Advice please - Fine for driving in residential area in Rome - 13 months ago

The traffic ticket is legal. There has never been a reported scam associated with traffic tickets. Italy is notorious for the use of cameras in traffic limited zones and a year delay in getting the ticket to you. You first tip off should have been an administrative charge to your credit card from the car rental agency for turning over your name and address. Your five days to pay expired over a year ago. Forget about photographic evidence. They will have a picture of your license plate and it will match your rental time. There is lots of discussion on this site (use search function) concerning Italy traffic tickets. The best advise is to try to pay it. Will not be cheap. There have been reports here that ultimately a local debt collection agency will come after you. Not sure what happens after that. I don't know if the collection agency is able to obtain a court judgement for the fine or not. But I am sure they can put it on your credit report. That is when it gets messy.

Thank you Frank.
I did get charged by the car hire company & paid the fine as we'll. So not sure if this is another one to add to my collection. But I will get it paid one way or another.

The fee charged by the rental company isn't a fine, it's a fee for processing your paperwork and supplying your information to the authorities. You'll be charged each time they need to do this so if you have 4 fines you'll pay for 4 processing fees along with the 4 fines.

Donna

Cheers Donna. Hopefully no more will arrive in the post & next time I want a day out of Rome I'll use the train.

"I'll use the train..." BINGO!

Rental cars do NOT give you all the freedom they promise. I've never had a single traffic ticket from riding the train, but I have had a 900Chf charge for a minimal scratch on a minivan in Switzerland.

Yes. I don't recommend having a car while visiting cities. Next time limit your rental to visiting the countryside and smaller towns, which tend to have more limited public transportation options.
Unfortunately many North American travelers are not familiar with the International Road Signage system used in Europe, which is based on symbols rather than words, and often enter streets where only buses or cars with special permit (usually residents) are allowed.

The fine you got appears totally legitimate. The authorities, by law, have 365 days to notify a foreign resident starting from the time the rental company has communicated the name of the renter who was driving at the time the fine was issued. That limit is only 60 or 90 days (don't recall exactly) if the renter was a person residing in Italy.

If you don't pay there are 2 possible consequences:
1-If you enter Italy within 5 years (statute of limitations for traffic violations) and have an accident, or somehow you get pulled over, your name might come up and you may have to pay then a higher fine.
2-The collection agency you mentioned may be affiliated to an international network of collection agencies with offices in your State/Province. They will not take you to court, because it would be too costly to have the foreign judgement recognized by a court (that doesn't happen anyhow). However you will have to deal with the collection agencies' unorthodox (and often illegal) harassment practices. As you may know that industry is not well regulated and often those collection companies will make your life miserable in order to force you to pay. If they report you to a credit bureau you can probably have that removed, but it will be a hassle for a while.
If it's not a large fine, it might be better to pay, even if you don't plan to go back to Italy in the next 5 years. In terms of statistics, I can tell you that Italian authorities (and the collection agencies they hire) generally recover about 20% of the fines issued to foreign residents. Believe it or not, there are a lots of Italians who also don't pay them, and that number has increased exponentially during the recent economic recession.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to respond it's been very much appreciated. I certainly feel better informed for my next trip in February.

Many thanks.
Jayne

I sympathize, am awaiting my gift from Italy next September

We spent three weeks in Tuscany a year ago May and didn't any tickets. The key is to be very observant of the traffic signs, always stay under the limits. use the GPS to find the parking garages. It can be done.

well ya know here in the states driving less than 10 mph over will not get you a ticket (in every state I've driven in) ...in Italy? Not so.

jayne,

If possible you might contact them to find out if they offer other payment options. If a collection agency gets involved, the cost will likely be higher than that of the ticket.

You may find this an interesting read (go to the second question in the article)....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/columnists/gillcharlton/5443294/Ask-Gill-pay-Italian-traffic-fines-or-face-courts.html

Hello Ken - this was very interesting.
I should have read up more about local regulations & zones etc. before I hired my little Fiat.
Many thanks.
Jayne.

Well Jim. It's true that in the US you can exceed the speed limit by 10 mph without getting a fine, however the speed limit in the US is not 130 km/h (80 mph) either. And those machines are also set to issue a fine if you exceed the limit by more than 10%. Many of those gray autovelox machines in the regular roads are disabled anyhow, so I wouldn't be that sure you got a ticket. A recent decision by the Italian Supreme Court declared all fines issued by automatic speed machines unconstitutional unless the machine received a periodic technical calibration within the previous year. Many jurisdictions, having failed to do this because of lack of resources, are not bothering with issuing those tickets. I have a very heavy foot too, but so far never got a ticket (and I have driven in Italy every single year since those machines were invented).

jayne,

This is also interesting reading......

http://www.italyperfect.com/blog/the-ztl-avoid-restricted-traffic-zones-fines-in-italy.html

I just about burst out in fits of hysterical laughter when I read the comment from "Marianne" at the bottom, where she states that she's hiring an Italian Lawyer because this is "such a racket". She obviously didn't do her homework on the RS Forum or she would have known what the consequences would be for violating the local laws, which presumably apply to everyone regardless of whether they're tourists or locals and are therefore not a racket . "Marianne" should also keep in mind that the agreement she signed when she rented the car states the renter agrees to pay any and all violation fines incurred during the time she's driving the vehicle. Perhaps her Lawyer will use an "Affluenza" defense and she won't have to pay the fine :-)

This is exactly why I use trains and other public transit as much as possible, and only use rental cars strategically when absolutely necessary (although trains and other public transit also have some potentially expensive "caveats" to be aware of).

Hi Ken - now that's what those signs meant - wish I'd been sensible and found all this out. Getting about in Rome was quite overwhelming and I felt lucky just getting us and the car back in one piece. I will be doing plenty off back ground reading on Italian trains before our next trip, as they will be my transport of choice.
Thank you.
Jayne.

Looks like there has been another reason to embrace the trains.

http://www.thelocal.it/20151228/car-clampdown-as-smog-smothers-italy

I'll add a little more advice, this on the 5 days to pay stipulation. I also recently received an outsourced Italian ticket, but I think I had to pay to a different agency from the one mentioned by Jayne, and one whose website did work. At any rate, all I I had to do was to affirm that I was paying within 5 days of the receipt of the notice, which was true. There really is no way an Italian business could make an exact determination of when you received a letter, unless they sent it by something other than ordinary post. I checked the postmark, and my notice had taken 2 weeks to arrive. I think it's fairly standard for mail from Italy to take close to 2 weeks to get to the U.S. I wouldn't, however, push my luck and delay too long.
Just for the record, we've made 16 trips to Italy and had a car for at least part of every one. This is only the second time we've gotten a ticket, the first being for parking in Siena in 1984. I wouldn't rent a car for city touring; but I won't let this deter me from car rentals where it's convenient.