AI traffic cameras in Greece issue erroneous fines during pilot
AI-powered traffic cameras deployed in Greece during a pilot phase issued citations with a 90-95 percent error rate, incorrectly penalizing drivers for violations they did not commit. Human review by police confirmed that of 5,500 citations, only 400 were valid, while the system misidentified phone use, speeding, and other behaviors due to visual recognition failures.
What happened
AI-enabled traffic cameras were placed on roads in Attica during a pilot phase to automatically detect traffic violations. The system achieved an error rate of 90 to 95 percent according to reporting.
Out of 5,500 citations issued, only 400 were correct after human review by Greek Police. The system issued 1,300 erroneous citations for mobile phone use and 3,800 citations for speeding were rejected.
Reported impact
Citizens received incorrect fines and reportedly had to formally contest violations they did not commit. According to lawyer Tryphon Tsoumanelis, citizens faced the difficult position of having to prove they had not committed violations detected by the system, including absurd misclassifications.
The system failed to account for contextual factors such as emergency situations where drivers may need to use their phones, and lacked discretion in enforcement decisions.
Index analysis
The failures stemmed from misidentification of driving behaviors and visual interpretation issues. Electronic cigarettes were misidentified, shadows caused false detections, and speed changes were misclassified as phone use.
Lawyer Tsoumanelis noted that the specific AI model and software version used were unknown, and questioned whether the same training data or model used in the United States was deployed in Greece.
Governance controls
Human review by the Hellenic Police was able to reject the majority of citations, filtering out incorrect violations. However, citizens still bore the burden of contesting these erroneous citations through formal appeal processes.
The system's vendor, a Silicon Valley company, had been selected through a tender process that was later cancelled.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.