How Switzerland can legally seize and auction your supercar

Most countries scale speeding penalties gently: a bigger excess means a bigger fine, and only truly outrageous driving reaches a courtroom. Switzerland made a deliberate policy choice in the other direction. After a series of fatal street-racing crashes, parliament passed the Via Sicura road-safety package, which took effect from 2013 and hard-coded extreme speeding into the criminal law with a mandatory minimum prison term and the power to take the car away.

The reasoning is blunt. Above a certain excess, the state stops treating you as a careless driver and starts treating you as someone who accepted the risk of killing a stranger. Once you cross the numeric threshold, the court has no discretion about the category — only about the sentence within it.

Three provisions of the Road Traffic Act (SVG in German, LCR in French) do the work:

• Art. 90 para 3 SVG creates the qualified offence: driving that knowingly accepts a high risk of death or serious injury, in particular through especially gross speeding. Penalty: one to four years' custody.
• Art. 90 para 4 SVG removes the argument. It lists fixed speed excesses which, once reached, satisfy para 3 by definition — no need to prove your state of mind.
• Art. 90a SVG allows confiscation of the vehicle where the driver committed a serious traffic offence and taking the car is a proportionate way to stop it happening again. Confiscated vehicles are realised, and the proceeds go to the state.

Alongside the criminal case, a completely separate administrative procedure runs at your cantonal road traffic office (Strassenverkehrsamt / service des automobiles). It decides your licence. Winning one does not automatically win the other, and both have their own deadlines.

These are the numbers in Art. 90 para 4 SVG. They apply to the measured speed after the legal technical tolerance has been deducted, so the figure on the report is already in your favour.

Note how unforgiving the 30 km/h line is: 70 km/h on a residential street — the kind of speed that feels almost ordinary on a wide, empty road — is legally in the same box as 200 km/h on a motorway. Swiss cities have converted large numbers of streets to 30 km/h, so this is the threshold most likely to catch a resident rather than a track-day tourist.

This is the part that produces news photographs of Lamborghinis on flatbeds. Where a court finds that confiscation is needed to prevent further offences, it can order the vehicle forfeited under Art. 90a SVG. Police can also impound on the spot at the start of the proceedings, so in practice the car often leaves before any judgment.

Three things surprise people:

• Ownership is not a shield. The measure attaches to the vehicle used in the offence. Leased cars and company cars have been caught, which leaves the driver facing both the loss and a civil claim from the owner or lessor.
• Foreign plates are not a shield. Offences on Swiss roads fall under Swiss jurisdiction. Non-resident drivers can be barred from driving in Switzerland, have the car impounded, and be asked to deposit security before leaving the country.
• Your insurance may walk away. Comprehensive cover can be reduced or refused for grossly negligent conduct, and the third-party insurer that has to pay a victim can claim its outlay back from you personally. That recourse, not the fine, is what bankrupts people.

Swiss monetary penalties above the fixed tariff are not amounts, they are units. The court sets two separate numbers:

• How many day-fines — this measures fault. A serious speeding case might be tens of units; the statutory ceiling is 180.
• What one day-fine is worth — this measures capacity to pay, from roughly CHF 30 up to about CHF 3,000 per unit, derived from your net income, your wealth, and your family obligations.

Multiply them and you see why the same offence can cost CHF 1,500 or CHF 250,000. It is not a punishment for being rich; it is an attempt to make the sting identical regardless of income. The practical lesson for high earners moving to Switzerland is simple: a traffic offence here is priced against your payslip, so it is worth knowing what your Swiss net income actually is.

Article 57b SVG bans devices whose purpose is to detect or disrupt traffic surveillance. In Switzerland this is enforced far more literally than elsewhere:

• Radar and laser detectors are prohibited to sell, own in a vehicle, or use. They are confiscated and destroyed, not returned at the border.
• Camera-warning features in navigation apps — the ones that announce a fixed or mobile camera ahead — must be switched off. Having the function active while driving is treated as prohibited use.
• Community reporting of mobile patrols falls under the same principle, and posting live police-check locations in a group chat has been prosecuted.
• Foreign-registered cars with built-in detectors get no exemption for being in transit.

Section control (Abschnittskontrolle) makes detectors pointless anyway: it measures your average speed between two points, so slowing for a single camera achieves nothing.

If you are stopped for a serious excess, three deadlines matter more than anything you say at the roadside.

• The criminal order (Strafbefehl) becomes final if you do not object in writing within the printed deadline — usually ten days. Missing it ends your case, badly.
• The road office letter gives you a right to be heard on the licence withdrawal. Answer it separately from the criminal case.
• Get a traffic-law specialist early. Measurement method, tolerance deduction and the legal characterisation are where cases are actually won; a lawyer is worth many multiples of their fee at this level of exposure.

And if you are simply new to driving here: exchange your licence within the twelve-month deadline (see the Swiss driving licence exchange guide), because driving on an expired foreign entitlement adds an entirely separate offence on top of any speeding case.

• Road Traffic Act (SVG/LCR), SR 741.01 — Art. 90, Art. 90a, Art. 57b, and Art. 16a–16c on licence measures (Fedlex).
• Swiss Criminal Code, SR 311.0 — Art. 34 and 106 on day-fines (Tagessätze).
• Ordinance on fixed-tariff fines (Ordnungsbussenverordnung, OBV) — the on-the-spot fine tariffs.
• Federal Roads Office (ASTRA/OFROU) — Via Sicura programme documentation and road-safety statistics.

This guide explains the statutory framework for orientation. It is not legal advice; sentences and licence measures depend on the canton, the evidence and your record.