bishbash

I hope somebody can help me please, I have received this Saturday a speeding ticket from the 4/10/2011 and the letter dated 22/11/2011 I have tried to pay it on line and it wont let me it said I have to go to traffic I live in the uk what should I do? I dont want to break the law but I cant believe it took so long to reach me.

mrsjdr

Not sure what you can do Bishbash, hope someone can help, although you can now receive and download speeding fines from traffico you still have to manually go to the bank and pay in yourself. Do you not have someone here in Spain who could pay this for you ?

bishbash

Thank you for your reply the problem is it wont let me pay on the internet because the ticket is now out of date to pay, I have had a fine before and it came recorded delivery(i am not a speed merchant I was working in Madrid) lol I just dont know what to do now.

MikeJ

You could wait until you get a court judgement and then let the bailiffs take your TV

MikeJ

Sorry - my previous post wasn't helpful. Similar thing happened to me - I emailed the chief of police in whose name the ticket was issued explaining the circumstances and eventually I was allowed to pay by direct bank transfer (although I do have a spanish bank account which made it a bit easier. I did have to pay the penalties and redoubled charges though - it added up to quite a bit. Because of a nifty bit of EU law (sponsored by Ken Livingstone to catch congestion charge evaders) the traffico can 'sell' your debt to an English debt collector who will then pursue you through the civil court in the UK - and then send the bailffs

Cazzy1

If you don't pay it they will put an embargo on your Spanish bank account, they did it to us.

billgates

To the op -
Did they provide any proof that you were actually speeding? Or even that it was actually your car?

bishbash

Some great news I got a friend who is Spanish to ring dgt for me and explain about the letter and to my great surprise the lady at the other end said forget it it's an I.T.problem you should never have been sent the letter and has e-mailed me to confirm.

agoreira

Perhaps like a lot of the EU regs, the UK is the only one that obeys them.

billgates

Is it just me, or does this strike anyone as a little odd?
How many foreigners would get a Spanish friend to ring up, only to be told to it's all a mistake?
99% would probably have just paid up and heard nothing more about it.
A clever scam going on perhaps?

VFR

Can the non payment of the congestion charge in London be pursued here in Spain though ?
I am thinking about Spanish cars/tourists who are most probably ignorant of the system there.

anonimouse

Interesting this, I note that many say they have received a speeding fine to pay, even when in the UK.

I know some one who received a letter this week that had to be signed for with passport number too, asking for confirmation of the driver with a photo of her car date time and speed (37km) over, 20 days to let them know or it is a 900E fine on top, no mention of paying the speeding fine, I guess that will come later, but does anybody know why she didn't just get a fine?

MikeJ

Further to my post #5. I was reading in the ST Travel supplement this weekend that the EU Directive which harmonises a number of disparate bi-lateral agreements on traffic offences and fines will come into force in 2013. From then wherever you are in the EU you can be pursued for fines incurred in other member states. Apparently one of the keenest countries for the introduction is France - because of the number of UK drivers which happily flout their traffic laws and ignore fines - mainly by speeding down the autoroutes (to Spain?).

MikeJ

This must be equivalent to the S172, which you get along with a NIP if you are caught speeding in the UK, which requires you to declare who was driving at the time of the offence. Failure to respond and disclose comes with a minimum of 6 points and £500 fine. The reason is that the law can only prosecute the actual driver for speeding and not the registered keeper.
The full benefits of EU harmonisation now becoming apparent :-)

mikelincs

Well I hope they soon sort it out, I know someone who was done for drink driving in France, he was an HGV driver and had had wine with his lunch. He got a driving ban in France, but was still able to work in the UK and Spain.