It will only be reduced if you pay it before the deadline. It’s quite likely that the delay between the fine arriving and you returning to the UK to pay it will make that impossible.
Yes you don’t get long to pay it at the “reduced” rate.
A few years ago, I read that there was also a recognised minimum time to stop at a stop sign - 3 seconds. So that’s what I do now - count “one Mississippi, two…” etc.
There’s a lot of people doing that here. As I understand it, if they have blagged some sort of insurance then it’ll be rendered null and void if the car hasn’t been registered in France within the required period.
And many of these aren’t “poor” people - they just seem prepared to “wing it”. All well and good until they hit you…or me…or some other poor unfortunate legal road user.
Fortunately that’s an urban myth, insurance companies can’t wriggle out of third party responsibility like that. the law makes sure they don’t. Simply, most reputable French insurers won’t issue a full year’s cover on a foreign registered car these days, they issue the vignettes a month at a time and if after 3 months you still don’t have a carte grise, and there is no genuine reason for the delay, they will normally cancel it and refuse to issue any more vignettes.
Answer - keep to the rules of the road , obey speed limits and you won’t get fined. Why should the police not conceal their presence to catch drivers who could kill someone?
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I was thinking more of those people who drive round on British insurance that they’ve got. Would their insurers stump up for an accident here?
Yes but if they discover that the policyholder has failed to declare a “material fact”, ie something that would affect the policy T&Cs - such as no longer being UK resident, since this is usually a condition of being offered cover by a UK insurer - they can (and do) take steps to recover from the policy holder any costs they’ve had to pay out to a third party. This is usually clearly stated in the policy T&Cs.
Yes I agree, the idea is to stick to the speed limit, but in modern cars it is very easy to drift a few kms above the limit, especially in urban area’s. What do you do, spend all you time watching the speedo or spend all your time watching what’s happening in front of you.
I know what you’re saying, a few kph this way or that doesn’t make a lot of difference, but being charitable I suppose the point is to not let people develop exactly this kind of casual attitude to speeding and rules of the road in general. I guess that’s the point of the fines, to stop folks being so casual about it.
Well that, and because they’re a nice little earner of course.
But a few fines doesn’t half focus the mind, and you discover you can do it if you have to.
“A material fact” - hmmmm, such as certain people I know of driving around France in UK plated vehicles that are officially on a SORN (Statutory Off Road Notification). I can’t imagine the insurance implications when there is an accident 
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It’s not a fair world is it. When I lived in the UK I had my motorhome on SORN for a year or so while it was being restored. When it was finished I took it for an MOT, and while it was parked outside the MOT centre it got clocked and a fine for having a SORN’d vehicle parked on the highway turned up in the post, and it was no end of hassle to get it withdrawn though I did in the end. Some people seem to get away with everything and some people get away with nothing. 
My GPS will warn me if I am over the limit and when I drive through a 50 limit I put my automatic speed control on.
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SORN is strictly about road tax/UK vehicle excise duty. The british insurance companies don’t care whether it is taxed or not, only that the car has a current MoT
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I wasn’t aware they even cared whether it has a current MoT, as long as it’s in a roadworthy condition. Otherwise if your car was off the road for a while and the MoT ran out, you wouldn’t be insured to drive it to the MoT station for a new test.
I think that you are missing the point. A vehicle declared SORN has to be kept off the road in the United Kingdom. By being SORN the vehicle does not have to be taxed and insured and therefore its owner does not get a continual stream of warning letters and fines when the DVLA computers notice that it doesn’t have current insurance, road tax or an MOT. It’s a fairly common expat move to bring a vehicle to France, SORN it to remove it from the DVLA’s active database then continue to use it without registering it in France. Many of these vehicles are insured through French companies. If a SORNed vehicle is involved in an accident in France and the ‘truth’ comes out it is likely that the insurance company will pay third party claims then start legal action to reclaim the money from the owner. The gendarmerie probably won’t be so polite.
This is exactly what I did with my own vehicle back in 2003, and certainly at that time it was perfectly legal in respect of the laws of both the UK and France to do so. I checked the legal position thoroughly ----- well as an ex traffic cop I would. (Takes cover in case of incoming brickbats. 
)
The SORN form asked me where the vehicle was being kept, and so I entered my french address. The French rules did not require me to register the vehicle with a french number because I had owned it in the UK. Only if I sold or otherwise transferred ownership of it did it need to be re-registered here in France.
For insurance I went to Aviva here in France. I was with Norwich Union in the UK and as Aviva are their parent company I was even able to keep my ‘no claims bonus’. Certainly Aviva had no problem whatsoever with me having a french address and an english registration plate on the vehicle for many years.
The relevant rules and regs change from time to time. It’s just a matter of knowing exactly what they are in order to stay ‘legal’.
SORN did not exist in 2003.
I think that if you had an MoT properly booked at your nearest testing station then you were insured (provided you had insurance obviously ). Bet the nearest testing stations to Dover and Folkestone do a roaring trade!
It had been booked in, it was insured and they did eventually let me off, but it took absolutely months before they confirmed it and what annoyed me most was the wording of the letter - can’t remember it now but it implied that I was a grubby little worm of a law-breaker who was grovelling and begging mercy and they were being magnanimous. For goodness sake, it was parked OUTSIDE AN MOT STATION - and I hadn’t even parked it there, I’d left it on the garage forecourt, off the road 