You are driving back to your house in the Dordogne, or heading for the ferry at Calais, when a white flash lights up the windscreen. A speed camera, a radar automatique, has just photographed your number plate. Weeks later, a letter arrives: an avis de contravention, a formal notice telling you that you exceeded the speed limit, stating a fine, and inviting you to pay within 45 days. For a British driver in France after Brexit, that letter raises sharper questions than it does for a French neighbour. Which fine band applies to you, and how many points are at stake? Can the police keep your UK licence at the roadside? What happens if the car is a hire car, or registered in your spouse’s name, or still on UK plates? And if you think the radar was wrong, how do you challenge the ticket without making your position worse?
This guide answers those questions in the order a British driver actually meets them. French legal terms are explained the first time they appear. Every decisive rule is quoted from the text in force and linked to its official source, and three very recent rulings of the criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation, France’s highest criminal court, show how judges apply those rules to radar cases, to hire and company cars, and to tickets where nobody knows who was driving. The procedures below move fast: 45 days to react to the first notice, 30 days once the fine is increased, and immediate decisions at the roadside. Read Part I to understand what the flash has triggered, then Part II to decide whether to pay, to name the driver, or to fight.
I. The flash and what it triggers: fines, points and roadside retention of your licence
A. How French law classifies your speeding and what the ticket really costs
French speeding law works in layers, and the size of your excess over the limit decides which layer you fall into. The starting rule is article R413-14 of the Code de la route, the Highway Code: “Le fait, pour tout conducteur d’un véhicule à moteur, de dépasser de moins de 50 km/h la vitesse maximale autorisée fixée par le présent code ou édictée par l’autorité investie du pouvoir de police est puni de l’amende prévue pour les contraventions de la quatrième classe.” In plain English, exceeding the limit by less than 50 km/h is a fourth-class petty offence, a contravention de quatrième classe, unless the excess is under 20 km/h on a road where the limit exceeds 50 km/h, in which case the fine drops to the third-class scale. That small exception matters enormously on motorways: flashed at 138 km/h where 130 km/h applies, with the 5 km/h technical margin deducted, you sit in the third-class band, not the fourth.
The money follows the class. The official service-public.fr guide to the fixed fine, the amende forfaitaire, for Highway Code offences sets out three prices for each class. Pay at once, in the hands of the officer or within 15 days, or within 30 days if you pay a posted notice online by bank card, and you pay the reduced amount, the minoré: 45 euros for a third-class ticket, 90 euros for a fourth-class one. Wait for the standard notice and pay within 45 days of the offence or of the posting of the notice, 60 days if you pay online by card, and you owe the standard amount: 68 euros third class, 135 euros fourth class. Ignore it, and the fine is automatically increased, majorée: 180 euros third class, 375 euros fourth class, payable within 30 days of posting, 45 days online, with a 20 per cent reduction if you pay that increased notice promptly. The legal engine behind those deadlines is article 529-1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which gives you “dans les quarante-cinq jours qui suivent la constatation de l’infraction ou, si cet avis est ultérieurement envoyé à l’intéressé, dans les quarante-cinq jours qui suivent cet envoi”, and article 529-2 of the same Code, which warns that “A défaut de paiement ou d’une requête présentée dans le délai de quarante-cinq jours, l’amende forfaitaire est majorée de plein droit et recouvrée au profit du Trésor public en vertu d’un titre rendu exécutoire par le ministère public.” The scope of this fixed-fine track is confirmed by article R48-1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which lists Highway Code offences, whether or not they carry a points withdrawal, among the offences extinguished by payment of the fixed fine. Paying therefore ends the prosecution: article 529 provides that “l’action publique est éteinte par le paiement d’une amende forfaitaire qui est exclusive de l’application des règles de la récidive.” But the reverse is equally absolute, and the service-public guide states it bluntly: paying means you admit the offence, and once paid, the ticket can no longer be challenged. Never pay “just to buy time” if you intend to fight.
