Carragee Consulting

La Paz, Mexico vs Paris, France

La Paz, Mexico – Inconsistent Enforcement
My friend Mark Wright was driving a rental car in La Paz when he got pulled over by a cop who demanded $500 or would issue him a ticket for “speeding”.

The cop said they could either pay him or he would force them to go 20 miles back to the station to pay a ticket formally.

He opened up his wallet and offered the guy $30. The cop then inquired with the other passengers how much cash they had, but they didn’t have any and so he was angry but accepted the cash and let them drive on.

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Paris, France – Small infractions, no leniency
A few weeks after our 2019 trip to France we got a ticket in the mail via the rental car company for €100 for going 5km over the speed limit.

The rental company also added an administrative surcharge for paying the ticket and enabling us to pay it later by credit card.

We’d been caught on radar and they provided a fuzzy but distinguishable picture of Matt driving.

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Shaking down rental car drivers is probably a decent income, but also discourages tourists from returning, limiting future income.

Stringently enforcing speeding infractions probably reduces speeding incidents and increases public safety and/or discourages driving.

Implementing the infrastructure to identify speeding remotely and issue tickets by mail must be expensive and seem hard to do in a distributed area.

That cities have different policies and enforcement mechanisms isn’t entirely surprising.

We travel in part to experience alternatives and understand similarities and differences with our own cultures and communities.

Both tickets were irksome experiences, but neither was ruinous of a broadly great trip.