Highway Code

Speed cameras in chaos between rulings, appeals and censuses

A speedometer register to tackle the problem of non-approval. Less than half of the devices could be 'sanctionable'

by Silvio Scotti

9 July 2025

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3' min read

Key points

Alarming data
Census and meter blocking
The point on appeals

3' min read

Nearly 15 months have passed since the Supreme Court of Cassation blew up the problem of the non-approval of speed cameras, but there is still no solution on the horizon. After months of pronouncements that confirmed the original one (ordinance no. 10505 of 18 April 2024), according to which the mere approval of the devices is not enough to validly ascertain speeding offences, the latest news is that the Chamber of Deputies is currently approving an amendment to the Infrastructure Decree (Decree 73/2025) to censor the detectors used by police forces.

Alarming data

The census - as stated in the technical report accompanying the amendment - serves to get a precise picture of the situation, after the first alarming figures provided on 29 April by Anci at the interministerial table set up by MIT in September 2024 to tackle the problem: according to the association of municipalities, among the equipment available to local police, almost 60% of the fixed ones and over 67% of the mobile ones, in addition to not being homologated, would not even have the theoretical requirements to be so, because they were approved before 2017.

In fact, in that year the same MIT (with Ministerial Decree 282) established rules for the approval of devices that the Government's technicians consider equivalent to those of homologation (for completeness, it should be noted that Article 1 of the Ministerial Decree speaks of an approval pending the issuance of specific rules for the homologation of meters, pursuant to Article 192 of Presidential Decree 495/1992)..

Therefore, less than half of the equipment in use by the police forces most active in controls would be 'sanctionable'. In fact, prior to that DM, the approval criteria were less strict and, therefore, there is a well-founded concern that equipment that is not entirely reliable is still in use.

The Census and Blocking of Meters

The amendment, inserted in Article 5 of the Decree-Law, establishes a section on the MIT portal dedicated to the census of speedometers. The entities on which the traffic police bodies depend, from the Ministry of the Interior to the municipalities, will have to communicate the data of all the equipment used, indicating for each one 'conformity to an approved or homologated type, make and model'.

But for the concrete implementation it will be necessary to wait for a Ministerial Decree that will establish the computer model to be used for the transmission of data and the manner of communication to the Ministry of Economic Development. From the effective date of the DM, there will be 60 days to comply.

In the event of omission, the use of the speed detectors at the disposal of the entity concerned will become illegitimate. And already the 'Salvini decree' (the Ministerial Decree of the Ministry of Economic Development published in the Official Gazette no. 123 of 28 May) imposes a series of technical and administrative fulfilments, foreseeing the disinstallation of the devices in the event of non-compliance.

So, the situation remains chaotic and, in practice, with the compulsory census it could become even more so.

The point on appeals

In the meantime, it can be said that those who receive a speeding ticket continue to have a good chance of having it cancelled by filing an appeal. In fact, this is confirmed by the content of the technical report to the amendment, which reports facts, data and theses that were not questioned by the government in the parliamentary debate and that are so relevant as to render ineffective the ministerial circulars with which in recent months an attempt had been made to give indications for resisting appeals by trying to blur the difference in meaning between approval and endorsement.

Already the jurisprudence, both of the Supreme Court and of the merits, had already taken an interpretative path consistent with the legal dictate: the report, in order to be valid, must be drawn up on the basis of measurements madewith approved equipment and mere approval is not sufficient.

This is not good news: compliance with speed limits is essential for road safety and appealing to civic sense is not always enough to avoid reckless behaviour. On the other hand, it is hard not to point out that the necessary and due approval dates back to 1993 and the fact that no solution is yet in sight is alarming. There is a risk that appeals will increase beyond all expectations, with consequences that are easy to imagine.