Points come on top of money, automatically. The same article R413-14 provides that “Toute contravention prévue au présent article donne lieu, de plein droit à une réduction du nombre de points du permis de conduire”, on a sliding scale: one point for an excess between 5 and under 20 km/h, two points between 20 and under 30, three points between 30 and under 40, and four points between 40 and under 50. Below 5 km/h of measured excess, after the technical margin, there is no points withdrawal. Note the mechanism carefully if you drive on a British licence. The French points system debits a French licence; where the registered keeper is pursued only as the person financially liable, which Part II explains, article L121-3 of the Highway Code expressly shields that person, stating that the decision “n’entraîne pas retrait des points affectés au permis de conduire”. If you were the driver, however, expect the withdrawal to be recorded against your French driving record, and if you hold a French licence with a fragile balance, a single motorway flash can push you towards zero. British readers who are unsure which licence they should now hold will find the position explained in our guide to your UK driving licence in France after Brexit, the one-year rule and exchange, which you should read alongside this article before you answer any ticket.
At 50 km/h over the limit, the case leaves the world of tickets entirely. Article L413-1 of the Highway Code states: “Le fait, pour tout conducteur d’un véhicule à moteur, de dépasser de 50 kilomètres à l’heure ou plus la vitesse maximale autorisée est puni de trois mois d’emprisonnement et de 3 750 euros d’amende.” This is a criminal offence, a délit, tried before a criminal court, with complementary penalties that include confiscation of the vehicle if you own it, a driving ban of up to three years that cannot be restricted to non-professional driving, a ban on driving certain motor vehicles for up to five years, and a compulsory road-safety course at your expense. There is no fixed fine, no 45-day letter, no paying online to make it go away. If you are stopped at 190 km/h on an empty autoroute at dawn, you are facing prosecution, and you need a lawyer immediately, not a payment card. Readers facing the parallel nightmare of alcohol or drugs at the wheel should also read our guide to drink- and drug-driving stops in France, roadside tests and suspension, because the retention and court procedure described there applies with equal force here.
B. When the police can keep your licence at the roadside and what the prefect can do next
Being flashed by an automatic radar and being stopped by officers are two different ordeals, and British drivers often confuse them. The roadside flash produces a letter weeks later. The interception, the interception by a patrol, produces immediate consequences. Article L224-1 of the Highway Code, in its version in force, orders officers to retain your licence on the spot, a conservatory retention called rétention, in a listed set of cases that includes this one: “Lorsque le véhicule est intercepté, lorsque le dépassement de 40 km/ h ou plus de la vitesse maximale autorisée est établi au moyen d’un appareil homologué”. In practice, stopped at 40 km/h or more over the limit as measured by an approved device, you hand over your licence and receive a receipt, and you may not drive once the officers leave. This applies to a UK photocard licence exactly as to a French one: the document is retained, and a ban on driving on French territory takes effect while the retention lasts. Arguing at the verge, demanding the calibration certificate there and then, or refusing to hand over the licence only adds offences to your file. Stay calm, note the officers’ unit, the device mentioned in the report, and the exact measured and retained speeds, and call for advice as soon as you are allowed to use the telephone.
Retention is conservatory, meaning temporary and protective, not a punishment. Within days the file goes to the prefect, the préfet, the State’s representative in the department, who decides the provisional measure. Article L224-7 of the Highway Code provides that, seized of a report recording an offence punishable by the complementary penalty of licence suspension, “le représentant de l’Etat dans le département où cette infraction a été commise peut, s’il n’estime pas devoir procéder au classement, prononcer à titre provisoire soit un avertissement, soit la suspension du permis de conduire”. A warning, an avertissement, ends the administrative track, though the criminal prosecution for the offence itself continues. A provisional suspension, by contrast, forbids you to drive for the period fixed by the order. Article L224-8 caps that period: “La durée de la suspension ou de l’interdiction de délivrance du permis de conduire ou de l’interdiction de conduire certains véhicules terrestres à moteur prévues à l’article L. 224-7 ne peut excéder six mois.” Six months is the ceiling for speeding; the one-year extension the same article mentions is reserved for drink, drugs, refusals and hit-and-run cases. The prefect’s order can be challenged before the administrative court, the tribunal administratif, and in urgent cases through the emergency suspension procedure, the référé-suspension, but those deadlines run in days and the file must already be complete, including proof of professional driving need where a restricted licence is requested. Meanwhile the criminal case follows its own path towards the police court or, for the 50 km/h délit, the criminal court, where the judge may impose the three-year suspension mentioned above, credited against time already served under the prefect’s order. Two tracks, two judges, two timetables: that is the single most important thing to grasp about a big roadside stop, and the reason a single letter from a lawyer covering both tracks, administrative and criminal, is worth more at that stage than any argument about the radar itself.
