Uh oh, traffic ticket from Germany!

[NW-Bound]

Check out Transferwise.

I used it earlier this year to wire money to reserve a pension in Austria.

Transferwise is a good service. I recommend it.

Just check out Transferwise, and it takes both the IBAN and BIC. The fee is lower at $3, compared to XOOM.

I don't know if Transferwise will insist on the German bank name, which I don't have.

Having sent an email to the German police, I might as well wait for their response.

Thanks to Cathy's tip on Iban.com, I knew the German bank name, and decided not to wait for the police to reply to my email.

I went to Transferwise to send money. But it did not ask for the bank name, and in fact displayed it after I put in the IBAN. It did not ask for the BIC however.

But what I like is that it has a memo field where I put in the ticket number for reference. That will make sure Aachen police will match up the money with my citation.

Yep, my money is on the way. Chalk this up to a lesson learned. Next time native drivers tailgate me, they can kiss my a**.

PS. Besides the $3 fee, Transferwise makes money from the exchange rate too. The conversion rate is US$1.20 per euro, compared to the current rate of $1.17. Of course it does not matter for this small fine. Xoom (Paypal) rate is about the same.

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

Hmm, so there are a lot of speed radar cameras in Germany, Switzerland?

They recently lowered the speed limit here to 25 MPH, it used to be 30. They installed speeding cameras everywhere, I was complaining to my wife about how many tickets I will now be getting. She said to me "when was the last time you went over 25 MPH"? She had a point, I could probably get by with a lawn mower engine under the hood.

 

[NW-Bound]

By the way, I look at the citation letter again. It is addressed to Phoenix, AZ, FRANKREICH (not USA). Hah! Frankreich is German for France.

Somehow, the letter found its way to my home, although it took a while. I have not been home for the last 2 weeks, so do not know when the letter arrived. However, it said I'd better pay up by July 18th, which did not leave me with a lot of time. The postmark had no date. The infraction was on June 12th.

Perhaps it bounced around the French postal system for a while. Good luck in finding Phoenix in France.

I wonder if it was because it was a spanking new leased car and the French registration paperwork showed that I was the owner (yes, my name was on the car registration), and somehow USA was missing from my address. The leasing company insisted that I kept the owner paperwork with my name on my body during the trip, and not inside the car in case it got stolen.

I checked the Visa account which I used for the leased car. No charge has been levied by the French leasing company yet. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[Nemo2]

Send 'em a sackful of Papiermarks.

 

[NW-Bound]

No, I came into their country and broke their law. Germans and other Europeans have to pay up, and so do I. They are not singling me out.

 

[HawkeyeNFO]

You were right in my neighborhood in NRW. Yep, lots of speed cameras around. Mrs NFO and I've received 3 or 4 tickets in the past few years. Luckily they are cheap in Germany. If you would have received it in Belgium it's much more costly.

And if you're being tailgated around here, it's because you need to stay in the right lane, except to pass. If someone runs in to you while you are too slow in the left lane, the cops could possibly hold you at fault.

 

[NW-Bound]

Nope. I was tailgated in single-lane roads.

 

[HawkeyeNFO]

Right on then. Let them eat the fumes from your tail pipe.

 

[NW-Bound]

In France, once on a 3-lane highway, I was on the middle lane doing just a tad below the speed limit of 130 km/hr (81 mph), say 127 or 128. A driver came up fast behind me, flashed his headlights, and tapped on his horn. What the heck!

He could have passed me on the left lane, but wanted me to go into the right lane where the trucks were. Trucks had a much slower limit of 90 km/hr (56 mph), and it would be very difficult to dodge in/out of their right-most lane.

It was even more troublesome on 2-lane Italian highways, where the right lane was occupied by slower trucks at less than 60 mph, and the left lane had Ferraris and Maseratis zooming by at 100 mph. If I wanted to go at some intermediate speeds, I would have to be careful to dodge in/out between the two lanes, and that was tiresome. So, sometimes I just took it easy and kept in the slow lane with the trucks.

But in single-lane rural roads was where the tailgating was most troublesome. I think the locals knew where the speed cameras were. So, they sped up and slowed down to evade the cameras. But as I did not know and thought I would try to keep up with them, I would not know to slow down in the right spots and would get caught.

 

[kcowan]

I would wait for the charge from the rental company. It might already include the speeding charge and surcharge. That is what they do in NA.

 

[NW-Bound]

On the Web, people talk of learning about the fines from their rental company. In my case, I received the citation directly mailed from the German police in Aachen.

Again, I think there may be a difference in my case due to the new leased car being registered in France with my name as the owner. Hence, the confusion on the letter being sent to Phoenix, AZ, Frankreich (not USA).

By the way, I looked again, and they put down 00000 as the ZIP code. Between the French and the US postal systems, they managed to get the letter to me. Amazing.

