The cost of traffic infractions

There are 6 replies in this Thread which has previously been viewed 3,176 times. The latest Post (September 26, 2019 at 8:13 PM) was by JAN.

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    How convenient that the word infraction is almost identical in Spanish...

    Anyway, Adri had her car towed away (again) for parking on a so-called pedestrian crossing that was so badly marked on the road, to be almost invisible. In fact they were nothing more than rubber studs in parallel across the road.

    So I met here at the money-making vehicle pound where she was charged $1300 by a bunch of officious, miserable uniforms to release the car and she later received a court fine in the post for $5172, which would attract 50% discount if she paid it within 14 days.

    That's a hefty amount by anyone's standards and the local council have now honed their towing away skills down to a fine art.

    I won't print what she said when I asked her when/if she was going to pay the fine.

    :asswave:

    Splinter, given your well-vaunted patience with bureaucracy and petty would-be autocrats, we are very disappointed at the brevity of your post. Surely you can regale us with more details and observations, worthy of a DCT column? I mean, isn't this towing scam deserving of at least as much ink as a Saturday trip to the local Coto?

    I tell u something.....some time ago, a year or so, I got constantly speeding tickets......wrong ones.....since I go same trip everyday several times and know the speed limits and always follow them, I check both car speed and the GPS speed which is always exactly same......so no way of that it could have been different. If limit is 100 I go 95-98 or so, never above. And with 100 limit, u would have a tolerance of maybe 5 km, so untill 105 km/hs no ticket.

    It's impossible, that I have like 20 times been so stupid and blind that I wouldn't notice I'm going 105 n not 95!!!! But, what can u do.......bills stay in system and u pay si o si, the latest when u wanna sell ur car!

    I'm 100% sure thousands of other drivers would be in same situation.

    They have just manipulated the radars to fine above, say, 92 or 95, then they know half of drivers can be fined!

    So with ur towing story, I'm not surprised......u just make it impossible to tell if u can park legally, and everybody is parking there.

    I have been towed two times in my life, once in Prague in the 90ties, and once in San Telmo.....same story like urs.

    So u get the picture, I'm not really a rowdy Parker.

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    We have a few tickets stories ourselves.

    One is a ghost ticket - the deceased relative's car had been parked in Mar del Plata for 6 years, but the plate got a speed ticket in Capital two years after the relative died. There is no picture of the fine, so 'you must believe them'. One assumption is that the plate was cloned, or that the plate reader read a wrong digit. However, since the car is registered in GBA, and the fine is from CF, when we have to pay the dues for the car, this fine doesn't show in the GBA system. I think it is around 6000 ARS by now.

    [We were able to get a cedula azul to drive the car last year, so the car is now in use, but had been parked in Mar del Plata for 6 years]

    The other one is like @JAN told. A friend driver told us that they put on purpose the wrong sign, so that you are convinced the limit is 110, while the radar is set to 100. We got that fine in Dolores, veeeeery far from Buenos Aires, on our way back from Mar del Plata and I am absolutely sure that we did not exceed the speed limit because we had already been burnt once on that route, so I always kept my eyes on the odometer while my husband was driving.

    Anyway, the fine was about 8,000 ARS because the car plate is associated to the address where the deceased relative used to live, and now nobody from the family lives there anymore - hence, we weren't notified about the fine and this made it double the original amount.

    Since Dolores and the car are both registered in the Province of Buenos Aires, if we don't pay the fine we can't renew the cedula azul (which is valid for 1 year, only). He was told he has to call the court (?) or some office in Dolores, but they don't pick up the phone. After insisting, my husband was able to speak with a different employee who suggested to go to la Casa de la Provincia de Buenos Aires in Capital. And so he did.

    He negotiated half the price explaining the circumstances (no notification received), and he was given 30 (?) days to pay. We were 'lucky' enough that the PASO made the pesos jump so it is even less money.

    But I agree that the fine system is just another way to spill money from those who have it.

    serafina Hahahaha Argentina.....

    My tickets was not one, but MANY, obvious totally cheat.....since I go most days 4 times a day same route and know the limits very well!!!!

    They also came in quite a bunch.......funny, before never any really, afterwards, since then neither.........

    Looks to me like they wanted to make some money quick.....

    I never paid any......I wait till peso 500 and then we are at square one hahaha

    A friend of mine, needed to renew license and add motorbike, but couldn't do it........but then it turns out there are ways of "making" a deal.........someone takes out all the shit and cashes some cash. I think he got away with a third of amount, (which was probably also already a fictious amount).