Speeding Ticket in France

Make sure that you are reading the date correctly, and that the location is correct as well. I believe that in Europe it is day/month/year.

Not meaning anything negative, but you are taking into account the US arrangement of mm/dd/yyyy is not the way it is done in France ( and elsewhere) of dd/mm/yyyy.

If the date of the infraction a is date you were not there ( and as I interpret your post you were in France with a car at some other time), I would contact the rental car company to find out why they provided the police your info and have them correct it.

Thank you Joe. But alas in reviewing the documentation and trying to make some sense of the French language it does appear the ticket notice is for a day we were in France. Quite possible we were in error as the French use those webcams. We will not argue and will just pay the fine. So now trying how to pay the fine electronically. If you have some recommendations there please share.

Also, thank you for your quick response. This is the first time I have used the forum.

I didn't see your response Paul - just wanted to thank you. You are not being ignored.

They have bill paying outfits in Europe that can charge your credit card and pay the fine by wire transfer directly to the city's checking account. I had one pay a ticket from a radar/camera going over the causeway to Venice for 1.8 mph over the speed limit. Good news is that their service charges were reasonable. I forget the name of the outfit, but I found them on Google.

I've seen transferwise recommended on this forum. I have not used the service myself.

Look on the back of the ticket. There should be a website for paying. It should recognize you as being from the USA and automatically be in English. You can pay with your CC in €. Be sure to let your CC folks know that you will be doing an online transaction in France so that they don't block it.

You can guess how I know this. We got 2 speeding tickets in France in 2012. My description above is how paying worked then.

As far as I know ANTAI is the governmental organization in France processing tickets, so look for that name on yours. Hopefully this link can help answering your questions: https://www.antai.gouv.fr/?lang=en

Edit: With this link you go directly to the English version.

Even w/o reading any French, you should be able to figure out what web site to access to pay the ticket, and the web site will have an English section. I did this last year, and while I can read French to some extent, I'm not sure that was even necessary, since I completed the whole transaction in English.

In addition to ANTAI for paying fines, the French National Police have a site of their own:

https://www.amendes.gouv.fr/portail/index.jsp

you can use google translate app, click the camera Icon and providing you've set it it French to English, you might get a good enough translation to understand the ticket.

I got a ticket near Nancy a couple of years ago. It was no big problem. I typed the text, section by section, into Google Translate until I had a good understanding of what the document said, including the fine. Then I found the government website on the back, and, lo and behold, when I visited, it had an English version. It took me less than 10 minutes to navigate the site, put in my CC number, and print a receipt to carry in my trip folder the next year. The fine was about 45 Euros. I'm sure French bureaucracy can be a pain, but it's amazing how efficient it can be when it comes to extracting money out of your wallet. :-)