Flashed in France

[ywouldi]

And I'm afraid it wasn't a nice French Girl. I was flashed doing about 100km/h in (I think) a 70km/h area. I was driving a Swiss hire car at the time.

How much time am I gonna be doing next time I hit the continent?

Ben

[davido140]

I've had quite a handful of speeding fines on the continent.

Nothing to worry about points wise as there they cant slap any penalties on a UK license.

They will probably track you down eventually via the hire firm and you might receive a letter demanding money.

Personally I have always paid these, lord knows what will happen if you dont. I'd imagine its fairly hard to persue debts like this across borders (London congestion charge stories in the press being a fairly good example)

In france if you dont pay an on-the-spot fine the police can sieze your car, Im pretty sure that would see you losing your hire car deposit money if that happened!

Edited by davido140 on Tuesday 8th May 20:11

[MKH9130]

ywouldi said:

And I'm afraid it wasn't a nice French Girl. I was flashed doing about 100km/h in (I think) a 70km/h area. I was driving a Swiss hire car at the time.

How much time am I gonna be doing next time I hit the continent?

Ben

In a hire car you may well get fined, (which will be paid by the hire car company first, then billed to your credit card + a fee usually of 30-45 Euros as per the terms and conditions of your rental). However, I've not been 'done' yet despite being flashed in a foreign registered hire car with both Hertz and Europcar.

I set off a large amount of cameras in my private car on the way through France. I was cruising at 100-110mph on a 90-110kmh road (flat as a pancake, 3am, zero traffic etc) and must have been flashed at this speed at least 5 or 6 times over the course of the journey. No fines have ever reached me, and neither did I expect them to.

I have been pulled by a Gendarme before, and issued a 90 Euro fine for doing 140mph in a 130kmh limit. Cash paid, my fathers licence shown and I was back on my way.

[nobleguy]

MKH9130 said:

ywouldi said:

And I'm afraid it wasn't a nice French Girl. I was flashed doing about 100km/h in (I think) a 70km/h area. I was driving a Swiss hire car at the time.

How much time am I gonna be doing next time I hit the continent?

Ben

In a hire car you may well get fined, (which will be paid by the hire car company first, then billed to your credit card + a fee usually of 30-45 Euros as per the terms and conditions of your rental). However, I've not been 'done' yet despite being flashed in a foreign registered hire car with both Hertz and Europcar.

I set off a large amount of cameras in my private car on the way through France. I was cruising at 100-110mph on a 90-110kmh road (flat as a pancake, 3am, zero traffic etc) and must have been
flashed at this speed at least 5 or 6 times over the course of the journey. No fines have ever reached me, and neither did I expect them to.

I have been pulled by a Gendarme before, and issued a 90 Euro fine for doing 140mph in a 130kmh limit. Cash paid, my fathers licence shown and I was back on my way.

140 in an 80 - and only 90 Euros. I'm off to the Monaco GP in a couple of weeks and am dreading the long drive down. Maybe it's worth £60 (or so) to get there more quickly.

Just in case anyone's interested, there's a speed camera site for France (in English) that appears to be refreshed reasonably regularly:

http://english.controleradar.org/driv
http://english.controleradar.org/driv

Edited by nobleguy on Wednesday 9th May 11:21

[SVX]

The French plod will definitely chase this up via the Swiss hire company, as Switzerland has agreements with France, Germany and Italy to pursue speeding fines. Expect an additional charge from the hire company too. If you were driving on a UK license, then you should be ok points wise, if on a Swiss license you could get points. Depends if the camera was loaded - was this on an Autoroute, or an N-Road?

[ywouldi]

I was driving on a UK license thankfully, I think it was N-Road, smallish mountain road from Chamonix to Annecy.

Cheers for the help guys.

SVX said:

The French plod will definitely chase this up via the Swiss hire company, as Switzerland has agreements with France, Germany and Italy to pursue speeding fines. Expect an additional charge from the hire company too. If you were driving on a UK license, then you should be ok points wise, if on a Swiss license you could get points. Depends if the camera was loaded - was this on an Autoroute, or an N-Road?

[Cooperman]

Remember, though, a hire company can only take additional cash from a credit/debit card if that card is still valid. If you cancel the card, for any reason (e.g. you lost it)then no further transactions against that card are possible.