The Traffic Camera Caught It And The Council Called It A Reflection

I am the sort of person who files Freedom of Information requests for fun, and I accept that this makes me insufferable at parties.

On 19 September, twelve drivers rang the local radio station within forty minutes to report lights over the bypass. The presenter made a joke about it and moved on to the traffic.

I requested the camera footage. There are two cameras on that stretch, and they are pointed at the road, not the sky, but the road is wet in September and a wet road is a mirror, and that was my entire theory: I wanted the reflection.

The council took the full statutory period, which is fine, and then sent me the footage, which is where it gets interesting.

Camera one: continuous, uninteresting, a road.

Camera two: continuous, uninteresting, a road — with a gap of nine minutes. The timestamps jump from 23:41 to 23:50. No frames. The covering email said the camera "experiences occasional dropouts due to a known fault".

So I requested the maintenance log for the known fault.

There is no known fault. There are three logged dropouts for that camera in four years, and all three of them are in the same nine-minute band on nights when people called the radio station.

Three. In four years. Which is either the greatest coincidence in the history of local government or a camera that has learned to look away.

I want to be fair. Councils are not competent enough to be sinister. That is the argument my brother makes, and it is a strong one, and I have no answer for it except the maintenance log.

What did the twelve drivers see? The radio archive has one caller, and she says: "Two lights, close together, going the same speed as me. I did seventy and they did seventy. I slowed down and they slowed down."

She sounds embarrassed. She keeps apologising. She says at the end, "I know it'll be a plane."

It was not a plane. Planes do not do seventy.

I have re-filed for the footage twice. The gap is still there. It will always be there.