Speeding fines detected on Italian roads using equipment identical to those adopted by the Municipality of Treviso on regional road no. 53, better known as the “Tangenziale”, could be canceled.
This is the consequence that risks deriving from a sentence of the Court of Cassation which, as the newspapers report, upheld the appeal of a lawyer from Treviso who, as a motorist, had received a fine for traveling at 97 kilometers per hour where the limit is 90. The appellant's initiative was also taken in light of a dispute that arose two years ago between the justice of the peace, to whom a previous fined driver had turned, and the ordinary judiciary, in the course of which conflicting pronouncements had been obtained.
The Supreme Court's reasons lie in the fact that the equipment would have been authorized by the Ministry of Infrastructure but not subjected by the Government itself to a more detailed technical verification necessary for their approval. There would essentially be a regulatory gap which, in the absence of corrections, would henceforth protect motorists caught by speed cameras currently deemed non-regulatory from financial consequences. As regards the public finances of the Veneto, on average the fines for violations of the highway code are worth around 50 million per year and a third are attributable to exceeding the speed limits detected by electronic equipment. The amount normally collected by the Municipality of Treviso would be just under 4 million.