Want to challenge what you consider to be an unjustified traffic fine? That will soon no longer be an option.
Getting a traffic fine is of course annoying. You often know whether it is right or wrong. In the latter case you are not alone. There are parties that help to contest a traffic fine. But a major change is about to happen on January 1, 2024, which will cause those companies to stop, it seems.
What is going on?
A change in the law will come into effect on January 1. This passed silently through the House of Representatives at the end of last week, message BNR. From January 1, the reimbursement of legal costs will decrease significantly. That fee is exactly the part of the profit margin that such a company takes to represent you. If that compensation decreases, it will be a lot less lucrative for companies to object to traffic fines. The cost reimbursement will be reduced by 75% to 90%. So significant.
The companies don’t leave it at that. Both Verkeersboete.nl and kosten.nu have started an online petition. Of course, you would almost say, because they want to save their own business operations. Yet these types of companies are a real help if you are indeed dealing with an unjustified traffic fine. We are not talking about being caught driving too fast, but, for example, an unjustified observation by a police officer that you really disagree with.
The petition is going fast. At the time of writing, it has already been signed more than 14,000 times. The legal costs compensation now amounts to 1,000 euros for a case. As of January 1, this will drop to 300 euros
Contest fine
There are of course two sides to the story. There are companies that want to save their business operations. So it is logical that there will be pushback from that corner. Then there are also the people who always challenge their fine through those parties. Even though the fine was justified. By making a case out of it, they hope to be proven right and that the traffic fine will be thrown into the shredder. Due to today’s bizarrely high fines, it can easily save hundreds of euros. And that’s worth it. The knife cuts both ways in that regard.
On the other hand, it can of course happen to you that you have really wrongly received a traffic fine. You then want to challenge this with the right help that comes from such a company.
The change in law did not come out of the blue. The popularity of contesting a fine has increased enormously. In 2020 there were still 2,350 cases. This number is expected to rise to 12,000 (!) in 2023. As a result, legal costs reimbursements will also increase. From 1.1 million euros in 2020 to an expected 7.9 million euros in 2023.
Increasing fine amounts, increasing appeals
The increasing fine amounts are also a reason for more and more people to challenge their traffic fine. The average fine for a traffic violation in 2022 was €84.16. In the case of a speeding violation, we are talking about €62.88. In 2021 it was still €81.15 and €63.60 respectively. Moreover, the number of fines is increasing. From 8,024,118 traffic fines in 2021 to 8,153,043 fines in 2022. An increase of 1.6 percent.
The petition is an attempt to continue to make legal assistance possible. It remains to be seen whether the House of Representatives will do anything with this petition, despite the thousands of signatures.
This article Fighting fines is no longer worth it for ordinary citizens first appeared on Autoblog.nl.
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