Driver Sent Fine After Pedestrian's T-Shirt Is Accidentally Read As Number Plate

There’s a lot to be thankful for with ANPR cameras. Bet you didn’t expect this website to say that. But it’s true - ANPR cameras take a lot of criminals off the street and crack down on uninsured drivers.

While they work most of the time, they too can have off days. Like spotting what may have been a personalised number plate wrongly travelling in a bus lane. Except, there was no personalised number plate on a vehicle in a bus lane. Heck, there was no vehicle in the bus lane in Bath.

The ANPR camera had picked up a woman walking along the bus lane, in a shirt that said ‘Knitter’ in spaced-out letters. It must’ve ignored the fact that a woman definitely isn’t the size of a car, and that the letters weren’t spaced in the same way that our number plates are.

Fast forward a few days and a man called David Knight got a ticket for driving in the Somerset bus lane. He lives in Surrey, 120 miles away, and had not been anywhere near Bath in the last few days. But he drives a Volkswagen van with the registration KN19 TER, which is what the ANPR camera thought it saw.

It’s not often you laugh at a ticket, but this is a pretty funny mix-up. Luckily, the council also saw the funny side and withdrew the demand for payment. Actually, two demands for payment, as the first one was ignored. And only after the council worker had started lecturing the couple about driving in a bus lane. But she too burst out laughing when she saw the photo.

Have you ever had a ticket mistakenly issued? Tell us in the comments.

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