Italian Traffic Violation - Pay or Don't Pay?

From a popular travel site:


Italian traffic fines
Nigel Daly, East Grinstead, West Sussex, writes
Last August I hired a car from Hertz and drove into Florence. Now, nine months later, I have received a letter from the municipal police there containing a "Notice of Payment before the Notification" of €101.20 for contravention of the Italian Highway Code for "circulated [sic] on roads reserved for other vehicles and indicated by traffic signs".

The notice says that I can pay the fine online through a website, www.emo.nivi.it, or by bank transfer. If I don't pay, it says: "We will proceed to make an official notification according to the International Conventions in force in your country… All the expenses will be charged to your account." Is this a con? I am suspicious for several reasons. First, it has taken over nine months to reach me; second, there is no address on the notice; and, third, the use of a credit agency – EMO – to collect the fine.

Gill Charlton replies
Unfortunately for you, this isn't a swindle. You must have strayed into a "zona traffico limitato" (ZTL) in Florence. When you enter these zones – which exist in many Italian cities – a camera takes a photograph of the licence plate. If the plate doesn't appear on the list of permitted vehicles, a fine is automatically issued.

About 600 ZTL fines are issued each day in Florence, raising a useful €25 million a year.

Hertz will have given your address to the Florence police. The police then have up to 360 days to tell you about the fine, and you have 60 days to pay or to appeal against it.

If you were staying at a hotel inside a ZTL, it is worth appealing. Send the dated hotel bill with a letter explaining the circumstances and the fine should be cancelled.

City centre hotels should provide customers with temporary access permits for the ZTL, but you must tell them that you have come by car. The permits are valid for two hours on arrival and on departure.

Not paying Italian traffic fines is generally considered a bad idea.

Although European Municipality Outsourcing (EMO), based in Italy, is not a debt collector (it simply translates the documents and issues the notices), failure to pay is a criminal offence in Italy.

The police can – and sometimes do – ask the car rental company to pay. Repaying Hertz will cost you a lot more than paying the original fine.

European Parking Collection (EPC), which is based in Britain, acts for 400 councils in Europe and has recently advised the Florentine police. It says the issue of enforcability remains a problem.

"If a fine is issued by the police, it can be enforced under Italy's criminal law," a spokesman said. "However, in our experience it's unlikely that a one-off ZTL fine will be pursued through the courts. But if someone has five or more outstanding fines, that's a different matter."

EPC says offenders may be blacklisted by car hire companies until the fine is paid.

If you offend while driving your own car, you risk being stopped by the police on your next visit and made to pay a much higher fine.

They can also obtain your address from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency
using a UK-based collection agency.

 

I'd dig around on this a little more like you're doing. I wouldn't necessarily take a travel site as gospel. Let us know what you find out?

 

I actually got about 5 camera tickets all through out europe , and never paid them due to the fact that im not a European Citizen. They are trying to change the law so that if you are a EU citizen you will be linked to all the EU countries..The hassel for me was that the rent a car company kept sending me letters about the tickets and charging my credit card on file $20 euros a time, so i had to finally cancel my credit card..

 

Yea, I'd cancel your CC if you want to forget about it. That's your call. Maybe dispute it as the 360 days are past but cancel the card in the meantime.

 

That Zone in Firenze was a PIA.
We drove around it for about 40 minutes on a Saturday to find public parking so we could take a cab to our Hotel. We won't stay inside of it again.

I'm sure I got camera tickets when I was there last. If they charge my Visa from the rental car place I'll just have Merrill get me a new card. It was July I've yet to hear anything yet.

 

More than one website can not be telling fibs... check them out or do your own search.

http://www.ricksteves.com/graffiti/helpline/index.cfm/rurl/topic/59154/traffic-tickets-in-italy.html

http://www.initaly.com/travel/avoid_tickets.htm

http://www.bella-toscana.com/traffic_violations_italy.htm

Nick

 

HFS.
Unreal. Feel for you - what a pile of dog pie to deal with.