II. How to answer the ticket: pay, name the driver, or challenge before the judge
A. The three doors on the notice: paying, designating the real driver, or filing the exemption request
Every avis de contravention offers three doors, and you must choose within 45 days. Door one is payment, through the official ANTAI site, by telephone, by cheque, or at an approved tobacconist, and it closes the case but admits everything, points included. Door two is designation, désignation: if someone else was driving, you name them. Door three is the exemption request, the requête en exonération, addressed to the public prosecutor’s officer, the officier du ministère public, whose address appears on the notice. The request must use the form attached to the notice and travel by recorded delivery with proof of receipt, and it must carry the right supporting documents, else it is thrown out unread. Choosing the wrong door, or walking through the right one with the wrong papers, is how British drivers lose winnable cases, so each door deserves a close look.
Start with the simplest British situation: the ticket names you, you were driving, the speed is right, and the only question is money. Pay the reduced amount within 15 days, or 30 days for a posted notice paid online by card, and a fourth-class motorway flash costs 90 euros instead of 135. Miss that window but pay within 45 days, 60 online, and you owe 135. Let it slide to the increased notice and you owe 375, reducible by 20 per cent if paid within 30 days of posting, 45 online. These are the service-public figures quoted in Part I, and they apply identically to British and French drivers: neither Brexit nor a UK licence changes the tariff. One warning specific to British residents: the notices are posted to the address on the vehicle’s registration certificate, the certificat d’immatriculation, formerly called the carte grise. If you moved house within France and never updated that address, the 45 days run without you, the 375 euros becomes enforceable under an execution order signed by the prosecutor, and your first news of the case can be a seizure notice from the Treasury. Anyone who has imported a British car should therefore keep the registration details current, a point developed in our guide to bringing your UK car to France, customs, registration within one month and insurance. And if the increased notice arrives for a ticket you never saw, the law gives you a second chance: article 530 of the Code of Criminal Procedure allows a reasoned complaint, a réclamation, to the prosecutor within thirty days of the posting of the increased notice, a complaint “qui a pour effet d’annuler le titre exécutoire en ce qui concerne l’amende contestée”, and the same article keeps that complaint open “tant que la peine n’est pas prescrite” where you can show you never knew of the fine, with a special three-month outer limit “lorsque l’avis d’amende forfaitaire majorée est envoyé par lettre recommandée à l’adresse figurant sur le certificat d’immatriculation du véhicule”, unless you prove you declared your change of address before expiry. For a Briton splitting life between two countries, that registered-letter rule is the provision that most often saves, or sinks, the case.
