I was visiting a pal in Bregenz, Austria, last week. He lives to the east of the town, and close to a motorway access, which would give me an easy route to the German Motorway system for my journey back home. However, he warned me that to use this access I would have to get a Vignette, and the solution was to drive through the city and follow the signs to Germany, which he said would avoid using the Austrian motorway and thereby avoid a toll. I did as he advised, only to run foul of a posse of police at a checkpoint just after the slip road joined the motorway, and about 200 metres from the German border. I had driven perhaps a couple of kilometres on the motorway without a vignette, and had broken the law, and was liable to the 120 Euro fine.

Unlike any other Motorway with tolls that I had previously driven on in any other country, there was no tollbooth at the slip road, and he explained that I should have bought a vignette at a petrol station before joining the system. Easy enough for a local resident who knows the rules, but not so easy for a (first time) casual visitor. Instead of putting the checkpoint at the end of the main stretch where they could catch people who had driven anything from 20 to 200 kilometres, they had put it a short distance after the slip road fed into the main stretch, within sight of the border. As clear a case of premeditated entrapment as I have ever come across. I have no objection to paying motorway tolls, but I do object to being suckered into having to pay a fine.