And here we were beeyatching about Chitcago:

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=346669

 

I confirm that it's 360 days but from the day the police gets your information from the rental company.
I have no idea if there is a maximum number of days the police has to do this operation.

Too bad it wasn't your car, you wouldn't have to pay anything!



Anyway you can see the picture in this website: https://ztl.comune.fi.it/tzv/

You need
- Numero verbale: number of the ticket, only number, no letters
(solo il numero senza lettere)
- Anno: year
- Targa: plate
- Data violazione: day (DD/MM)

Then click on "Accesso"

 

Pay the fine. You openly admitted you drove someplace were cars are verboten so ignorance of the law is not an excuse. If you do not pay I doubt your driving priviledges will be re-instated.

 

Gotta love those "gotcha" type tickets. Bummer. I suppose some of the thought process should be if you ever plan on going back to Italy or not.

Note to self if ever driving around in Italy...where not all roads are roads.

 

How do they prove that you actually got served the letter? They can't, this is why camera light tickets are going out of business here...

 

Don't pay and cancel your credit card.

They are powerless to do anything about it. If you used an international driving permit to rent the car, you will have a new one next time. No worries. If you used your US driving license, their systems are not set up to track them in any sort of blacklist. No worries again.

No repercussions if you go back to Italy and drive again. No need to pay.

 

i agree the last thing they need to do is start kicking out their tourism $$$...

 

i don't get the question. you did something wrong, why not pay it? it wasn't anybody else's fault...

 

Here you have it. It boils down to conscience and deciding if you want to pay up or not? That's your call.

 

I can't help but play a little bit of devil's advocate here.

For those who say, "you've admitted you did it, so pay"...

First, I'm not sure any admission has been made, and without the photographic evidence can anyone definitively say who was driving the vehicle at the time? Let's say the hotel valet drove the car around the block to put it in the garage, but that triggered the photo. Should our onocoffee be responsible? Or the hotel?

Not to mention the fact that foreign countries need to be slightly more accommodating to foreigners in this regard. While there are indeed laws (and they should be adhered to), we're talking about unfamiliar territory for the most of us. I use a driver when I'm in Europe, as I don't need or want to cause these hassles. They know the rules, the lay of the land and where to avoid. I don't. That said, I only read and speak English and French. So, Italian is gibberish, for the most part. While this isn't an excuse, it's just a fact that people may violate without even knowing they're doing so. A camera won't point out your violation and re-direct you, if you're lost. It has no sympathetic capacity: it just captures the event and a computer issues the citation. Highly impersonal and after-the-fact. I think most people would choose to cease and/or avoid the violation IF they knew they were violating (or going to violate). However, let's also be honest...navigating Italian traffic isn't exactly the easiest of tasks when you don't know where you're going, don't know the signage or language well, and have impatient and budding F1 drivers tailgating you around the piazza. Ever seen National Lampoon's European Vacation? Stupid, but there's some truth.

CW

 

Sorry but thats crap, what about the foriegners who come to the US and cause an accident or a traffic jam? Jeez the excuses are never ending.

 

Call it crap, but it's a fact. I'm sure they won't cut much, if any, slack, though.

Just saying that that's why I don't drive there.

Further, given that English is the world's standard language, we don't perhaps have the same "ignorance" of the posted signage and language issues.

Regardless, the starting legal position is (and, as a lawyer, I am well aware of) that lack of knowledge of the law is not an excuse (paraphrased, of course).

But, IIRC, you're in Law Enforcement. Thus, let me ask that if you pull someone over who clearly is in distress (i.e. is lost, doesn't know the language, cannot read the signage), how do you handle the situation? Do you assist them? Do you warn them? Do you cite them? I suggest there are degrees of violations (jaywalking v. drunk driving), and if it's a minor infraction that they may have committed unknowingly (such as driving in an area that they're not supposed to be) as opposed to a felony, you might be willing to cut them some slack.

That said, a camera sure won't.

CW