Cue Mariah!

All we want for Christmas isn’t a faster car, fewer speed limits, or a free pass on enforcement.

• It’s accuracy.

• A system that works as it’s supposed to.

• And enforcement that’s fit for purpose.

That doesn’t feel like too much to ask does it?

Yet the recent revelation that faulty speed camera systems have wrongly flagged drivers for speeding tells a far more uncomfortable story. Not of a one-off technical hiccup, but of a deeper, systemic failure in how enforcement is designed, governed and trusted.

We live in a society where most people still assume that organisations in positions of authority (the police, councils, government bodies) are competent, honest and acting in the public’s best interests. That assumption underpins compliance. It’s why drivers accept penalties, pay fines and take points on the chin, even when it hurts.

Stories like this challenge that assumption.

When failures happen at this scale, they are rarely down to a single mistake, update or individual. They point to something more ingrained: weak oversight, poor accountability and a culture where consequences for failure are limited or delayed. By the time the public finds out, the damage is already done.

And that damage isn’t abstract.

Speed enforcement directly affects people’s lives. Fines, licence points, insurance premiums, employment prospects. For professional drivers, it can mean lost work. For everyday motorists, it can mean months or years of financial and practical consequences, all based on the assumption that the system enforcing the rules is accurate.

Yet those systems are not held to the same standards any well-run private business would face.

If a commercial organisation operated a system that incorrectly penalised customers at scale, there would be legal action, compensation claims, regulatory scrutiny and potentially closure. Transparency would not be optional. Accountability would not be negotiable.

Public bodies, however, often operate under a different set of expectations. Apologies are issued. Reviews are promised. Lessons are said to be learned. Then the cycle moves on.

That imbalance matters.

Because the public are not just “subjects” of enforcement. They are customers of a system that is meant to be fair, accurate and trustworthy. Trust is not something that can be assumed indefinitely, it has to be earned and maintained.

That means public enforcement systems should be run with the same discipline expected of any high-performing organisation: clear responsibility, measurable performance, independent auditing and genuine consequences when standards slip. Accuracy should not be a “nice to have”. It should be the baseline.

None of this is an argument against road safety or responsible driving. Quite the opposite. Effective enforcement depends on credibility. Once confidence in the system starts to erode, compliance follows it down.

Until accuracy and accountability are treated as non-negotiable, incidents like this will keep happening. And each one chips away at public trust a little more, reinforcing the feeling that failure is not the exception, but something baked into the system itself.

So yes, all I want for Christmas is a system that works. One that is accurate, accountable and worthy of the trust it demands from the people it polices.

That really shouldn’t be too much to ask.