Forget ideas about travelling at high speed on the Italian Autostrada. The days of burning the asphalt at 200+kph are long gone. Italy has embraced speed restrictions and is enforcing them vigourously. This may be considered surprising for a nation that designs and assembles an impressive line-up of high octane vehicles: Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bugatti and and Maserati are some of the better known supercar manufacturers; Ducati heads up the bike builders. Italy is a tough act to beat!
Speed Cameras are being installed so throughout Italy. Expect to find new cameras on a stretch of AutoStrada that had no camera on a previous journey.
Road Traffic Fines in Italy
Car Rental & Fines
If your hire vehicle is photographed speeding, the Italian Authorities will track to you down to enforce payment. This applies if you are not an Italian national. A British National can expect to receive a demand for payment of a fine, in the post, to any UK address. The Demand for Payment will be written in excellent English. Worse still, in the small print of your car hire contract, the company has reserved the right to charge the driver's credit card for each and every intervention with the authorities on behalf of the renter. Typically, each intervention will incur a charge of €50. This is deducted from the card that was used to pay for the security on the vehicle at the time of the rental. If the fine is not paid, further interventions take place, charges will continue to be levied and taken from the card.
Italian Law specifies that a person resident in another country must be notified of the fine within 1 year of the date of the traffic violation. The notification must be in English and shall clearly indicate a reasonable means of payment from outside of Italy. This is usually Debit Card or IBAN transfer. According to Italian Law, if the communication does not satisfy these two conditions, the fine is not enforcible.
In the event of a rented car, the 360 days start from the date of identification of the holder of the rental agreement.
