Driving here 4 (four) years on a car & motocycle. Guess what? No tickets Not even a parking ticket.

I just obey the law

I dunno, out west, they tend to look the other way if the 'hot donut' sign is on up at the local coffe house. I remember one time blazing flat out across Kansas at 120-130mph as there was nothing out there between me and KC, I didn't even pass any cars for about an hour. Then, at some point, I saw a glimmer in my rear view mirror, so I pulled back a little, down to 95 or so, and the next time I looked up, I saw a Kansas Statie blowing my doors off, no lights, hauling it to the next exit. This was back when it was still 55mph nationwide. I nearly wet my pants. A similar experience in Wyoming and the passing Statie even waved as he blew past.

Can't do that up in New England, though, as even with the limits and the intolerance, there are just too many cars. Wyoming is difficult not to drive through at 2x the limit, especially since even if you fall asleep at the wheel on the interstate, there's not much to slow you down or crash into.

Or if you're in Maryland, the slow drivers all drift left keeping everyone else from passing.

Holy crap, I'm sharing my bandwidth with a posse of hardened frickin' criminals on this site......

Just do what we do in Masshole-achussetts; pass on the right.

I used to love the MD Staties doing a rolling roadblock on the beltway in the morning to get folks to slow down...as if that was all that effective.

And I'm thrilled at being thought of as a hardened criminal in CH. I need to have my lead foot amputated sometime I suppose.

some interesting reading.........

Überschreitung:InnAusAutum 1-5 km/h40.-40.-20.-um 6-10 km/h120.-100.-60.-um 11-15 km/h 250.-160.-120.-um 16-20 km/h V240.-180.-um 21-25 km/h VV260.-über 25 km/hVVV

pity it didnt copy over properly, check out the link for speeding fines..


http://www.linker.ch/eigenlink/verkehrsbussen.htm

I get one on average every 100,000KM, it would be less than that as I got 1 2 days running!

I've covered this before in detail

Trust me.
It won't last.

I also drove 4 years without a ticket.
And then... an unfamiliar route, was slightly lost, going downhill, flash, blitz...FINE

About " I've never seen a car with an inaccurate spedometer"

How would you know if it is accurate or not?

I'd believe that CH was all about concern for public safety and following the posted limit, but when you put a speed cam on the downhill side of a hill, I think that's just another form of revenue generation. Especially since I saw one of those cameras in my rear view mirror on a tiny, narrow, windy road that some asshat in a yellow sports car passed me on the uphill side without issue and at a much greater risk to public safety than someone getting busted going a few KM over the limit going downhill.

I think what I find most worrisome about driving and speed in CH is just how little awareness there appears to be with regard to safety in so many drivers. I either have a constant appendage on my bumper so close that I count the nosehairs on the driver or, like last Sunday with some crazy motorcycles on a narrow mountain road, get people passing on roads at high speed in extremely dangerous situations and nearly causing an accident.

Speed cameras won't fix those folks, but real live human cops popping up at random might.

Since you asked...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedometer

The basic upshot is that in EU countries, and Switzerland doesn't make any of it's own cars, speedometers are not allowed to read so that the driver will be speeding if they are indicating a legal speed. The error is typically less than 4% so most people don't notice.

GPS devices are not covered by this law. But the penalties for an automaker getting this wrong are extreme. Practically speaking, if someone is speeding, they are either making a mistake and inadvertently overspeeding or they are deliberately breaking the law. If they are blaming the equipment then either the car is incorrectly maintained or the manufacturer is going to be fined big time.

__________________
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Welcome to Switzerland. More will follow.

Actually, the upper error limit is almost 16% (and the lower is 0%).

Tom

Actually, speedometers are designed in a such way, that they can show incorrect speed only in smaller direction, i.e., it can show your speed as 50 km/h but in reality it is 47.

Usually you cannot imagine your speedometer showing you speed as 47 km/h while you are driving at 50. This will be detected during "expertise" checks and you will be asked to fix this.

Which is exactly what I said.

Tom

Inadvertently overspeeding. I like that. That's the reason I've had 3 tickets in ten years - 120, 40 and 40 CHF. Mistake kind of implies that it wasn't my fault, and it was. But I didn't do it deliberately.

When I pass those signs that tell you how fast you're going, they're consistently 10% under what my speedo says. At least, on my previous car. I've not checked with my new one.

Swiss authorities are totally obsessed with speeding but many other aspects of safe driving or safer roads are completely ignored. If I just think about the irresponsibility of setting up all those dangerous death traps (aka "art") in the center of many roundabouts it gets my blood boiling.

Well, automatic speed traps in the right place generate tons of revenue while real human cops tend to cost a lot of money...

Other than speed, you also have to watch out for traffic lights. My husband received a 250CHF fine for passing the traffic light 0.01s after it turned red.