Municipalities make money from traffic fines. In the first ten months of the year it was a record: 1m3 billion in municipal revenues. And the primacy, according to a Codacons investigation, goes to Lombardy.
From January to October this year, Italian municipalities collected almost 1.3 billion euros from fines for violations of the Highway Code, 1,294,799,772 euros to be exact. A figure that could grow further as the Christmas holidays approach and traffic increases and therefore approach or exceed the billion and a half reached in 2023, when an increase of 6.4% was recorded compared to the previous year.
But where do you pay more? The Codacons survey highlights Lombardy in first place with 324 million euros, followed by Lazio with 130 million and Emilia-Romagna with 129 million. At the other end of the table we find Molise, which collected just 1.4 million euros in the period considered.
Among the large cities with over 250 thousand inhabitants, Milan emerges as the leader with 128.7 million euros in takings, followed by Rome with 88 million and Turin with 43.7 million. Overall, Italian municipalities with populations exceeding 250 thousand inhabitants have collected over 410 million euros, representing an important share of total revenue. Even small municipalities, albeit with small numbers, are not excluded from the phenomenon: municipalities with less than 5 thousand inhabitants have collected 72.7 million euros, while those with a population between 5 and 10 thousand inhabitants have reached 93 million of euros.
Looking at the sanctions per capita Liguria is the region where citizens pay the mostwith an average of 40.1 euros per capita, followed by Tuscany (34.9 euros) and Lombardy (32.3 euros). The situation appears very different in Southern Italy, where the average fines per capita are significantly lower. Molise is in fact in last place with 4.9 euros, followed by Calabria and Sardinia with 8.9 euros, and Sicily with just over 9 euros per person. These data indicate a different incidence of sanctioning in the various Italian regions, also influenced by traffic density, the presence of control infrastructures and the frequency of road monitoring operations.
Beyond the numbers, the critical point of transparency remains on the use of proceeds deriving from traffic fines. According to Codacons, while on the one hand sanctions represent an important source of income for municipal coffers, on the other it is not always clear how these funds are reinvested. Under the law, half of the proceeds from fines should be reinvested in road safety and maintenancea share that rises to 100% for revenue from electronic control devices such as speed cameras. But there is no certainty of this. A survey carried out in September by Quattroruote highlighted how this mandatory destination is often disregarded, with many Municipalities using the proceeds from fines to meet budgetary needs rather than to improve road safety. And the Observatory on road fines, established by the 2023 decree law to monitor transparency in the use of these funds, ended up in a sort of limbo: it should have provided detailed data on road accidents and the management of proceeds annually, but To date there is no certain information on its actual operation.
