The French, in the name of public safety, have placed radar cameras, some marked, some hidden, all over the country in ever increasing numbers. Critics say that a budget conscience government is more concerned with their revenue potential than it is with public safety. No matter the reason, radar cameras are now everywhere in France. Evidence that the rational is more one of money than of safety is that GPS´s which show camera positions are now illegal in France. Radar detectors have been illegal for some time.

Previously, the National Police made little effort in collecting fines from foreigners, particularly non EU foreigners. Apparently that has changed. Drivers should be careful about speed and know what the limits are and where. Speed limits are not always posted, even though they change. For example, when travelling into a town, the sign showing the name of the town indicates that the speed limit just dropped from 70km or 90km to 50km. The sign displaying the town name with a red slash across it (indicating you are leaving the town) means that the speed limit is raised back to 90km.

Drivers should remain vigilant. Particularly when travelling on roads which are unfamiliar.

Look for a bank routing number on the ticket paperwork. Your bank can remit the amount directly to that number. It was prominent on my Vicenza ticket.

Speeding tickets in Connecticut seem to cost most of my friends ~$250, so I sort of agree with nytraveler that you got off lucky.

I ignored a speeding and parking ticket from California and parking tickets from Belgium and Switzerland.>

Man to break the laws in other countries and then proudly boast about it - now that to me is being a very UGLY American, or 1/2 an Ugly Yank in this case.

Bravo!

"Proudly boast" ? Where did you see that?

I've parked in the wrong place and got a ticket, buzzed round to the police station, apologised deeply (in french) and the guys took the thing back. I've also driven in a bus only lane in Norway while racing for a ferry and sent the local police a letter of apology (in English this time) and got a lovely letter back.

In France, if you pay within 15 days, you pay €45 for speeding up to 20 km/h in areas where you're allowed 90km/h. However, if you pay later but still within 45 days, the fine is raised to €68. If you wait even longer, it may rise to €180. So, pay quickly!

Infraction on the 12th September.
The ticket seems to say, if you pay within 61 days, it's 45; if you pay later, or contest it, it's 68.
Any hints on how to pay?
The ticket, of course, is all in French.
I scanned it into word, and copied the text into Google Translate, and it seems to say I can pay online at:
www.amendes.gouv.fr
But the URL doesn't work, nor do any of the English pages of it which I found by Googling.
So, I'm willing to pay, and can't, because their website isn't operative, and the clock is ticking.

The URL works quite well for me and it is in English.

What Sarastro said.

You must be in France.
According to what I've now learned by Googling, the French website cannot be reached by a non-French IP address.
That's idiotic.

I am in the States and reached the site with no problems. It then asked for an e-payment number.

So, what could be my problem?
I cleared my cache and continue to get the message,
"Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage"

I am not in France. I am back in DC. The website opened up with no problems at all for me, and it was (to my surprise) in English.

Try another browser. I use Firefox.

I am using Firefox on a Mac. Might that make a difference?

I hope Andrew looks in. I'm stumped. Cleared my cache, closed Explorer, same results with the basic (home) URL, and with its English language subset.

I'd fall back on just calling them tomorrow, but they probably don't have an English-speaking person, and my pigeon French isn't good enough for the basics.

Tom, change your DNS to use Google DNS and see if it works then:

https://developers.google.com/speed/...dns/docs/using

It could be the DNS, could be the browser, I also use Firefox. Has anyone else using MS Explorer had problems with www.amendes.gouv.fr ?

I pay my fines online using IE but I am in France.

I WISH our fines were so low, here for a speeding ticket its at least 138$ for normal speeding, and then start at 368$ for excessive speed( which I think is anything over 10-15 kms per hour) ouch!

I am not sure why you think ticket should be translated for you. You went to a foreign country whose offical langauge is not english. Its not their responsibility to translate every ticket they send out, they would need a whole department to handle that, since they would have to translate tickets into many languages as they have foriegn tourists.

I am in the U.K., and had no problems opening the site www.amendes.gouv.fr using Firefox. The page was automatically in English, but it is also available in French, German, Italian and Dutch by clicking on the flags in the top right hand corner.