Highway Code, new fines already steep: Milleproroghe postpones adjustment to inflation

Undisciplined motorists saved by the Milleproroghe. Among the many forward postponements provided for in the official decree-law of 27 December 2024, the government has also included the one-year suspension of the two-yearly update of administrative penalties for violating the Highway Code. Confirmation of what was anticipated in the first drafts came from the text of the decree now sent to the Senate for conversion into law. A sigh of relief, therefore, for consumer associations and, above all, for drivers, since the update to inflation would have been a real blow to be added to the sharp tightening of administrative penalties in force from 14 February 2024 with the new Highway Code.

The postponement to 2026 therefore goes in the direction of citizens, at least according to what the Ministry of Transport itself emphasises in the report accompanying the Milleproroghe decree now being examined by the Senate. Without the postponement to 2026 of the adjustment to the inflation of fines, the exceptional increase in prices in 2021-2022 would have had to be taken into account, which, due to inflation in that period, had caused the FOI index (national consumer price index for families of factory and office workers published by ISTAT) to vary by +15.6% in the period between December 2020 and November 2022. Really too much even for the administration, which wanted to avoid the double effect of increased penalties resulting, on the one hand, from the entry into force of the new rules on the Highway Code in terms of sanctions and, on the other, the update to inflation 'which would entail an excessive burden on citizens' Not only that. In addition to suspending the update for 2025, the regulation also provides that the update decree that is to be issued by the end of 2025 will take into account inflation for the two-year period 2024-2025.

Even without adjustment for inflation, the cost of fines has already become particularly high in recent weeks. The new Highway Code, in fact, has particularly affected the penalty system. And it is the Ministry of Transport itself that reminds us of this in the illustrative report to the Milleproroghe, such as the fine envisaged for anyone exceeding the speed limit by more than 10 km/h and by no more than 40 km/h, which is raised to between 220 and 880 euro, if the violation is committed within a built-up area and at least twice in the space of a year. On the parking ban, the report again reminds us, penalties are doubled for cases of parking and stopping on intersections or in lanes reserved for parking and stopping buses and all LPT vehicles, as well as in cases of parking in areas reserved for the disabled.