Most traffic fines can be avoided for a few thousand forints with widespread fraud

In recent years, the police have identified hundreds of companies and individuals that regularly change the registered owners of the cars in their name, so that their users escape traffic administrative fines.

The traffic blog Traffix first reported the phenomenon, citing internal police information. According to this method, the essence of the method is that in the majority of speeding cases, the motorists who break the rules are not stopped on the spot, in such cases, an administrative procedure is initiated based on the principle of objective responsibility, so the fine must be paid by the owner of the car in principle, if he does not name the perpetrator of the violation, or it does not indicate that the car was stolen or sold before an offense was committed with it.

Decisions on violations are sent by the police within eight days to the owner of the car, who only receives them immediately if he has a Customer Portal registration and previously requested electronic administration. If this has not happened, the post office will deliver the registered letter from the police, which, if the recipient does not accept it, may take several weeks before the presumption of delivery is established.

You then have 30 days to appeal or pay the fine. However, if no reaction is received, the police will notify the government office days later to remove the car with which the violation was committed from traffic. At that point, however, the government office indicates that the car has already changed hands, and no sanction can be applied to the new owner.

Car trading companies can sell and buy vehicles among themselves free of charge, according to Traffix, they ask interested parties for a few thousand forints, and fraudulent businesses often run in the name of homeless people, who cannot be found by the authorities with any official letter, and when they accumulate too much debt , then the business will simply collapse.

Among the violations listed in the twenty-first paragraph of the Road Traffic Act, in addition to speeding, there are illegal crossings at railroad crossings, running through red lights, using the highway’s stop lane, and violating the rules on no entry and mandatory direction of travel, as well as in nature conservation areas traffic without permission. In addition, there may be car transcription fraudsters among those who drive away from gas stations without paying, or those who fail to pay the toll.

Miklós Herpy, a traffic lawyer, told Telex that the number of abuses of this type would be significantly reduced if the law on the registration of cars was changed, so that the prerequisites for a fee-free registration include that there is no pending administrative procedure or an unsettled administrative fine related to the car.

In the case, the police provided the portal with the information that the open claims for administrative fines based on the principle of strict liability exceeded HUF 10 billion between 2020 and the end of 2022, but part of this was due to the fact that violators requested the option of payment in installments or payment deferrals. At the same time, also in this period, a further 2.5 billion forints in fines for failure to pay road tolls were collected among the accounts receivable, and another nearly 1.7 billion forints were not paid by motorists for violations that did not fall within the scope of objective responsibility.

The traffic police initiated criminal proceedings in these cases due to suspicion of budget fraud, the investigation is carried out by the National Tax and Customs Office.

The ORFK also announced that they want to reduce the possibility of evading traffic fines with a comprehensive review of the traffic rules system and legislation based on the new KRESZ government decision.