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Prior parking ticket in Italy many years ago - any chance I get arrested?

reajackson

10+ Posts
Morning:
Anyone have any data on travel from Switzerland to Italy in re to prior Pisa area limit travel zone (ZTL) ticket 2007 that I did not pay as it was just absurd. Curious if I have any chance of getting arrested for non payment - this ticket was in Pisa in a restricted zone where the signage was non existent - I now understand that the Zona Limita in these sorts of cities take a photo as you travel through them without proper authorization - pesky stuff to say the least - I now understand what these Zones are about.
Any thoughts? I suspect there is a limit on fines - 5 years perhaps.
Thanks in advance.
Rj
 
If it was in a rental car they probably charged your credit card months after you got home. If it was on a Sunday or holiday you may have just gotten lucky.
 
If you haven't received continuous notifications, then I believe your fine is not relevant anymore, since it's been over ten years, and was a very minor offence. As ncp said - if it was a rental, it's been charged already.
 
Since you say that you received the ticket, I am assuming you were driving your personal car. In that case they do know who you are. Unlike many years ago when everything was done on paper, now everything is in a database and easily retrievable.

I don't know how efficient the Italian police are, but if you were stopped for a traffic violation and the policeman checked for wants and warrants, your unpaid violation might turn up.

It's probably too late to contest it unless you took a contemporaneous photo of the street where you entered the ZTL and showed there was no signage. One way to be safe is just pay the ticket. How much was it?
 
We got 3 ZTL tickets, within 6 minutes, in Bologna, on a Sunday in a bus lane, maybe ten years ago. We were driving a rental in my husband's name, and the ZTL was totally unmarked. The 800 Euro tickets arrived almost a year later. We were in communication with our Italian hosts at the time, who checked it out for us - unmarked! The process to appeal included writing it all out in Italian. If we lost, they would double the fines! They advised we pay. My defiant husband refused. I don't know if the records remain. So, now we rent the cars in my name. With all the automated speed traps now, even in small towns, we did get a ticket on our last trip for backing into a ZTL to turn around, which I promptly paid! But, we've had no further bills from Bologna.
 
I doubt it would be an issue now. In 2011, I apparently got caught speeding on camera in Gaeta, in a rental car. I received a notice from Hertz, or Avis, about it, and it said the police would follow up with a notice for the fine. It never came, and so I never paid. I would have, but had no way to do so.

I've rented cars several times since, and there was never any issue or mention of it.
 
My rental car people, Luigi & son, notified me when I got home last trip of a speeding ticket. They asked which cc to use for payment, I advised and that was it. Easy....
I couldn't keep track this trip, of all the speed cameras! Lots of new ones on the autostrada, which is being worked on about every 15 miles or so. What an experience!
 
WAZE is functional in Italy and is a big help with the speed cameras, but I'm not sure I would use it to tell me where the ZTL zones are. After many decades of driving in Italy, I've decided that the signage is there, it's just my inability to see and process timely that is the problem.

The couple of speeding tickets we've accrued were handled in different ways -- one was through the credit card company; the other, through an on-line payment site. We've never had a ZTL ticket, but my wife's brother racked up over $800 in fines on one ill-fated trip into Florence.
 
One of the good things about Google Maps is that in the detailed description of a route, it tells you when you are entering and leaving a ztl/toll zone. If you combine Street View with that, you can usually also see where the sign is. Good for planning, I'm not sure what you hear during the driving itself.

ztl.png
 

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