Getting traffic tickets in Italy - PISA - Restricted travel zone w/out Autorization

Did you get a mysterious charge on your credit card from your car rental company a month or two ago?

The police didn't just come up with your name and address from nowhere. They would have had to get the info from your car rental, and the rental company charges you back a fee to furnish the police with the info.

Same thing happened to me, and the City of Venice wanted the fine paid directly to their checking account IN EUROS. i found that there are bill payment companies in Europe that can charge your credit card in U.S. Dollars and wire transfer the funds in Euros directly to the City. And they were actually reasonable on their service fees.

Those radar/cameras are viscous--not giving me even 1 mph over the stated speed limit. If the funds don't go directly to the city, I wouldn't pay it.

no mysterious charges... i receved notification from Hertz back in July that this was coming... but just got it yesterday.

I don't have any idea how to pay this darn thing. The user name and password they gave me do not work. I have tried many times.

Hmmm.

Try using a different browser

It happens to many travelers. General advice is you really cannot drive in any town in Tuscany and many places in Italy. The streets are restricted and clearly signed, though, yes, you probably were not aware of what the signs meant.

You actually are lucky that you received only one ticket, some people repeatedly drive in and out of ZTLs, racking up several tickets in an afternoon.

The delay in notification is normal, Italian bureaucracy can bog down at times, but a Racket? No, it is not, you violated the traffic laws, whether you were aware of it or not.

How to proceed? That is up to you, lots of advice out there. The inclination would to be to just pay. Others might have other advice.

If you went there using the ID and plate number and it says there are no fines to pay, then don’t pay. Almost half of the traffic fines issued in Italy go uncollected, and those issued to foreigners are collected even in a much lower percentage. Some municipalities use collection agencies like NiVi of Florence, with affiliates abroad, to try to collect. However traffic fines (even those incurred in the US) in the US are not reportable to the credit bureaus and foreign fines obviously cannot be enforced in US courts, therefore all collection agencies can do is send a couple of letters in the hope of collecting something, and if they don’t, they move on to the next victim.

The business of imposing very low speed limits in Italian cities, and then placing cameras everywhere is not a scam, but it is a mechanism that Italian municipalities employ to increase their revenue without having to increase taxes on the “voting” residents. They have reached a high level of abuse, and often the courts reverse the tickets when Italians file a recourse with the Prefect or the so called Peace Judge, but Cities don’t stop trying to vex people to try to get extra money. And since most victims of the fines are not residents in those cities (local residents tend to learn quickly where the cameras are located in the roads they travel often), local authorities are very happy to collect from people who vote elsewhere.

Not so different from a variety of automatic traffic monitoring/revenue enhancement systems in our own cities, a happy partnership between cash-strapped municipalities eager to provide more services and private, for-profit traffic camera companies whose only concern is safety (so they get the great majority of the revenue generated for their service). It's for the children, of course. You can't be too safe now, can you? That'll be $450, please.

Good idea on trying another browser... that catches me every now and then but, alas... my user name and password from thier documentation are still not valid...

I tried to pay... I understand there is a 5 year statute of limitations on traffic tickets...

This topic comes up frequently here, and is always frustrating. To help others who may be doing a Search ( admittedly clunky here on the Forum) on the topic, would you consider adding TRAFFiC to specify about which tickets you address? There are so many questions here about tickets in Italy, eg Colosseum, Vatican, Pompeii, train, etc.
Posters have added great info and it would be helpful if others could benefit from this discussion.
Thanks so much, and good luck!

Done... Thanks.

Chris, thanks, much improved. Hopefully this never happens again to you!

The former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who is from Florence, had a major argument with the Mayor of Florence, Dario Nardella, a few months ago, about the City's practices of extorting money from the citizenry using unethical speed camera tactics which have the obvious objective of collecting money while doing nothing for safety.

For example the city of Florence has placed 4 speed cameras on the divided freeways and expressways, after the end of the A1 and A11 freeways, on roads with controlled entrances, dividers, multi lane, with no pedestrians or bikes allowed (therefore the roads with least chance for fatal accidents, which generally occur in proximity of city intersections rather than expressways). At the same time on those fairly safe roadways, they lowered the speed limit to 60 km/h (37 mph) or 70 km/h or even 50 km/h, even though it would be perfectly safe to travel at 90 km/h (55 mph) on those roads, knowing that many out of town motorists (unaware of the existence of those cameras) would be likely to exceed the low speed limit. There is one speed camera, at the exit of the A1 at Scandicci that in 2022 recorded 975 speed violations a day. Those 4 speed cameras alone record over 900,000 speed violations a year with a very nice revenue for the City of Florence.

Roberto, pretty impressive data. Hard to argue with hard numbers. Thx

I drove in Italy more than once in the late 80s and early 90s when we lived in Germany.

Never got a ticket, but based on advice, I never drove over the speed limit.

Today, I would never rent a car to drive in Italy.

In the 1980's autovelox machines practically did not exist in Italy. Once in a while they would have a patrol with a bulky camera apparatus set up temporarily at traffic checks, and usually they would give you a 30km/h leeway (so on a 50 km/h speed limit they would fine you if you went at 80 km/h) but no fixed cameras with only 5 km/h leeway working 24/7 like today.

Joining on the to thread. We received our ticket from Florence for being in a restricted traffic area. It sounds like we join a very large group of people who ended up making similar a mistake. I was dubious of the notification and followed a helpful link to the Florence municpale site. It was super easy with links to pay tickets and then you enter the ID and Password from the ticket. They have updated it so you can pay with credit cards instead of wire transfer. It was quick and easy. Part of the risk of driving in foreign countries. You try to follow the rules but sometimes the signs are vague or you just make a mistake. This isn't the most expensive learning experience I have had while traveling.

I'm just glad the Florence site made it so easy.