremely tough. And it just means that my kids aren’t going to have the Christmas that I would like to be able to provide for them.”
Ms Miller, who also works in a cafe, is just one of many locals who believe that the sudden amount of speeding fines just is not adding up.
Cristy Bonadio, who owns a trucking company, was hit with five fines in October, despite most of the 40 vehicles under her business having not received a fine in decades.
In disbelief, she decided to ask other locals if they had been receiving a huge number of fines recently – and was stunned at the response.
“So I put up on the local social media group, ‘Has anyone been done with a camera with fines they received that are questionable?’” she told The Guardian.
“I was flabbergasted at the amount of people that responded to it. Literally hundreds.”
Thanks to one single speed camera, locals combined have received a total of $282,627 in fines, according to local MP Shane Knuth who estimated this figure.
Mr Knuth said he was inundated with calls from frustrated residents who were booked by the camera, with a two-week period alone in September recording a whopping 580 fines.
Some elderly residents have become fearful that that they will be stripped of their driver’s licences because of the amount of speeding tickets they have received.
“Little old ladies, like ‘my car can’t even get that fast up that hill’. There’s something that just doesn’t add up,” Ms Bonadio said.
“There’s many people that are going to be losing their licence over this.”
Local refrigeration technician Geoffrey Smith explained that he was heading to a job in the early hours of the morning in convoy with another vehicle when both trucks were fined.
“The ticket said the tradesman in the front car was doing 74. And I’m in the rear car following the front car, but I’m doing 86,” he told the outlet.
“There was only a one-second difference between the front car and the rear car.”
Residents of the town have also said they were frustrated due to the amount of time they have had to wait to receive their fines in the mail.
Other claim that their vehicles cannot even travel at the speed that the camera allegedly caught them driving at.
“It’s not a safety thing when you’re receiving it a month later.,” Bonadio said.
“You should be receiving it within 12 hours, so you can correct your action.”
A spokesperson for the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads confirmed to news.com.au that the transportable road safety camera operated in the area from September 7-21. The department stressed that the vast majority of motorists who passed the camera - 94 per cent of them - were not fined.
It said the camera had caught 342 vehicles travelling at more than 20km/h over the speed limit, and eight vehicles exceeding the limit by more than 40km/h. One motorist was driving through the 60km/h zone at 124km/h.
The department said “only valid infringement notices” were issued.
“Following the speed limit is the best and easiest way to avoid any infringements, whether a first or subsequent infringement,” the spokesperson said.
“Deployment records of transportable road safety cameras have shown reductions in offences over the period of deployment, indicating that motorists are amending their speeding behaviour after seeing the speed camera, before any infringements have been received.
“Motorists should expect that if they are speeding anywhere on the road network they could receive an infringement.”
The spokesperson added that delays in the tickets being sent to recipients occurred because “each infringement is manually reviewed for accuracy”.
“Currently, the law requires camera detected offences to be issued to the registered operator of the vehicle by post,” they said.
