Rotterdam residents receive piles of unjustified fines due to a screw on someone else’s license plate

In association with

Rijnmond

NOS News•today, 10:12 PM

A man from Rotterdam has been wrongly receiving parking fines from the municipality of Breda for two years. This is due to a screw on a license plate of a car in the Brabant city.

According to the man, he received the first fine from Breda in August 2022, when he was on holiday. He assumed that someone had borrowed his car and had been to Breda. However, that turned out not to be the case. After investigation at the municipality, it turned out that a different car was in the scan photo; his parking ticket was revoked.

After that, the fines continued to come in, up to four per week. Each time he objects and each time the fine is withdrawn. That has now happened almost fifty times, Rijnmond writes.

“Every time I get an email saying it’s an error and the car involved is not my car.” The municipality of Breda says that the license plate will be exchanged with another one that differs by one letter. “I have a B, and he or she has a D,” said 42-year-old Abdullah. The car also has a different color and is of a different brand than that of the Rotterdammer.

The Rotterdam resident decided to do further research himself. He asked someone in Breda to take a photo of the car in the street where all the parking fines come from. The culprit turned out to be a screw in the middle of the letter D on the license plate. “As a result, the scan car reads a B,” he explains.

Abdullah suspects that the owner of the car lives there in Breda and has a parking permit. “Only that scan car thinks every time a car from South Rotterdam is parked.”

The municipality has confirmed that the recurring error must be due to the screw, but the scan car continues to register Abdullah’s car. “I’m so tired of it. I have to make sure it works out every time. I spend so much time on it.” Other authorities cannot do anything, the man tells Rijnmond.

A spokesperson for the municipality of Breda tells the broadcaster that an adjustment has been made to the system, which means that from now on, Rotterdam residents will no longer receive parking fines.