My Fine is Lucca

Jeremy got fined €300 for being in a park in Rome after closing time.

Reading this reminded me of a letter I got in the mail this spring from the Commune di Lucca, Italy notifying me that, a year earlier, I’d transgressed into a restricted traffic zone — a ZTL —  while there on a visit.

Detail from a traffic infraction, in Italian

The infraction had made its way from Lucca to my car rental agency, Sixt, and then back to Lucca, and onward to me. The journey took a long time. 

I have to hand it to them: the completeness of the ZTL-violating bureaucracy was impressive, down to the availability, accessible by logging into a violation website, of a timestamped photo of my offending car snapped by the CCTV:

A black and white Photo of a vehicle, highlighting the license plate.

Paying the fine—which I did because I’d like to visit Lucca again someday, and don’t want to end up in the Italian slammer—cost me $156, complicated international wire transfer fees included.

Peter Rukavina
Lucca
Italy
Traffic
ZTL
Sixt

Comments

The wheels of Italian justice grind exceedingly slow, but eventually they will indeed catch up with you. I was able to pay online the following morning, so with luck I will be able to visit the park this afternoon.

Re: "complicated international wire transfer fees included".

Have you considered a Wise account, if they are available to Canadian citizens and residents? They come with a European bank account with an IBAN, which makes payments like this easy and cheap: https://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/002774.html

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Photo of Peter RukavinaI am . I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.

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