Changing cars and waking up a few weeks later to a stack of tickets in the mailbox. That’s what happened to a Bologna driver in Italy. She received a total of 165 fines for driving in restricted zones, even though she believed she was compliant. Each letter carried the same reason: unauthorized access to a restricted traffic zone or travel in a reserved lane. And the bill kept climbing day after day.
Between November 2024 and February 2025, this driver amassed 165 penalties, totaling about €10,800. Most of them concerned repeated passages beneath Bologna’s electronic gates for the ZTLs (restricted traffic zones) and the city’s reserved lanes. For years she had a disabled placard that legally allowed her to circulate in these areas, which she crosses daily. The real problem wasn’t her driving. It stemmed from a simple license plate entry error recorded when she bought her new car. A minor mistake, but it was enough to trigger this avalanche of fines.
165 Fines in Four Months in Bologna’s ZTLs
It all started when the motorist declared her new car to be associated with her circulation authorization. From that moment, every passage under the control gates triggered an alert. The automated system interpreted the presence of the car in a ZTL or in a reserved lane as an offense. It generated a ticket for every passage. In four months, the records piled up in rapid succession, until they reached the total of 165 fines.
And yet, on paper, everything seemed in order. This driver had held a disability placard for years, authorizing daily travel in these zones. The problem lay in the new plate being registered in the system with two digits reversed. It was most likely a simple data-entry error. The database did not recognize the vehicle as authorized, and the cameras treated every passage as an offense. The total sanctions climbed to about €10,800.
Plate Error, Bomob System, and Dismissal of the Fines
Facing this avalanche of penalties, the motorist did not back down. Represented by lawyer Giulia Zanoli, she challenged the sanctions before the civil division of the justice of the peace. Three separate appeals were filed as the tickets kept arriving. The judges granted these appeals and annulled the vast majority of the fines. It was established that the driver had long enjoyed a valid permit and was legitimately using the ZTLs and the reserved lanes.
The rulings also highlighted that the anomaly originated from a transcription error in the Bomob management system, which is responsible for monitoring access to the restricted zones. A simple reversal of two digits in a license plate was enough to turn an authorized driver into a virtual repeat offender. This case serves as a reminder to motorists with a license tied to their registration that a small administrative slip can come with a very high price tag.
- After switching cars, verify that the license plate declared for the pass is correct.
- Keep the registration confirmations or emails provided by the managing agency.
- Act on the first unusual fine by reporting the error to the relevant department and preserving a written record of the steps taken.
In cities where car access is increasingly filtered by cameras and electronic gates, a detail can change everything. Two inverted digits on a plate can be enough to trigger dozens of fines. A reminder that, beyond the Highway Code, the precision of data linked to vehicles also matters.
