AI tool promises to cancel traffic fines in 10 days

An AI to appeal fines: a cancellation case in ten days

You can appeal a traffic fine without a lawyer, in minutes, using artificial intelligence that finds procedural defects in the case file. That is the argument of the creator of recurretumulta.online, a free platform that analyses the penalty from a photo or PDF. His case: a speeding fine on the M30 that he submitted, appealed and had cancelled in ten days. The story is personal, with no other case files to back it up, and the reception has been anything but warm.

What the tool does and what it promises

The approach is simple: you upload the fine — photo or document —, a language model reviews it and returns a diagnosis on deadlines, notification method and possible formal defects. No registration and no cost, according to its creator. The implicit promise is that citizens stop paying out of inertia. The detail that is often omitted: the analysis points out grounds for appeal, it does not guarantee that the appeal will succeed. And the case showcased is one, not a statistic.

Why doesn't the administration use the same AI?

The first suspicion that arose was symmetry. If an AI can find the defect to overturn the fine, why doesn't the administration use it before issuing the fine to make it bulletproof? The question pointed to a possible imbalance of resources between the enforcer and the defender. Some linked it to a previous case, that of someone who claimed to collaborate with ITV to check AdBlue status.

The business behind the altruism

A free tool, with no registration and no visible income, raises eyebrows. Some responses read the announcement as covert advertising and demanded answers: how is it sustained? The identity of the author was also questioned, as he presented himself with a name and origin different from those others attribute to him. Scrutiny is legitimate for a project promoted in this way; the accusation, without evidence, is no more than suspicion.

The blunt verdict: "it doesn't work"

Faced with enthusiasm, there were one-line judgments. One response settled it with a "it doesn't work" and no further data. Another recalled that anyone can upload a fine to a free chatbot. And a third joked about selling the tool to the DGT so it could issue penalties with no possibility of appeal. None provided a verified case to the contrary; nor did the promoter prove his own beyond his word.

That an AI can make it cheaper for citizens to defend themselves against a fine is plausible and, given the cost of a lawyer, almost inevitable. That this translates into mass cancellations, however, is not proven. If the model gets the procedural defects right, the bottleneck will not be technology, but the administration's capacity to resolve. We will have to see how many of those appeals end in silence.