Parking and stopping

Parking in a fire-service access route is 55 €, and where it actually obstructed emergency services it becomes 100 € with a point. This is the closest row the catalogue has to the case English-speaking drivers usually ask about, which is a hydrant.

Parking in a disabled bay without entitlement is 55 €, and it carries no points. We checked that against all three lists of the points annex and it appears in none of them, so the zero above is a confirmed finding rather than an unfilled cell.

We spell this out because the row is widely reported with points attached. The consequence people actually encounter is different and more immediate: the vehicle can be towed, and towing costs are not part of the fine catalogue at all.

Overstaying or parking without a valid ticket is a small ladder of 2 rows in the reviewed data set, rising with the time overrun and topping out well inside the caution-payment range. Which means these are almost always cautions rather than fine notices: no fee, no register entry, and effective only once you consent and pay.

If you are reading this from outside Germany about a hire car, note that the parking rows work on the vehicle, and that a notice may reach the keeper — the hire company — before it reaches you. What that company then charges you is a contract matter, not a fine, and it is not in any table on this site.

Germany also has a separate route for the case where the driver of a parked vehicle cannot be established, addressed to the keeper instead. It has a flat fee of its own rather than the percentage fee a normal notice carries. This site names that provision and states no amount for it, because the reviewed data set does not carry one.

German rules distinguish halten from parken — stopping and parking — and the catalogue rows follow that split. Stopping where stopping is prohibited is its own row, starting at 20 €. Parking somewhere you may stop but not park is a different row again. A sign or marking that forbids one does not automatically forbid the other, and a notice will tell you which of the two you are charged with.

The other axis is obstruction. Almost every row in this category has a plain version and a version where the conduct obstructed somebody, and the second is where points appear. The fire-service and double-parking rows above are the clearest examples: 55 € and 55 € plain, 100 € and 80 € where somebody was actually obstructed.

Two costs regularly reported as "the parking fine" are not part of this catalogue and appear nowhere in these tables. Towing and storage are recovered separately, under a different legal basis, and they can dwarf the amount in the row. And where a private operator manages a space, what you receive may not be a public notice at all but a contractual claim, which has nothing to do with the figures here.

The one thing a low amount does reliably tell you is the procedure: at these levels almost everything is a caution rather than a fine notice, which means no fee, no register entry, and no effect at all unless you consent and pay.