The second British situation is the car that is not really yours to answer for: a hire car from the airport, a leased car, a car lent by a friend, or the family car registered in your spouse’s name. French law starts from the driver: article L121-1 of the Highway Code states that “Le conducteur d’un véhicule est responsable pénalement des infractions commises par lui dans la conduite dudit véhicule.” But an automatic radar photographs a plate, not a face, so the law adds a financial safety net. Article L121-2 makes the holder of the registration certificate financially liable for certain offences, and specifies that “Dans le cas où le véhicule était loué à un tiers, cette responsabilité pèse, avec les mêmes réserves, sur le locataire”, the hirer. So if you hired the car, the hire company will pass your details to the authorities and the notice will come to you, often with an administration fee from the company on top, which is contractual and cannot be challenged as part of the ticket. If the car belongs to your spouse, partner or friend, the notice goes to them as holder, and they must either pay, designate you with your identity, address and driving-licence reference, or challenge. The designation is made on the form attached to the notice or online through the ANTAI designation service, and it must be exact: a wrong licence number or an illegible name invalidates it. A recent Court of Cassation ruling shows how seriously the courts police this boundary between the driver and the holder. On 30 June 2026, in case number 25-85.861, the criminal chamber quashed a conviction where a registered keeper who denied driving had been found guilty of running a red light on the sole ground that she owned the photographed car and lived where it was flashed. The Court recalled, under Cass. crim., 30 June 2026, no. 25-85.861, that “il appartenait à la juridiction de relaxer la prévenue s’il n’était pas établi que celle-ci était la conductrice du véhicule et de la déclarer éventuellement redevable pécuniairement de l’amende encourue”. Acquittal on the criminal charge where driving is unproven, with possible purely financial liability as holder: that distinction, between guilt as driver and liability as keeper, is the most useful sentence in this whole guide for any Briton photographed in a car registered to someone else.
The third door, the exemption request, is where procedure bites hardest, and it is governed by a provision every British challenger should read twice. Article 529-10 of the Code of Criminal Procedure applies precisely to radar tickets sent to the registered keeper, and it makes the request admissible only “si elle est adressée par lettre recommandée avec demande d’avis de réception, en utilisant le formulaire joint à l’avis d’amende forfaitaire”, and only if accompanied either by one of the listed documents, namely the receipt for a theft or destruction complaint or number-plate usurpation report, a signed letter identifying the presumed driver with identity, address and licence reference, the sale-declaration copies where the car was sold, or the automated-driving-system certificate, or else by proof of a prior deposit, a consignation, “d’un montant égal à celui de l’amende forfaitaire dans le cas prévu par le premier alinéa de l’article 529-2, ou à celui de l’amende forfaitaire majorée dans le cas prévu par le deuxième alinéa de l’article 530”. Two points in that text decide cases daily. First, the deposit is not a payment: “cette consignation n’est pas assimilable au paiement de l’amende forfaitaire et ne donne pas lieu au retrait des points du permis de conduire”, so consigning preserves your challenge and your points while the case is examined, and the sum is returned if the case is dropped or you are acquitted. Second, the prosecutor’s officer checks admissibility first, and an unaccompanied letter, however well argued, is rejected without examination of the merits. The United Kingdom side of the Channel adds one practical note worth keeping: GOV.UK’s official driving abroad guidance reminds British motorists to carry their Great Britain or Northern Ireland licence whenever they drive abroad, plus the V5C log book and insurance certificate for their own car, and to generate a licence check code before collecting a hire car. Keep those documents with the car, because when a designation or a challenge requires your exact licence reference in a hurry, the photocard in the glovebox is what stands between you and a missed deadline.
B. Fighting the ticket before the police court: the radar photograph, the device, and the hearing
If the exemption request is rejected, or if you contest from the start with a deposit, the file goes to the police court, the tribunal de police, the criminal court for petty offences. Article 531 of the Code of Criminal Procedure lists how that court is seized, including by direct summons, and from that moment you are a defendant with full rights of defence: access to the file, legal representation, witnesses, and argument. Three lines of defence dominate radar cases, and each has been tested in the Court of Cassation within the last eighteen months, which is why this guide insists on them and on nothing else.
