164 kilometres per hour. On a stretch where the limit is 80. Twice the maximum, in a country where the border crossings fill up every summer with people waiting an hour for a stamp in their passport.

The driver is a 46-year-old Polish national, identified by the initials M.J. He was driving a Ford with Polish plates. The "Safe City" cameras logged him while he was still moving, and police intercepted him on 22 August at 17:53, as he was leaving the country through the Tabanovce border crossing. He will face criminal charges under Article 297-A of the Criminal Code - reckless operation of a motor vehicle.

So the system worked. The camera filmed him, the database recorded him, the officer at the border recognised him. The whole chain functioned exactly as it is supposed to.

And here is the part worth noticing: he was caught on the way out. Not while doing 164 km/h, but hours later, once he had finished driving and wanted to leave. Which means that between the offence and the arrest, a car travelling at that speed kept moving along a Macedonian road, next to Macedonian vehicles.

This is the second foreign national detained at Tabanovce under the same pattern in a short space of time. One piece of evidence that "Safe City" sees everyone. The other - that the border crossing, not the road, is where the bill finally lands.

The question left over is not whether the camera works. It works. The question is why someone has to want to leave the country before they can be stopped, when the speed was measured in real time.