Switzerland’s obligatory motorway ‘vignette’ car sticker must be placed on the outside of the vehicle’s windshield using its own ‘sticky’ side – and it seems that using an incorrect sticky tape can land you before the country’s highest court.
There’s a stereotype that the Swiss are irritatingly officious about sticking to the letter of any rule – that may be exaggerated, but this latest tale from the country’s Federal Court does little to dispel the notion.
The Federal Court, Switzerland’s highest judicial authority, handles appeals that had already been ruled on by lower courts. It doesn’t matter how important or ‘trivial’ the cases are — federal judges examine all the appeals that are brought to them.
A recent such case involved the motorway sticker.
This is what happened
The motorway vignette must be affixed through it ‘sticky’ side.
That’s the rule and everyone must…stick to it.
This is intended to ensure that owners of a vehicle purchase a 40-franc vignette for each automobile and not use the same one, switching it for one car to another.
A vignette that is not affixed in the correct manner could indicate that the driver is not following the rules.
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Adhesive tape
As Swiss media reported on July 17th, in mid-December 2022, a man was stopped at a customs port in Rheinfelden, Aargau.
Border officials found that his vignette was attached with a double-sided adhesive tape and could be easily removed.
They immediately suspected him of cheating and reported him to law enforcement authorities; as a result, the cantonal court sentenced him to a fine of 300 francs for’ forging official stamps’.
However, the driver filed an appeal with the Federal Court — whose rulings are final.
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What happened next?
The complainant explained to federal judges that he had reattached the vignette with a double-sided adhesive after it had detached itself from the windshield of his car.
But it soon fell off again and this time, he affixed it with a “permanent” adhesive.
In other words, his intention was not to commit fraud but to ensure that the vignette stays affixed to the windshield.
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Benefit of the doubt
The court handed down its verdict on June 25th. In it, the judges reaffirmed that the vignette must be affixed directly to the windshield and may not be transferred to another vehicle afterwards.
Furthermore, once it is removed from the vehicle, it is no longer valid.
However, the court did recognise that in order to be punishable by law, the man’s actions had to be driven (no pun intended) by the ‘intent to cheat’ — that is, acting in full knowledge of the illegality of his deed — rather than by the innocuous circumstances he described.
The judges have therefore referred the case back to the cantonal court, which must now re-examine all the evidence and determine whether the use of the double-tape was indeed ill-intentioned.
