Just read this on the beeb. Applies to motorbikes as well so if you’re planning on heading that way anytime soon might want to look into this.
Waze has been warning me of this for a while and I’ve been ignoring it.
Thanks for the info. I’m in France at the moment (in my 2006 car) and luckily have no plans to go near any of the cities mentioned.
We’ll all have to pay more attention to these zones as they spread.
Official site: -
I’m not sure its all automated fines yet.
We stopped in a hotel Rouen earlier in the year in the GF’s Irish registered car. We didn’t realise one was needed there until we arrived, but she hasn’t heard anything since. So, i think the only danger is if you’re actually stopped in a controlled zone by les flics for a check.
She’s over there at the moment in the same car & has just called me to say she’s been flashed by a speed camera. So we’ll see how automated the speeding fine system is! 
I believe they are actually pushing these hard now. Doubt she will get any point as I cannot see it being enforceable but she may well end up with a fine that she will probably need to pay, or sell the car 
The 250 sports a yellow No.2 (Euro3) Crit’Air sticker. As far as I know there is no distinction between a No.2 and a No.1 or any other of the Crit’Air stickers for now, things may well change.
As for the speeding ticket it will come in the post, France and the UK have an agreement to disclose vehicle owner details, that said I’m advised there is no knock on for ignoring them but you do so at your own risk.
Although the car is registered in Ireland, she still has a French driving licence & a house there too, which is where she’s heading. Will be interesting what they do. I understand that if you get done here & have a foreign licence they create a parallel UK one on the DVLA system & put the points on that.
Problem may be that she’s not planning on heading back to Ireland until the end of October. So, if they do send here a penalty notice & fine she won’t know until she gets back. In which case It’ll be interesting if she gets pinged up as she goes through security at Cherbourg port.
One of my friends had the opposite problem. Picked up a speeding ticket in his Haute Savoie registered Land Rover and flew home to Dublin blissfully unaware there was a ticket heading his way to his Chamonix address.
Needless to say it had passed out of any discount period, or normal period for paying and had escalated to serious dosh by the time he opened the envelope on his next visit. It took him months to sort it out. He managed to get them to reduce it to the normal fine.
I’m guessing in your GF’s case they would send it to Ireland, they won’t know her connection with France from the reg number.
More likely she won’t hear from them. I was flashed on the autoroute here in Normandy last year. I heard nowt. I suspect foreign registered vehicles are too labour intensive to deal with.
I got a speeding fine while over there on the bike a couple of years ago so they’ll definitely go after foreign registered vehicles for that, not sure about the emissions stuff though
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I was lucky then. Maybe I wasn’t enough over the limit to trigger a response.
The GF got a fine sent to her French address a few years ago when she got flashed by a camera driving a car with French plates in Germany. She was doing 51kph in a 50!
French speed cameras* on the autoroute are front facers so bikers are all good 
I did wonder why they all slowed down at various points and the flash I got explained why.
*The one I saw, others may be from rear
Article I read said upto 80 Euros if stopped by French plod.
Next year it will be with cameras (automated) and fines over 700 Euros
I looked at the website and it was in English too. You can’t buy the stickers locally and they are posted, so be sure to apply a couple of weeks before travel.
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Ah yes, the interoperability of fines between ‘mainland’ EU countries is long established. I wouldn’t expect gov.ie to be so well plugged-in.
Under French law GPS providers are not allowed report camera positions, Waze has them marked as “Police reported on the road ahead. Are they still there? Yes, or No?” So pretty much everyone knows where they are.
Just be careful, they are not all fixed cameras and not all front-facing. One of my in-laws here in France has been done so often he lost his licence for six months. He was pointing out the various locations to me where he was done. Some were very clever (or sneaky, delete as appropriate). One was positioned like an anti-tank emplacement in defilade on the reverse side of a hill overlooking the road so the hill hid the police car and radar operator.
I regularly see British registered cars and bikes pulled over at the last Péage gate on the A26 to Calais. They know it is better to fine them on-the-spot than send paperwork to DVLA. You can be zapped anywhere on the A26 and the toll booths make a convenient place for them to pull you over.
We’re at the time if year now in Alsace where you often see gendarmes out waiting to pull drivers over as they enter villages. However, it’s too late to hit the brakes once you’ve spotted them. One of their colleagues was hiding in a maize field & recorded you on the NSL road a KM or so further back & this has been transmitted ahead for them to do the necessary.
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Jeez, it all makes touring in Europe harder, eh? We’ve riding in Spain and Portugal later this year. Going to have to do some Googling now to make sure we’re okay.
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Just don’t take the piss and you’ll be fine. Never saw a speed trap in Spain apart from the road in/out of Potes. It was as if they wanted to let you know they were there but couldn’t be arsed hiding behind a bush to catch you.
The worst place is clearly Switzerland were they don’t take kindly to speeding or noisy bikers. They have fines linked to earnings and I was told is one reason many Swiss bad boys hop over to Italy or Germany.
Same with the many French/Swiss/Spanish plod I’ve seen over the years. Much like the British, act like a dick in front of them and expect a ticket, learn where they hang out (villages, approaches to toll Booths) and Google the type of speed cameras in each country.
Oh and one top tip, Portuguese plod don’t react well to the observation that one of them is “a fucking idiot” and it turns out the ones in blue vans carry guns too. 
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Heh, cheers for the advice.
We’ve toured Spain a number of times and never had an issue. Love it there, just wondered if this new emissions restriction thing was spreading over to Spain/Portugal as well.