jacylou

My daughter received a traffic ticket by mail after she returned from Australia. --$131.00 for going 64 km/h in a 60 km/h speed zone, caught by an automatic detection device, she said. I told her I would write to this site and ask what she should do. Will someone with experience in this matter give her some advice. If she is never going back for another visit----- ???? Thanks.

Neil_Oz

I'm not sure what kind of advice you're looking for. Are you asking whether, if you daughter doesn't intend to return to Australia, she'd be (a) safe, (b) morally justified in ignoring the fine? In respect of (a), I suppose the answer is "yes". In relation to (b), it depends on the extent to which she accepts the principle of adhering to local law when a guest in someone else's country.

On the other hand, a $131 fine for exceeding the speed limit by 4 km/hr is by any standards outrageous pickpocketing by the state government, much more to do with revenue collection than deterring unsafe driving and quite disproportionate to the severity of the offence. Few Australians would pay it if they could get away with ignoring it.

jacylou

Thanks, Neil Oz, for the response. Don't know what she will decide to do. $130 is a lot of money for 4km over the speed limit. And she drove many hundreds of km while in Australia and tried to be so careful.

WallyKringen

This ticket must have come to you via the car rental company. Most of them are owned by or affiliated with multinationals. Ask them what they're going to do if your daughter doesn't pay. You wouldn't want to have them put it into collections where you live and ruin her credit rating for a few years to come - that might cost her a lot more than the fine.

WK

LordBalfor

Just be real sure the ticket is legit and not some kind of scam. I say this because it sure seems like an excessive amount to me. It may well be legit, but try and check it out before paying (take note of where and how you are suppose to pay, and try to verify that it's all on the up and up - maybe check with the car rental agency etc). If it is truly legit, she should pay it (excessive or not). You never know how thank can come back to haunt her somehow.

Ken

nevets

Jacylou

One course of action is to contact the state authority in Australia, police department or infringement orifice/office, which issued the fine, in writing, and ask them to disregard it. They're usually pretty cooperative in disregarding fines which are just over the limit if you give a legitimate reason as to why you exceeded the limit by such a marginal ammount.

What happens when a fine is incured is that the department looks up the person who the car is registered to and sends out the fine. This can take a week or so.

Then the victim gets 21 days to pay the fine. If it's not paid after 21 days there is a reminder sent.

Then another reminder after the next 21 days. So by then 63 days has expired.

In your case, because you're overseas, I think the department would understand if the time limit is extended.

So your daughter should send them a letter and say that she's sorry for exceeding the limit and ask that they disregard the fine because she didn't realise she was over the limit and this can be explained possibly by a built in +/- tolerance of a few kilometers either way in the speedometer of the car being driven.

Another reason can be that she thought it much more important to keep her eyes on the road then to keep such a diligent examination on the speedo.

It would not be a good idea to say that you were eating a hamburger, juggling a can of coke and trying to talk on the phone at the same time as admire the view when you happened to drive through the speed camera and expect the department to admire your dexterity and ability to multi task and then disregard the fine.

Receiving a fine for four k's over is disgraceful and I'm sorry that our country is so mean fisted. The fact that the fine is exessive could be explained by the owner/s of the car putting a little extra on it for admin/postage costs.

Steve

Tassietwister

If you travel by train in Sydney and by accident miss your stop you are fined $200.

Seems cheap to me by comparison for speeding which actually is somewhat of a danger.

RalphR

$131 seems spot on....see my recent response to a similar posting.

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34728260

I would pay the fine if you have rented a car.

jacylou

Thanks, everyone, for your responses.
My daughter has already paid the car rental $30 or $40 because she received the ticket and they had to do extra paper work. She had been told that would be their cost if she received a ticket.
She's going to call the rental agency and see what their response is. When it is all said and done, she will probably pay the ticket and have a clear mind!!!

PrincessAurora

That fine is so excessive! I live in New South Wales and the fine for doing up to 15km/h over the speed limit is about 70 or 80 dollars. They dropped the fines about 18 months ago and increased the number of "demerit points" a driver loses (part of the whole licensing system is Australia) instead.

As the others mentioned, check it's for real and then contact the relevant state authority. If she received the find whilst travelling in New South Wages you could visit the website www.infringements.nsw.gov.au and it might offer some assistance as to how to go about the whole thing. This is the website of the Infringement Processing Bureau, the state body who deals with all fines, parking, driving and boating fines.
Cheers
Aurora

jacylou

Thanks for the web site, Aurora.
The ticket was issued in Healesville, Victoria. We are going to check it out further! Oh yes, they gave her one demerit point, too!!

Graeme

As a Melbourne taxi driver I have some experience in this area. Definitely write a letter and in the circumstances ask for the fine to be waved on this occasion and promise not to do it again. It has worked for me especially as the offense is minor. They will acknowledge your letter and hold proceedings until they reply.

eurock

Hi There
We received a parking ticket whilst on our last trip to the US. It arrived after we got back to Oz - I sent a letter to the address on the back of the ticket - with a copy of the ticket explaining that we were from overseas but also included my credit card number if they still required the money. They didn't take it from my card!