Police in Sussex, England have been forced to cancel 500 speed camera citations that were improperly handled. Under UK law, vehicle owners accused of speeding by an automated ticketing machine have just 28 days from the date a citation is printed before they must respond or face prosecution in court. After a Sussex employee loaded the wrong envelopes into the machine, delivery was slowed enough that a court could have invalidated many of the tickets for lack of proper notice.

"Some notices were sent by second-class post as a result of human error in loading the postal machine... we've canceled all relevant tickets," Chief Superintendent Peter Coll explained to the Sunday Mirror.

Although the error saved £45 (US $90) in postage costs, the canceled tickets were worth £30,000 (US $60,000) in revenue. The loss is unlikely to make much of a dent to the area which used 102 speed cameras and 27 red light cameras to generate £4 million (US $8 million) in revenue last year.