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Fines on the Autostrade - Italy

This issue may have been addressed previously but I was unable to locate anything. We recently traveled in Italy on the Autostrade and received a ticket for failure to pay a 60 cent toll. In a nutshell...we approached an unmanned toll gate to ask directions (we got lost) and being our first time driving in Italy, did not know that we must activate the ticket machine. There was no one to ask and no bar blocking the exit so we drove through to the next toll section a short distance away. We tried to explain to the guard at that station who spoke very little English what had happened...we payed the 60 cent toll. He gave us an unpaid toll ticket and managed to tell us to go pay the toll at the closest PuntaBlu station (which we never found). The ticket indicated we could pay at a toll gate but we were refused when we tried to do that. The amt. on the ticket is 48.40 euros...hard to believe for a 60 cent unpaid toll...especially when we tried to pay it and were refused.

We had a rental car and that info. is listed on the ticket. Can anyone advise whether it is in our best interest to pay this outrageous fine online within the 15-day time period to avoid additional "legal" fees or might we have success in pleading our case via the Autostrade site? My companion thinks we should not pay the fine but my name is the one on the rental car information.

Posted by
4535 posts

This type of issue has come up before. It seems that unless your rental car company will wind up paying the fine and passing the cost through to you, there is little Italy can do to hunt you down and make you pay the fine. You will be unlikely to have any success in pleading your case, if for no other reason that you seem to have no case (although I can see how it happened). I have not heard of anyone being denied re-entry for failure to pay traffic fines.

Posted by
2829 posts

I'd pay the fine just to avoid the rental company collecting fine + administrative fees.

When you receive such citations (I've lived in Italy), there are instructions to explain your case and try to reverse the fine. In your case, as you had the ticket, it would be very easy to do that. Indeed, the "fine" is the maximum toll you'd have to pay had you lost your ticket altogether.