Colorado is voiding about 27,000 automated speeding tickets and refunding more than $1.1 million after a paperwork failure on Interstate 25 at Pueblo: as the highway construction zone moved down the freeway, nobody updated its legal description, so the locations where drivers were ticketed no longer matched the paperwork on file — and every ticket issued from the moved cameras has to be thrown out, The Drive reported on November 12, citing local reporting by Pueblo County News.

Source: The Drive

The tickets came from mobile speed cameras policing the I-25/US 50B interchange reconstruction work zone, along a three-mile stretch of interstate running from Indiana Avenue north to 13th Street. As construction progressed, the work zone — and the cameras with it — shifted along the corridor. According to the reporting, the speed limits themselves were properly posted and the drivers who were ticketed were in fact exceeding them; the failure was administrative, not a finding that anyone was wrongly accused of speeding.

Because the violation locations do not match the filed legal description of the work zone, all 27,000 tickets are worthless. Parade, reporting the same Pueblo account on November 13, put the total value of the voided tickets at about $1.1 million.

Source: Parade

What drivers should do now

State officials say anyone who received one of the violation notices and has not paid can simply discard it — in the words reported from officials, you can safely toss the notice in the garbage. Anyone who already paid does not need to file a claim or make a call: the refund will be issued automatically and sent by mail, both outlets reported.

The break will not last. Officials say that once the paperwork is straightened out, the work-zone cameras on the corridor will go live again. No restart date was given in the reports.

The camera program behind the tickets

The cameras belong to the Colorado Speed Enforcement Program, run by the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT). In the Pueblo work zone, drivers travelling 10 mph or more over the posted limit receive a $75 civil penalty, mailed to the vehicle's registered owner and captured by the state's Automated Vehicle Identification System (AVIS). The penalties carry no points against a driver's licence, and owners have 45 days to pay or appeal, CDOT says.

Source: Colorado Department of Transportation

Enforcement on the Pueblo corridor began with a 30-day warning period on June 30, 2026, with $75 fines starting on July 30. CDOT says more than 11,000 warnings were issued during the warning period alone, and that excessive speeding on the corridor fell by nearly 67% after enforcement began — the result the state points to when it says the cameras themselves were working as intended.

Colorado created the program after recording 31 work-zone deaths in 2024, the highest number in state history. CDOT says speeding has been a factor in at least a third of all fatal crashes in Colorado from 2023 to 2025, contributing to at least 728 deaths. Camera enforcement is also active in two other work zones: on Colorado Highway 119 between Boulder and Longmont, and on I-25 North between Mead and Berthoud.

Not Colorado's first ticket error this year

In September 2026, the Colorado Springs Police Department mistakenly doubled the fines on 2,764 speeding tickets after a software update — tickets that were supposed to be $40 were billed at $80 to about 700 motorists before the error was caught, and the extra $40 was refunded, Parade reported. The Pueblo failure is far larger: it wipes out an entire corridor's camera enforcement at a stroke.

For the truckers and commuters who run I-25 — the main north–south freight spine through Colorado, linking Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo and New Mexico — the practical message is simple: a Pueblo work-zone notice from the affected period can be ignored, a paid fine is coming back by mail, and the cameras will be watching again as soon as the state fixes the description. What has not been announced is when the refunds will finish arriving, or when enforcement resumes.