EDMONTON - A photo radar ticket is something you never want to see in your mail, but what if the ticket you receive isn't even for your car? That's what happened to one Edmonton man, who's now warning other drivers to check their ticket twice.
Kamal Hassen almost paid his ticket, until he took a closer look at the picture of the car.
"And it's not my car."
The licence plate in the photo is partially obscured, but if you put it side by side with Hassen's car, the difference is clear, especially with the lights.
He then noticed that the other details like the time of the 10 a.m. offence didn't make sense, since he works a late shift and would've been sleeping then.
Hassen called the Automated Enforcement Program and was frustrated when they told him to fight it in court, which would mean taking a day off work.
Enforcement staff tell Global News every photo goes through an extensive review, and plate numbers are not guess work.
"Days like today, we end up eliminating and rejecting the violations. Reason being if we can't see the license plate number we can't get registered owner information," says Rick Ragnon with the Automated Enforcement Program.
But if there's a partial plate, and staff believe they can see the number, they will run it to make sure the vehicle description matches.
"Vehicle in the image was a 4-door dark coloured vehicle and the motor vehicle information was a four-door dark coloured vehicle. So putting that all together, they believed they had a valid image."
Staff now agree it's not Hassen's car, though, and have cancelled the ticket.
"This could happen to anyone else," Hassen says. "If I didn't pay attention and look into the details of my car, the timing and the date, I could have ended up paying for somebody else."
With files from Julie Matthews, Global News
© Global News. A division of Shaw Media Inc., 2013.