BUSSI SUL TIRINO – “Yesterday was the sentence issued by the Justice of the Peace of Pescara with which the appeal against the order – payment order for alleged violations of the CdS, issued by the Prefecture of Pescara was accepted” – he declared the lawyer Carlotta Ludovici – yet another victim of the well-known speed camera located in the municipal area of Bussi sul Tirino had proposed at the time, with the patronage of the lawyer. Ludovici Carlotta, before the Prefecture of Pescara the appeal against several fines issued by the Municipal Police of Bussi for allegedly exceeding the speed limits. The public body believed it shared the counterarguments of the Municipality of Bussi relating mostly to the problem of the approval of the device and therefore rejected the opposition.
The road user, convinced of his reasons and with stubbornness, always through the patronage of the aforementioned lawyer, proposed opposition against the provision issued by the UTG of Pescara, ex law before the Justice of the Peace of Pescara, and rightly so, given that the latter accepted his requests. On this point, it is important to highlight that the judge hearing the case, addressing once again and in great detail the age-old problem inherent to the approval of speed cameras, ruled that the two procedures, approval and approval, are completely different from each other.
The Judge based his decision both on the primary legislation dictated by the Highway Code, which literally states that for determining compliance with speed limits, the results of duly approved equipment are considered sources of proof, both on the countless rulings on the merits that are compliant and decidedly oriented towards believing that approval and approval are two different technical procedures, and above all on the recent decision adopted by the Supreme Court of Cassation.
In this regard, the Supreme Council with ordinance no. 10505 of 04.19.2024 intervened in detail in a definitive and clarifying manner. Specifically, the SC has ruled in a self-evident and granitic manner that fines for speeding are not valid if the detection device is not approved, but only approved, thus deeming this which has been the practice up to now illegitimate. The law to which the Ermellini rightly referred is art. 142, paragraph 6, Cds, which provides that the detection equipment must be “duly approved“. The administrative approval and type-approval procedures are not overlapping, and the approved equipment must, therefore, be kept distinct from the type-approved equipment. Of course, the Court continues, the ministerial circulars evoked by the appellant cannot have an influence on the interpretative level – in the face of a clear hermeneutic based on primary regulatory sources – which would seem to endorse a possible equivalence between approval and approval, based, however, on an approach which, precisely, it does not find support in the aforementioned primary sources and which, as such, cannot be derogated from secondary sources or administrative circulars. This assumption was made by the Justice of the Peace of Pescara, who after having ascertained that the speed camera located along the state road 153 in Bussi Sul Tirino was simply approved, correctly annulled the contested provision and consequently the underlying fines, which provided for onerous fines and the deduction of points from the driving licence.
“We are truly satisfied with this decision taken by the Pescara GOP which could represent a definitive turning point in resolving the issues caused by a not always uniform interpretation of justice which has led to a profound difference in treatment between citizens, who despite the filing of appeals of the same nature against high fines from the same speed camera have been achieved by different and conflicting measures. In other words, some, in truth the majority, had their fines cancelled, others, indeed a few, did not, even though it was the same speed camera; what was said as a consequence, precisely, of the lack of uniformity in the decisions taken by the Judges. It is encouraging to learn how the ruling issued by the Supreme Court of Cassation, which finally intervened on the topic, has confirmed the assumptions from which we started from the beginning of this tough and long-standing legal battle, i.e. from 2019, the year of installation of the speed camera in question and reiterated to this day, challenging hundreds of fines. The Supreme Court of Cassation, as well as the Justice of the Peace of Pescara, are agreeing with us.”
