traffic ticket on vacation

Not sure why you would ignore it. You broke a law now pay the fine.

You could get a French interpreter to translate the letter for you. While that may seem like a lot of trouble you are a representative of America and Americans and I know you wouldn't want the world to think of American tourists as bunch of criminals. If it was something you likely did (got caught speeding by a camera) you would undoubtedly want to pay it. If something you are not sure of, perhaps your French translator can help craft a reply to send back. Myself, I would probably just pay it, but you do have other options.

Mike,
Not sure if the Swiss chase fines with collection agencies in the USA; so if you never go back to Switzerland, you may be lucky. But if you come back to Switzerland you might not be so lucky.
The Swiss add non-payment fees to fines and bills which are not paid on time. If you fly in, the might spot it at the airport (if you cross a land border no checks). But, worst case, if you are driving, the police do a spot check and find your record, it would be immediate driving ban (hire car towed away, you left at side of road), and a lot more expensive than a mere 250 Franks.
But do you want a conviction listed against your name, even if it is in a foreign country?

PS It is "CHF 250", '$' is the symbol for dollars, not Francs.
PPS, try typing the text into an online translator (don't make any typos), usually they are approximately correct, but sometimes spectacularly wrong.

I would not ignore this...bad advice. Pay it. It's immaterial if you don't know what law you broke, they say you did period. If you never plan on returning to Switzerland (quite easy in my case), then you might get away with it , but red tape being what it is, they could keep coming after you even it it cost them a bundle, ie way in excess of the fine, doing so. I would not bet on them letting this go at all.

That's $100 more than the City of Venice charged me for 1.2 mph over the 35 mph speed limit on the causeway going over to Venice. Those radar-cameras have no heart.

You'll have to go online and find a European bill pay service that will charge your credit card--and wire transfer the funds in Swiss Francs to the City of Lausanne. Their service charges are actually pretty reasonable.

And expect a $45 charge on your credit card by your rental car company for taking time to provide The City with your name and address.

Pay it. It will come up again. Rest assured that it has already hit your rental car company. Who knows how it will affect you. If you plan on ever going back then it WILL come back up. Really.

Maybe for speeding? The speed limits are strictly enforced, often by camera.

If you copy the relevant language and post it here, I am sure someone can translate the French and tell you what it says.

In any case, do not ignore it. Pay.

You can use google translate to get the general idea.

We got our speeding ticket in June and paid the same day. They make it easy to do on-line.
At least use a card that will give you miles or a percent back. C'est la vie.

The ticket being written French is not an excuse with the existence of Google translate. If you translate it you will get the general gist of the matter. Perhaps your rental car company made an error and it was not really your car -- it's unlikely but I know someone who that happened to. Speaking of the rental car company, soon (perhaps it happened already) you will be charged around 30 euros for them to provide your information to the ticketing authorities. As to paying the ticket, assuming you committed the violation why wouldn't you pay it? What would your defense be? It's not like you can argue that the police officer was wrong -- there is a picture from a machine of the violation and that is the end of the story. "I did not know what I did is illegal" is not a defense here in the US or anywhere else in the world. Would you think that it as okay for Mike from Lausanne to ignore a ticket that he got in Clearwater just because he got the notice in English and does not know which law he broke?

Google translate is how I found out what our letter from Switzerland said. We got it in 2013 for speeding in 2011! It sounds like Lausanne is much more efficient than the little town where we went too fast.

The only way to pay for the fine was by bank transfer. It cost more to send the transfer ($35) than the cost of our fine (CHF 20). We were only going 1-5 km/h over. If you can pay it with your CC, it will be much more convenient and there should be no extra bank fee except what you'd normally pay for charging something in a foreign currency. Be sure to inform your CC provider that you'll be making that payment or it might be blocked causing more aggravation.

This little chart shows what you might have done for the CHF 250 fine, assuming it was only one ticket -- 11-15 km/h over the limit in a built up area. Note the paragraph above gives the typical speed limits, and says that they may be lower.

