Speeding tickets in France

laurie,

To answer your question if you received a speeding ticket in your home area, would you pay it? If you were in fact speeding, that would seem to be the right thing to do.

Good luck!

I don't know where you live, laurie, but if I were to get a speeding ticket in your neck of the woods, would you expect me to pay it?

Yes, I would pay them.

The great unknown is what will they do if you don't pay. In this era of massive data bases, web connections, etc. it is far easier to track someone down. The Italians have aggressive in pursuing their traffic tickets and reports are being being posted here of large tickets with lots of extra fees being turned over to local collection agencies. No one has reported if the collection agencies have successful in collecting these past due traffic accounts. Keep us advised if you don't pay. Would like to know for future reference what happens when your ignore the French.

The question is "why wouldn't you pay the tickets?" Come up with a good reason and then we can talk...

Q1: did you drive the car in the picture?
Q2: did you break the law?
Q3: if 1 and 2 are yes, what possible reason would you have for not paying them?

Part of the philosophy of Rick Steves, and many here, is to respect other cultures and other countries that we visit. So yes, I would pay the tickets.

We got 2 tickets in France in 2012. The French are very efficient. On the back of your paper ticket, there should be info on paying online with your CC. Do it. It will recognize you as an English speaker and everything will be in English.

By the way, don't be surprised if your rental agency dings you about 25 Euro for each ticket as well. They charge you that fee for providing your information to the French authorities.

If you can't read the French, try plugging it into Google Translate and you should be able to figure out just how much fun you were having, where you were having it, how much you're going to have to pay for it and how to do that.

This is a cut and paste from the reference I will put below. I think I'm correct in saying that the demerit points are not relevant unless you have a French driver license.

As of October 2005, the typical fines for speeding are:

less than 20 km/h above limit: 68€ (90€ in city area), 1 demerit
point; 20 to 50km/h above limit: 90€ to 250€, 2 to 4 demerit points;
more than 50km/h above limit: 1500€, minimum 6 demerit points.

This came from Wikitravel on Driving in France: http://wikitravel.org/en/Driving_in_France.

Note that our two tickets were discounted to only 45 Euro each because we paid quickly and online. In one case we were going 100 km/h in a 90 km/h zone. In the other we were going 112 km/h in a 90 km/h zone. According to the chart above, I guess we got the benefit of the doubt on the 2nd ticket.

We just accept the possibility of getting tickets while driving in Europe and add them into our trip expenses. At least with the French, they get to you pretty quickly and let you pay online with your credit card. This spring, we got a ticket from Switzerland during our trip in 2011. The only form of payment they would accept was a bank transfer. The cost of the transfer process was more than the cost of the ticket!

Pay them unless you are planning on never going back to Europe, especially since it sounds like you have a collection of them.