A US driver from Georgia who was arrested after exceeding the speed limit by more than 35mph was stunned to be handed a $1.4 million fine, which had to be either paid or contested in court .
“I said, ‘Maybe that’s a typo,’ and [la femme au téléphone] “No sir, you either pay the amount stated on the ticket or you go to court on December 21st at 1:30 p.m.,” driver Connor Cato told WSAV-TV, the New York Post reported Monday.
In early September, the Georgian statesman was stunned to discover that he had been driving at speeds approaching 90 mph in a roughly 55 mph zone in the city of Savannah. This would have netted him a fine of more than $1.4 million.
Convinced there was a typo, the man picked up the phone to contact the court, which then confirmed that he would either have to pay the exorbitant amount or appear in the courtroom to contest it before a judge, American media reported.
Luckily for him, it was actually a bug in the existing system that would have automatically filled out the reserved amount portion of the ticket because speeding “represents a mandatory court appearance,” where the amount is then determined, city government spokesman Joshua Peacock said from Savannah.
“We don’t emit [ce montant] as a threat to scare anyone in court, even if that person heard someone in our organization say otherwise,” he said in a news release.
According to the American newspaper, fines for such an offense typically cannot exceed $1,000 plus state fees.