In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
Wondeful! What a lovely scam! :bigergrin:
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
Oh dear, this is one huge over-simplification by the BBC! I believe Perugia was one of the first cities to introduce these T-Reds, and in the first month of operation (July, probably 2004) they generated more than a million Euros of revenue for, errm, can't remember if it all went to Perugia council, or to the franchise which operated the T-Reds. They turned them off for August (?), then put them back on again. In October or so, the local public bus company carried a sackful of fine notifications to the Council, and put the question 'are you going to throw all of these away, or do you still want a public transport system?" (Presumably the Council saw the light, because buses still run!)
Meanwhile, many motorists 'paid up' just for an easy life....until....a higher court agreed with the motorists' organisations that these fines were completely illegal for about a thousand bits of Italian law, so anybody who had been fined could (if they could be bothered) reclaim the payment. So, either various bits of Italian law were mended (unlikely) or the T-Reds were adjusted in order to conform.
Except they didn't! Another good 'scam' - if you like - came about a year after the court case, when the motorists (allegedly) vandalised the locks on the data-collection boxes located on the traffic lights, and then claimed that vandalitic jokers were tampering with the data......and so the intervening fines could again be reclaimed. So they fixed the locks, and centralised data collection. Then the Council took the franchise operator to task for not giving them any fine money - which of course had been, in good part, returned to the 'innocent' motorists.
But, with unusual persistence for Italy, these T-Reds are up and running again - (though I've no idea where the BBC gets the idea that three seconds is allowed, all the discussion is about milliseconds!) - and I believe that the car bodywork trade association are negotiating ten milliseconds as an effective 'bailout figure' for their operations! There is a lot of money in shunts. Of course the councillors and police want a bit of the action, who can blame them!
This doesn't answer your question but apparently much the same is going on in London....I know a barrister that was caught out...said it was easier to put up and pay up. So be aware this type of thing doesn't only happen in Italy.