We pay the tickets and just add them to the cost of our ground transportation. I'm sure the picture of the car, and possibly of you in it, is on file. You likely would never have noticed the camera.

Mike,

As the others have mentioned, you can use Google Translate to get some idea of the reason you were ticketed. You could also post the pertinent details here and woinparis can provide a more precise translation.

I'm assuming they provided instructions on how to pay the fine?

None of us on the forum know for sure what will happen if you don't pay the ticket, or whether there will be consequences on your next visit to Switzerland. The usual advice is that those who incur foreign traffic violations should pay them. The Swiss tend to be somewhat fastidious about this sort of thing so I doubt it will simply be written off. If the Swiss decide to use the same tactic as the Italians, your fine could eventually be referred to a North American-based collection agency and if that happens the costs will quickly escalate.

This is one reason why I prefer to use trains as much as possible and use rental cars only when necessary.

Good luck!

Speed cameras don't lie, and unlike traffic cops in North America, they flag everyone traveling over the limit, not just the worst offender. Chalk it up to a learning experience and pay the fine.

Definitely pay the fine. You can use Google translate to find out what it was for, but I'm guessing from the amount, a camera logged the incident. The laws here are quite strict and it's unlikely they made a mistake. If you received the notice by mail, then they have taken the necessary steps to find you.

You may decide to ignore it, but we Swiss will not ;-) Your fine will happily continue to wind it's way through the Swiss legal system with you been listed as a no show and collecting additional penalties as it goes until it becomes a criminal offence and at that point you'll at the very least get listed on the Schengen system.

Damn, Jim. Now THAT'S the way to do that.

Wow, the Swiss don't mess around! That tends to confirm my point mentioned earlier about the Swiss being "fastidious about this sort of thing".

Of course, the Swiss are not going to forget it. I would really be surprised if they did. Regardless of the amount spent by them, ie way in excess of the ticket, they will still come after you. You can bet on that. Justified or not, pay it, unless you decide never to return to the country.

Fred, once you get added to the Schengen system you will have problems in the other countries too.

Bottom line is whether in Switzerland or in the Schengen zone (can't remember if Switzerland is in Schengen or not), if you get a traffic ticket, pay it, unless you decide to forgo going back ever. Then the US collection agency could be after you.

Fred, FYI, Switzerland is in the Schengen Area (and has been since 2008). There are no passport/ID checks on Switzerland's land borders, but there are (nominal) customs checks.
AFAIK there is no system to centrally record driving offences in the Schengen Area, nor any system to check ID's against a central database when you enter the Schengen area, they just check your passport to see if it is valid.
However, should somebody with an open fine enter Switzerland directly (by air), or be stopped by the police, I would expect the Swiss authorities to want payment.

Although it appears there's no provision at the present time to check visitors for traffic offenses in Schengen countries, data systems are expanding and this could certainly happen in future. The Schengen Information System, which is used for national security, border control and law enforcement, is constantly being expanded and broadened. It's not inconceivable that at some point in the future this could include traffic offenses, as could information that's shared between the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) and the U.S. National Crime Information Center and National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System.

It's always surprising to see people at the border giving vague answers to CBSA officers, when asked if they've ever been arrested or convicted of any crime. The officers already know the answer when they ask the question, so being evasive or vague is not a good idea!

A point could be that fines in Switzerland are issued by cantonal authorities; in case of non payment rules are different by each canton, and in some of them an unpaid fine may easily escalate into the criminal domain. For example, in Graubunden an unpaid fine may be translated in one day in jail for every 100 CHF. While nobody is going to chase a foreign citizen for four days jail time, that is a matter that could potentially end into the Schengen database.

@ Chris...Thanks for the information. Bottom line advice is pay the ticket, so one won't be haunted by it on future trips.

Just an fyi, Switzerland still had some checks on land borders at the end of the summer of 2015.

We were stopped coming from Germany back into Switzerland--near Konstanz I think. They were really nice. Wanted to see passports for all three of us. They let us through once they saw the passports. They appeared to be checking everyone.

We were in a Swiss car coming back into Switzerland after being out for a couple of days.