Anyway, on the Web, many people ignored the fine despite several dunning letters. They said that nothing bad happened to them when they returned to the same country.

 

[braumeister]

We shall see about that.

 

[Nemo2]

We shall see about that.

View attachment 26494

Und..ve haff vays of making you [-]talk[/-] pay.

 

[NW-Bound]

In my experience, the German and French people I met were friendlier than the Italians. This applies not just to the store clerks or servers in restaurants, but also people I ran across in the streets.

 

[Nemo2]

..people I ran across in the streets.

Small wonder you're getting traffic fines.

 

[NW-Bound]

Speaking of pedestrians on the street, I saw that Italian drivers were respectful of pedestrians in a crosswalk; if they saw someone about to step off the sidewalk at a marked crossing, they stopped. Not so with the French drivers in some cities. In fact, in Strasbourg, I saw a crossing that required two traffic cops waving hand-held stop signs to make motorists stop. That's terrible!

OK, I found the photo that I took. The ASVP on their vests means "Agent de Surveillance de la Voie Publique", which means "Traffic Warden on Public Road".

Note the speed limit painted on the road: 30 km/hr (19 mph). If motorists drove really that slow, they would not have problem stopping for pedestrians.

The above kind of road was where I got tailgated for obeying speed limits.

 

[gerntz]

Aachen was on the drive from Cologne to Brussels. A friendly German I talked with in front of the Cologne Cathedral said I had to make a stop there to see the church. And indeed the stop was worthwhile, even if I got a ticket there.

And I also stopped at Maastricht, Holland.

Thanks. We're going from Aachen to Köln & then on.

 

[Beldar]

I admire your honesty in paying the fine, I might have blown it off myself.

Many moons ago I travelled regularly to Syracuse NY on business. I racked up numerous parking citations with the rental cars, all of which adorned my office as souvenirs. Never had any hassle from the rental agency or anyone else for that matter.

I have a framed US government military paycheck for $0.02 hanging on the wall. One month between travel advances and expense reconciliation my pay came out to be "PAY EXACTLY 2 cents". Must have sent a shock-wave through the system when I didn't cash it.

_B

 

[Alan]

Add my admiration of your integrity in jumping through the hoops to pay the fine.

AFAIK Transferwise is the best and lowest cost forex company out there. Over this past 18 months I have used them to transfer a LOT of money and continue to use them to transfer money most months. I have an HSBC US and an HSBC UK account so transfer between the two is same day but they are still much more expensive than Transferwise until it comes to sums exceeding $100k which I have needed when buying a house in England.

In 2013 we went on a driving holiday in France with my wife's sister and her husband using their car. That year France changed the law to make it illegal to use the speed camera warning feature on car GPS's. If you are stopped for speeding in France they will apparently check your GPS if you have one to see if the feature is enabled. You are also required to carry 2 breathalyzer kits in your car.

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

I think this is awesome. It gives the driver another chance to maybe not kill someone.

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

. You are also required to carry 2 breathalyzer kits in your car.

I think this is awesome. It gives the driver another chance to maybe not kill someone.

 

[Lakewood90712]

Let go to a bench warrant. They will have Interpol on you in a few days , might send agents to arrest you and fly you back to see a judge.-free airfare for a second vacation. Maybe even get you on the no fly list

 

[Moemg]

I was going to send you my leftover euros to help pay for your fine but I remembered I am trading them in Cuba for Cuc's so I can buy some cigars and Rum.

 

[NW-Bound]

Thank you. It's the thought that counts, as they say.

Hmmm... Maybe I could raise some money with GoFundme, so that I could go back to Aachen to pay in person. Too bad the fine money is already deposited into the police account, as Transferwise advised via email. Oh well, next time then.

 

[NW-Bound]

I received another foreign letter in the mail. Wife handed it to me, saying that perhaps it was the receipt from the German police in Aachen.

Nope! It's from Switzerland. Arghh!!!

Yep, another speeding ticket. This one is from the police in Basel. The letter is addressed to Phoenix, AZ, France with Zip Code of 00000, same as the earlier German ticket. And same as with the earlier letter, the excellent cooperation of the French and US Postal Offices ensures that the letter gets in my hand.

I opened it up and read it. This one is also in French. It has no copy of the radar photo like the German letter. It says I was clocked doing 68 km/hr (42 mph) in a 60 km zone (37 mph) on an Autobahn. After deducting 3 km/hr for margin of error, they determined that I oversped by 5 km/hr (3 mph).

Hence, the fine shall be 20 Swiss Franc, or US$ 21. The letter includes a voucher for my convenience. All I have to do is to fill in the number of my preferred credit card, and mail it back to them.

My wife said I should pay it, and I will. The trip was more than 2 months ago. Are there more foreign tickets coming my way? Sigh...