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Quote:

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in conclusuion i wouldn't accept that ticket
if fined I would get a good lawyer
Post last edited on 05/07/2012 12:08:19

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If my understanding is correct on the spot fines in France are really a sort of deposit against a future court appearance and you are perfectly able to challenge the fine/deposit in court if you so wish. However the likelihood of that happening would be pretty rare as clearly, even though those fines can be higher the cost of a challenge is far, far higher as you would need to employ a French/English speaking lawyer. If you loose its possible the fine could be increased. If any European country is breaking to law as you suggest its hard to imagine that cases have not been taken to the European Court of Human Rights and I have certainly heard of none.

David

It doesn't matter what the law actually says, unless you can speak fluent French, then how on earth will you get your point over.

We were stopped by Italian police, and given an on the spot fine, and the more we argued (in English) the more the fine went up and the more they looked around the car to find further 'transgressions'!  In the end we shut up and paid up, but by then the fine had increased many-fold and we still had to pay.  If we'd not argued in the first place we might have got away with a much smaller fine.

It's quite threatening to have two gun-toting policemen getting more and more angry!  I wouldn't like to quote the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic to them in their language nor would I expect to win the argument!!!!

There isnt a need to worry about this right now, as many websites report that it is not being enforced until November. See it here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18662555