First, the photograph. Anyone flashed by an automatic radar can ask for the cliché radar, and the service-public guide explains that the request goes online or by post to the automated-offences centre in Rennes, the Centre automatisé de constatation des infractions routières, with a copy of the registration certificate, a copy of photographic identity, and a copy of the notice. Ask for it systematically: the image sometimes shows two vehicles in the frame, an unreadable plate, a motorcycle fairing hiding the rider, or a car that is plainly not yours, and each of those defects feeds either a designation or an acquittal argument. Second, the device. Radar challenges that allege the camera was uncalibrated almost always fail unless they target the two documents the courts actually require. On 28 October 2025, in case number 24-84.434, the criminal chamber rejected a defence that demanded the device’s full metrology logbook on the ground that its type approval had expired, holding that the report’s statements of approval and of a check some seven months before the facts sufficed. The Court’s words, in Cass. crim., 28 October 2025, no. 24-84.434, deserve quotation: “l’homologation du cinémomètre et la date de la dernière vérification suffisent à établir son bon fonctionnement”. A cinémomètre is the technical name for the speed-measuring device. Do not therefore write to the prosecutor demanding calibration certificates you have not seen: request the file, check the approval reference and the last verification date in the report, and only plead a device defect if one of those two pillars is genuinely missing or out of date. Third, the identity of the driver. Where the photograph cannot identify who drove, the prosecution must prove you drove; ownership of the car is not proof. That is the exact lesson of the 30 June 2026 ruling quoted in Part II.A: mere ownership plus residence near the flash site reverses the burden of proof and gets the conviction quashed. At the hearing, the judge who is not convinced you drove must acquit you on the offence, while still being able to hold you financially liable as keeper under article L121-3, a liability that, as noted, carries no points withdrawal, no criminal record entry, and no use for repeat-offender rules.
Two further warnings belong in every honest guide. The first concerns companies and associations: where the flashed vehicle is held by a legal entity, French law separately punishes the failure to designate the driver, and the resulting corporate fine is far heavier than the driver’s. On 20 May 2025, in case number 24-86.765, the criminal chamber corrected a police court that had fined a company only 135 euros after an opposition to a penalty order, recalling under Cass. crim., 20 May 2025, no. 24-86.765 that “en cas de condamnation d’un contrevenant qui a formulé une requête en exonération d’amende forfaitaire, l’amende prononcée ne peut être inférieure à celle qui aurait été due si l’intéressé n’avait pas présenté de réclamation”, and fixing the corporate fine at 675 euros. The moral for British directors of French property companies, and for anyone driving a company car, is double: designate promptly when required, and understand that challenging can raise the bill, because the judge who convicts after a rejected challenge cannot go below the fixed fine, and for entities the scale is multiplied. The second warning is costs. An acquittal returns your deposit and clears the points threat, but a conviction after a fought case can add the court costs and, for keeper-liability findings, leave the fine at the full rate. A lawyer’s pre-hearing review of the photograph, the report’s approval references, and the designation history of the vehicle is therefore not a luxury: it is the triage that separates the tickets worth fighting, unidentified driver, defective designation chain, missing approval trace, from the tickets worth paying at the reduced rate within 15 days.
Conclusion
A French speeding ticket is a small file with large teeth. For less than 50 km/h over the limit, the fixed fine runs from 45 to 375 euros according to speed, promptness and class, with one to four points withdrawn automatically, and payment ends the case but admits everything. At 40 km/h over with an interception, the police keep the licence on the spot and the prefect can suspend it provisionally for up to six months. At 50 km/h over, the case is a criminal prosecution for a délit carrying up to three months’ imprisonment, 3,750 euros, confiscation and a three-year ban. Against the automatic radar, the keeper who was not driving has three orderly exits: pay, designate the true driver, or file the exemption request by recorded delivery on the official form with the documents or the deposit that article 529-10 demands. Before the police court, the defences that win are the photograph, the approval and verification trace of the device, and the burden of proof on the driver’s identity, as the Court of Cassation confirmed in October 2025, May 2025 and June 2026. Keep your registration address current, keep your licence reference with the car, calendar the 45 days from the first notice and the 30 days from any increased notice, and never pay a ticket you intend to challenge. Handled that way, most British radar cases in France end either in a reduced payment with eyes open, or in an acquittal or keeper-only liability with points and record preserved, which is the best outcome procedure can offer.
Need a quick opinion on your case
Flashed by a radar, stopped at the roadside, or facing a 375 euro increased fine in France? Our cabinet offers a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer who handles British driving cases every week. Call 06 46 60 58 22 or write through our contact page with your notice, your licence reference and the date of the facts, and you will be told plainly whether to pay, to designate, or to fight.