A young woman was branded a "hoon" and had her car seized after she was wrongfully accused of speeding 62km/h above the limit on a Perth freeway, due to a software glitch in new mobile speed cameras.
WA Police have suspended the 11 speed cameras and will manually review 53,000 speeding detections recorded since the new equipment was rolled out in January.
The woman had her car returned and the charge withdrawn when she argued she was driving at the speed limit of 100km/h.
"Which is probably what she was doing ... it's a big gap," Assistant Police Commissioner Paul Zanetti told 6PR radio on Thursday.
Under WA's "hoon" laws, police have the power to impound the vehicles of drivers who exceed the speed limit by 45 km/h or more.
He said officers became aware of the software problem in February and a recent review found nobody else had their car wrongfully seized.
Police will now check all other fines issued from the cameras.
"People shouldn't get too excited about that," Mr Zanetti said.
He said it was very unlikely anyone had received an infringement caused by the fault.
Mr Zanetti strongly suspects the glitch was caused by a software upgrade after the cameras were cleared for use.
He admitted the fault would "shatter" public confidence in speed cameras, which are integral to changing driver behaviour.
"People don't like getting hit in the hip pocket. They are a necessary evil," Mr Zanetti said.
The faulty cameras have been replaced by older models, which had been in storage, while the company that designed the new equipment fixes the issue.
Australian Associated Press
