Was driving through France for six days last week. During that time I got a total of four speeding tickets from those automated speed trap machines. These all occurred on the autoroutes.
I’m a very conservative driver and at no time was I going any faster than anyone else on the road. After the first one I became extremely careful about going faster than anyone else. The confusing thing about the French autoroutes is that the speeds suddenly change from 130 to 110. the car had a neat feature which is to tell you what the speed limit is on the dashboard and was pretty sure I slowed down each time. My French friends said there is an app that hooks into something that warns you about these speed trap boxes which are apparently switched in location frequently.
Anyone have any ticket avoidance advice for my next trip to France? I didn’t remember the name of this app.
I found in Italy everyone knew where the machines were and accordingly slowed way down for them. If you don’t know where the machines are, just drive slow until you do.
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I have driven about 100 times on the French Autoroutes and never had a ticket. Could it be because I rented one of your Mercedes, and big one at that. This robo cop ticket situation is completely automated. They email you the ticket (In my case, via the rental agency). At no time after the first ticket, did I go any faster than anyone else on the road. The Gilet Jaunes would never put up with such a high frequency of tickets.
Someone joked above that they target foreigners (or maybe car renters); is it possible ?
I have been told that satnavs and apps that give away locations of cameras are illegal in France and that if you are stopped they will throw the book at you for that instead.
In Germany they announce the location of speed traps on the radio as part of the traffic. I believe the rationale is the more people know about them, the less speeding and therefore more safety for everyone. Of course, there are those sections of the Autobahn without speed limit…
(and I just checked: navigation systems that show radar cannot be legally used in almost all European countries. Romania is an exception).
I use a Garmin GPS that shows where the fixed cameras are. Worked well in Spain, Italy, France etc. Like others said they are illegal but never had any issues. The first few time I used it had no idea it was illegal. Its purpose was so we didn’t have to use cellular data/google maps to figure out where we are going.
Sidebar, I brought my Garmin to France with us and could not use it because it requires a cigarette lighter plug and not one car at the rental agency had one. I just called Garmin and they said they do not make any units that run off a USB connection because they don’t put out enough power to run the Garmin. Did yours run off the cigarette lighter or did you figure out a way to adapt it? Does anyone know of a GPS that would run off of a car USB port?
Mine runs off the cigarette lighter. Never had an issue. Keep in mind I haven’t driven in Europe now for almost 2 years due to the Pandemic. Don’t know if it is more difficult now with newer model cars. This looks like it would work with mine.