How to contest an unfair ticket

A mistake in speed-limit signage revealed recently in Christchurch has resulted in a potential backlog of seven years worth of incorrectly issued fines.

Which goes to show that while such mistakes are rare, they can happen.

Last year, Stuff reported on an Auckland woman who spent six months fighting a speeding ticket following confusion about where particular posted limits applied.

Those signs are important – a police spokesperson told Stuff that limits are enforced ‘‘in good faith as per the speed limit signs on the road’’, rather than any hi-tech database of such information.

So what do you do if you think you’ve been incorrectly ticketed?

The same thing you do to contest any fine. You wait for the ticket to arrive and then you write to the Police Infringement Bureau. You have until the due date of the fine to contest it.

It’s police policy to proactively contact those who have been incorrectly ticketed if an issue has been identified – as is the case in Christchurch.

There’s no national database of speed limits because they’re set by different authorities. The New Zealand Transport Authority (NZTA) is the road controlling authority for highways so it holds speed limit information for those.

Regional speed limits are set by local councils, but most have ‘‘speed limit maps’’ of their respective areas available online.

NZTA spokesman Andy Knackstedt says the situation in Christchurch arose from a ‘‘unique set of circumstances’’, where a change in limit was not followed by signage update due to the focus on recovery efforts following the 2011 earthquake.

The change was published in the Government Gazette in March 2011. Actual limits ordinarily take effect one month after publication, but this was overlooked in the aftermath of the earthquake at the time.