Cooltours Motorcycle Touring in Europe Tip #01; Speeding

Speeding in Switzerland

Once in a while, visitors from abroad who was unlucky enough to get caugh wiht speeding complain about inflexibility of police and/or authority; "Terrible expensive fines!". "They don't warn you in advance when they check your speed! That's traping!" "The guy didn’t want to listen to what I had to explain!" "I got fined for beeing 1 km/h too fast only!"
Yes, I have red some of those story’s on the internet, and, of course, I have experienced them by myself, in many distinction. Swiss policeforces and their style of doing their job seems indeed to be different than others. Reason enough for me, to do a little essay on that topic to scare a bit the too braves amongst you and to take away fear from the feared.

Everybody knows: The average Swiss is correct in every respect (often enough even more than that). Their correctness, in fact, goes way over their ability for spontaneous flexibility or common sense. Of course, to become a cop, you need to be even more distinct on these characteristic. Correctness, obviously, is one of their main requirements at all.

Now, if for instance, the law says, that you’re allowed to ride your motorcycle 80km/h on this road, and the cop who’s checking your speed would tolerate you riding 90km/h or 100km/h… well… what value exactly would it have, establishing and enforcing this laws?

The issue, in many parts of the world, would probably be solved by explanation, speaking and listening to each other or, in short, some negotiation. It most likely would be in the power of the cop to let you off the hook and tell you to be more correct next time, which you still next time wouldn’t because you’re equally trusting in your negotiation skills than you trust in your riding skills. The bad news is: This is not as it works here! There’s no such thing like “variations” if it comes to speeding; Everybody gets the same treatment for the same fault.

You see, fines for speeding within a certain level be within an affordable range. Everything above is going to be heavily expensive for foreigners (as local Police can not take away your driver’s license, in the case of a legal proceeding it'll be very expensive) and, depending on the amount of exceeding these levels, would have the loss of my driving permission as a consequence.

There is no pardon in villages and within city-limits, which is 50km/h. It is again one level tougher if you get caught in a 30km/s section, as they are usually in the neighbourhood of schools! It’s going to be painful from the beginning.

My personal limits are (on the speedometer of the motorcycle or car):
<30km/h, <55km/h, <90km/h, <110km/h and <140km/h. Staying within these limits make sure, that it's not going to be too painfull if bad luck strickes you.

To come to an end on this essay: There’s a big plus on the whole system. As said already above: “You  pay what you see”! So if you see an 80 km/h sign, you know you will get away with 84, but you will pay with 1km/h more. AND: You'll pay same amount than everybody else does. Not more, but also not less.

Same, btw., is valid for shopping, restaurants and most services: If you see a price-tag of CHF 100.00 on a product in a window, you exactly will pay 100.00 for exactly this product. You will not be cheated or ripped off in any causes. YOU PAY WHAT YOU SEE.