Your details will be recorded simply for contesting an incorrect parking ticket!

[Pickles]

According to Midi Libre, Claude Gueant (Minister of the Interior) has signed an arreté creating a database of all motorists who contest PVs (eg parking tickets, speeding tickets, etc), down to even the smallest parking ticket. The alleged aim of this is to collect statistics and build up a (very detailed) profile of those who challenge PVs. Ostensibly, this information is not supposed to be used in the consideration of contestations of future PVs, but if that is so, why has it not been categorically stated that those who are successful in their challenges should have their details removed from the database?

As someone whose car received a parking ticket for a town that it had never visited, during a period in which it was in an airport car park (the traffic warden had written down the wrong reg no), I would feel somewhat worried that a previous mistake by an administrator or parking warden could in some way be used against me in the future.

From what I have seen, the cloning of vehicle registrations (in France and elsewhere) can already cause a nightmare for those affected - this new database will add insult to injury!

The arreté can be found at:

http://cnpp.ysance.com/article.php3?id_article=15326

[NormanH]

I presume this is heavy-handed dissuasion after the decision the other day that motorists have the right to challenge fines.

Don't forget that here it is often a "police" matter even if it is only the Police Municipale..

Another example of the repressive policies of "Puante", who has never actually been elected...

[Sprogster]

There is an increasing problem of cloned number plates in France, with innocent drivers receiving multiple GATSO speeding tickets in the post, as someone else drives around using your car reg.

A recently widely reported case in Brittany involved a deceased individual in France, with the elderly widow receiving multiple speeding tickets in the post addressed to her husband who had died two years previously. Despite the fact she can prove her husband is dead, his ancient Renault 5 subsequently scrapped, the photo of the car caught numerous times speeding being a different make and model being used hundreds of miles away and therefore an obvious case of cloning, she has been told she must pay the fines amounting to several thousand euros first, before her appeal will be heard. Money she does not have.

[Stuarta]

Moving slightly off topic - as a previous victim of cloning - not so much in the sense of fake speeding tickets - more like "no, you can't get a CT for this vehicle - it doesn't exist!", I can confirm that, although it is a very long, drawn out procedure and the vehicle is not able to be a) registered, b) insured or c) used throughout, in my case it did eventually come to a close - after a period of about 2 years had elapsed since I lodged a complaint. Unfortunately, they dropped the case as they couldn't prove anything against anyone (no word as to whether they actually found the culprit - almost certainly someone from a "depot vente" outfit that I had left my car for sale with).

The vehicle is now "alive" again, reregistered, insured and locked in a friend's garage-waiting for me to buy a new house and start using it again.

In this case. at least, there was light at the end of the tunnel. It was just a very long, dark tunnel.