poorly calibrated radars flash nearly 10,000 motorists by mistake

A rain of flashes. The Swiss police had to admit, Monday, November 27, an embarrassing error in a country which has made precision a commercial argument. Four poorly calibrated radars wrongly flashed nearly 10,000 motorists in a little over a month, in the streets of Bern. Due to a programming error in software, the four new radars detected so many offenses that it alerted the Bernese cantonal police.

“In total, 9,604 erroneous measurements were recorded between September 12, 2023 and October 19, 2023. All those concerned will receive a letter in the coming days and around 6,000 paid fines will be refunded,” announces the police, without specifying the amounts unduly collected.

Officers noted a higher than average number of violations at all four offending device locations and “more and more people concerned came forward”. The authorities therefore called once again on the Federal Institute of Metrology, which had validated the first configuration, to carry out checks. These revealed that the measured speed was too high. “These four devices are the only ones used in Switzerland with this configuration and therefore the only ones affected by this error”said the police.