DGT speeding fines for a car that was never there

DGT fines for a car that was never there: how to appeal

An official notification arrives from the DGT, Spain's traffic authority. Excessive estimulante ilegal. A town more than 600 kilometres from home. The car has never set foot there. And yet, the automatic estimulante ilegal control system has read a licence plate that, on paper, is yours. The scene repeats itself with a frequency that no longer surprises anyone: mass notifications, OCR reading, and an owner — often a company — required to identify the driver within 20 days. The problem is not just the fine. It is that the burden of proof has shifted sides without anyone voting for it.

What the DGT requires when the car belongs to a company

The procedure is mechanical. When the vehicle's owner is a company, the administration does not issue the fine directly: it sends a request for the driver to be identified within 20 days. Only afterwards does the actual penalty arrive. This step, designed to prevent companies from diluting responsibility, becomes a labyrinth when the vehicle was never at the scene.

The first reasonable reaction is to request the photo. It is not a whim: automatic licence plate reading systems (OCR) fail. They confuse a letter with a number, alter the order of characters, read a dirty or poorly lit plate. There are documented cases where the photograph showed a car of the same model with a similar plate, one digit out of place. Once the appeal letter was submitted, the file just sat there. Another affected person provided proof of work on the day of the alleged offence and got off. The conclusion repeated among participants: they shoot at anything that moves, and if it sticks, it sticks.

Duplicate plates and fake plates: the system's black hole

There is a more uncomfortable scenario. The plate of the penalised vehicle may be an exact replica of yours, fitted to another car. It is not science fiction: there are cases of people who discovered their plates were being used to commit fuel thefts at petrol stations hundreds of kilometres away. One driver received a court summons for an unpaid fill-up 500 kilometres from his home; he lost a whole morning proving it was not his car. Another got a speeding fine for a Ferrari he obviously did not own. His response was impeccable: happy to pay, where do I collect the car?

The pattern repeats: the administration shows remarkable efficiency in issuing mass notifications and considerably less in verifying whether the penalised vehicle matches the owner. A stolen car can take months to turn up, but generates penalties with tow-truck removal in the meantime. The paradox is that the citizen trying to prove innocence faces a system that, in practice, operates as if the radar's presumption of accuracy were absolute.

How to file an appeal without having it thrown out

The strategy repeated with the most success has three legs. First: formally request the photographic evidence supporting the complaint. Second: argue that the reported plate did not travel through that place on the stated date, which points to a reading error by the automatic system. Third: submit it through the official registry, in person or online, with proof of submission. Email will not do: they can claim it never arrived or was deleted.

Failing to answer the allegations or doing so without reasoning leaves the driver defenceless, and that voids the file if the case goes to court. The administration, however, rarely concedes: it litigates for free and judges do not always award costs. So it is worth measuring the effort. Some distinguish between fighting what has a real basis and wasting time on nonsense, especially when there are citizens breaking the law red-handed who can be caught easily.

What happens when someone else drives the car

The obligation to identify the driver falls on the owner. If the vehicle belongs to a company but is used by a single person, the procedure becomes a bureaucratic routine. The question hanging in the air is another: can you not lend the car to a son, a partner or a brother-in-law? The legal answer is yes, but the identification must be reliable. If the person named later denies it, or a deceased person or an elderly relative with no connection to the vehicle is named, the penalty can fall more heavily on the owner.

There lies the crux of the matter. The system demands from the owner a standard of evidence that the administration itself does not apply when issuing the fine. And meanwhile, the clock runs: 20 days to respond, weeks to receive the final penalty, months if appealed. The affected party who started out asking for a photo ends up learning administrative law without ever having asked to.

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The photo, when it arrives, usually settles the case. When it does not arrive, the file remains in a limbo from which no one fully escapes. The system is designed so that most people pay. Those who do not discover that the burden of proof is a prettier word than it seems.