Yeah actually, I've only gotten the handling fee from hertz on my German tickets.. (25 euro) not the actual fine.. Supposedly the German authorities can try to collect from me directly, however in practice they dont waste their time trying to collect outside of the eu... At least so I've read....

 

I had the same experience. Hertz charged me some handling fee to respond to the ticket, but I never heard from the German authorities. At ED, my factory rep told me that countries like France will chase you down, but Germany doesn't go after non-EU citizens.

 

The fines in Germany are very low, so if it is not worth it, they won't do the efford. Here in Switzerland however... Ehmm I can give you one advice if you ever want to drive in Switzerland and that is: stick to the speedlimit, especially on the main roads. Fines here are rediculously high and they can even put you in jail if they want. Speedcams are more common than roadsigns....

Regarding the Netherlands... Fines there are also becoming very high now and they will indeed do anything to let you pay. Even if it is 5 years after "the crime" haha. (I know from experience... I am Dutch).

 

Not necessarily. I got a ticket driving my ED 650 the day I was scheduled to return the car and fly back to the US. The polizei required payment in full--expensive, don't recall the exact amount--so I handed over almost all of my remaining Euros. Then, back in the states, I get a letter from a German magistrate that the officer did not set the fine properly, so that I still owed about 70 euro more. I responded with the facts of the case in German, but then received another letter demanding payment. Since I travel to Germany often, I figured that I better pay in full.

A couple of summers ago I got a ticket in Norway (going about 58 mph in a 50 mph zone, ie, the national speed limit) while driving a Hertz car. The extremely polite officer told me that I had to pay at a bank before I'd be allowed to fly out of the country. The tariff was about $400! The officer also pointed out that he typically nails German drivers for fines of about $1k as they have trouble adjusting from autobahn speeds

Both of these incidents involved stops by the police as opposed to photo radar tickets.

Spyder

 

On the Porsche Treffen in fall of 2010 one of the participants got caught in a radar speed trap on a back road. Had to pay the fine, then, there and in Euros. Something like 250+ Euros.