Dutch speed cameras rubbish with foreign plates
Last year a friend asked me to check a series of fines he received from France in French (in error), stating he had to pay the maximum fine for speeding even though he never got the original fines, which were for a lot less. Although an administrative mess, at least French speed cameras can read Dutch license plates. It took the Netherlands until sometime last year to be able to properly read French license plates on speed cameras and stop being the laughing stock of French speed freaks.
However, we’re still laughing stock to anyone that doesn’t have a Dutch, French, Swiss, German or Belgian license plate: the software in Dutch speed cameras can’t read anything else. The Dutch government keeps making lame excuses, while other European countries seem to have figured out how speed camera software works.
This also means that Dutch speed cameras don’t fine the notoriously fast driving Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians and Latvians who probably know all this and not suffer the consequences. It also attracts comments about the Dutch ‘paying for everybody’s mistakes’, as it is easier to nail locals for speeding that trying to decipher a Polish or Latvian address and registration that cannot be easily checked on the side of the road.
Speeding is dangerous, and apparently the Dutch government doesn’t feel that road safety is a priority.
(Link: www.flitsservice.nl, Photo by Heiloo Online, some rights reserved)
The locals are not being nailed. They’re being made to pay for violating traffic laws. Violations that they committed themselves.
So the ones who make the comments about the Dutch ‘paying for everybody’s mistakes’, are just employing straw men arguments. They’re paying for their own mistakes.
Update: the French government agreed back in November that I shouldn’t have to pay the extra fine and that paying the original fines would be fine. I’m still waiting for the original fines (and wondering if the car will be confiscated next time we drive through France)…
I kind of doubt that it’s a question of being able to read the plates, rather it’s a question of setting up the international agreements to forward the fines on to people and for France (for example) to get permission to link my license plate to me.
[…] in 2015 we told you about how rubbish Dutch speed cameras are with foreign plates, and told you that “speeding is dangerous, and apparently the Dutch government doesn’t […]