A speeding ticket almost every day I was in France

[RichardFlack]

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.

George

George

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?

iPhone?

[RichardFlack]

If I could keep it to one a day, I’d be ok with it.

Kept it at 1 in last 23 years (felt stupid about that lone one from 2011 driving from Cinque Terre back to Florence) and visited-drove various parts of the continent at an average of 3 times each year.

Not rocket science if you can read speed-limit roadsigns.

Perhaps they were in French.

[Stan_Y]

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.

George

George

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.
George

FWIW you can download map data onto your phone and use Google maps without a cell data connection in offline mode. I always try to do this when I’m driving out of the country.

[ClarkstonMark]

I got several tickets in Italy years ago. The Italian authorities got my home address from Hertz. After the tickets went unpaid, I received a summons from the Italian court system in Italian with an increased amount to pay. I wrote a letter disputing it (even had it translated into Italian). Nothing happened and I never heard anything for 2 years so I assumed it was all good. Last year I received collection notices. They had sold my “debt” to a US based collection agency (Cedar something) and now the collection agent fees on top of the original charges made this a much bigger issue and I was concerned about impact to my credit.

I ended up getting a lawyer involved (have Hyatt legal through my job) and was able to negotiate paying half just to clear this all up and put it to bed. The price I ended up paying (close to $700) was roughly about what the original tickets would have cost me to pay from the beginning without all the additional headache.

Moral of the story is it might be worth paying the tickets if it’s not a lot of money.

I’ve gotten several tickets due to cameras in Germany and Czech Republic.
It is true that the 25-30 Euro charges are only the fee the rental car company charges for having to provide information to the authorities.
The Germans never contacted me about the tickets.
The Czechs did (sent me a letter describing the charges), but I never paid the ticket.

[Brandon_R_Moyse]

I am curious - how do these work?

Are they cameras that simply catch you at a single point in time? Or is it like a toll road that measures your time to cross a certain distance and simply calculates whether or not you had to speed in order to cross that distance in that time?

Is there any sort of “cushion”? Or do you get nailed at 111 in a 110 zone?

[patrick_c_albright]

I am curious - how do these work?

Are they cameras that simply catch you at a single point in time? Or is it like a toll road that measures your time to cross a certain distance and simply calculates whether or not you had to speed in order to cross that distance in that time?

Is there any sort of “cushion”? Or do you get nailed at 111 in a 110 zone?

They are cameras.
I am not sure of the amount of leniency that they give you.
If you are going too fast, you see the flash.

[K_N_Haque]

I am curious - how do these work?

Are they cameras that simply catch you at a single point in time? Or is it like a toll road that measures your time to cross a certain distance and simply calculates whether or not you had to speed in order to cross that distance in that time?

Is there any sort of “cushion”? Or do you get nailed at 111 in a 110 zone?

I got a ticket for going 118 km/h in a 110 zone in Austria few years ago, so any cushion there is less than 8 km/h (5mph) if one exists at all.

[Philip_Ente]

I was never 2-3 km over posted limit.
Maybe they got me when the speed limit went down from 110 to 90 but you really have to be on your toes to pick that up quickly. I adjusted less than 1-2 minutes after seeing it on the dashboard.
Like I said several times- If I got a ticket, then they were giving out 60 tickets a minute.

[Jim_Brennan]

I was never 2-3 km over posted limit.
Maybe they got me when the speed limit went down from 110 to 90 but you really have to be on your toes to pick that up quickly. I adjusted less than 1-2 minutes after seeing it on the dashboard.
Like I said several times- If I got a ticket, then they were giving out 60 tickets a minute.

That’s nearly 70miles an hour… if you waited a minute or two, that means you potentially traveled a bit more than 2 miles farther before slowing. Consequently, it seems entirely possible that by the time you reduced speed a minute or two later, that you had already passed the camera.

[Tom_Clement]

I received notice of 2 tickets while in France in 2018. We received the €29 charge for both of them from the rental car company, but only received one actual ticket. They were both for going about 5-8 km/hr over the posted speed limit so there is definitely not much cushion.

[Tim_Heaton]

The cushion is typically 5% of posted limit.

[LMD_Ermitano]

I drive cross country fairly often in France & Spain. Only once in Italy & Germany. Now that I think of it, I always get fined in France (the rental company just tacks it on to my credit card); but never in Spain, Italy & Germany.

[JViolini]

They have signs announcing them…c’est la vie.

[Steve_Anderson]

Same scenario for me in 2019, but fortunately only once. Sixt rental car on an Autoroute. Passed about 5 consecutive sites posted as 130kph. The sixth was 110kph. I noticed the sign and recalled looking around to see if there might be a reason for the change. Nothing that was explicable; same number of lanes, no construction, no change in weather conditions, etc. The next station was back to 130kph. I did slow down, but apparently not enough. The Sixt fee for me was 39e (vice 29), VAT included ;-} Don’t recall the actual fine, and when I found the old email/link for payment of my l’avis de contravention, I found that “Le service est momentanément indisponible.”

In any event, Lesson learned. Any time I saw a digital speed sign after that I assumed there was a camera.

Cheers!

Steve