M4 speed camera sees driver fined for ‘speeding’ at 73mph
The use of automated camera devices on the busy motorway has resulted in motorists being captured exceeding variable speed limits and being prosecuted for driving at speeds including 73mph or 47mph. As reported[1] earlier this year, Lisa Deeley, 58, of Glastonbury Road, Birmingham, pleaded guilty to exceeding a variable speed limit at Bath Law Courts. The court heard that the 58-year-old was behind the wheel of a Volkswagen car driving on the M4 between junctions 19 and 20 and the M5 between junctions 15 to 17.
Deeley was caught speeding at 73mph while a speed limit restriction of 60mph was in place. She was fined GBP100, ordered to pay a surcharge of GBP40 and handed three penalty points for the offence. In a separate incident along the same route, Christopher Lees, 64, of Kestrel Road, Charfield, South Gloucestershire, was captured on an automated camera driving at 47mph, despite a speed restriction of 40mph being in place at the time.
The 64-year-old was fined GBP220 and handed three penalty points. He was also ordered to pay a surcharge of GBP88 and prosecution costs of GBP110. Meanwhile, 51-year-old Ben McCarthy, from Cromhall in South Gloucestershire, was caught at 68mph in a Range Rover Sport, again breaching a variable limit of 60mph on the M4.
McCarthy was disqualified from driving for six months and fined GBP461, along with a surcharge of GBP184, and GBP110 in prosecution costs, leaving court with a total bill of GBP755. Mohammad Younis, 37, of Vicarage Road, London, was driving a Peugeot Boxer van on the same stretch of the M4 when he was caught travelling at 58mph, after a 50mph restriction had been enforced. Younis was fined GBP166 and ordered to pay a surcharge of GBP66 and prosecution costs of GBP130, totalling GBP362.
He was also issued three penalty points. Another motorist, James Rodda Allen, 53, of Cotmarsh, Broad Town, was caught out twice on the same route heading westbound and eastbound. All of the offences took place on September 3 of last year when Allen was travelling on the M4 on junctions 18 to 19.
He was caught by an automated speed camera travelling at 59mph eastbound and 70mph westbound, while a 50mph speed restriction was in place. Allen was also caught travelling at 52mph on the M32 Severn Beach rail line overbridge after a 40mph limit had been enforced. The 53-year-old was handed two separate fines of GBP384 for two of the speeding offences along with seven penalty points, but no separate penalty was imposed for the second offence on the M4 as the magistrates accepted this was the same journey.
Allen was ordered to pay prosecution costs of GBP90, leaving court with a total bill of GBP858.