Traffic tickets in Bangkok: the fine stopped being a crime

Three things happened to the Thai traffic ticket in three years, and none of them was announced in English. The fine stopped being a criminal penalty. A court threw out the form it was printed on and the table that set its price. And the ticket you ignore now reaches you through your vehicle’s tax disc. Here is what a ticket actually is in 2026, who it accuses, and what it costs.

Compiled by the Town Wire News desk · Last verified October 2026 · How we made this

The change nobody translated

On 25 October 2022 Thailand published a short, strange and rather humane statute called the Act on Administrative Fines. Its reasoning, printed at the end of the Act, says plainly what it is for: too many everyday prohibitions had been made criminal, people who could pay a fine paid it and people who could not were detained instead, and a criminal record follows a person for life over something that hurt nobody. So the Act invented a new category of wrong — not a crime, not an administrative act — and then went through the statute book deciding which offences should be moved into it.

The Act carries three schedules. The first is the list of laws whose fine-only offences convert automatically. The second is the list where the responsible agency still had reservations, so conversion needs a royal decree. The third covers offences that already carried administrative penalties.

The Land Traffic Act B.E. 2522 is in the first schedule. Section 39 says that 365 days after publication in the Royal Gazette, criminal offences punishable by fine only under the laws in schedule one become administrative-fine offences, and the criminal fine rates already written into those laws become the administrative fine rates. Publication was 25 October 2022. The conversion therefore took effect on 25 October 2023.

Which means that if you were stopped in Bangkok for speeding, for a phone in your hand, for a helmet you were not wearing or for a line you crossed, you did not commit a crime. Section 5 of the Act says it in one line: the administrative fine is not a criminal penalty. Section 34 says state agencies may not record such an offence in a criminal-record database or as criminal history at all.

What the conversion actually gives you

It is easy to read “not a crime” as a technicality. It is not. Four consequences follow directly from the text.

The amount is meant to be personal. Section 9 lists what has to be weighed in setting an administrative fine: the severity of the impact on the community or society and the other circumstances of the offence; the offender’s culpability, age, record, conduct, understanding, education, health, mental state, habits, occupation and surroundings; any benefit the offender or anyone else got out of it; and the offender’s economic status. Section 7 caps it at the maximum in the underlying law and nothing else fixes it.

You can pay it over time. The second paragraph of section 9 lets the official or the court allow instalments on request where a single payment is not possible — with the whole balance falling due if an instalment is missed without reasonable cause.

If you genuinely cannot pay, there is a route that is not a cell. Section 10 allows a natural person who offended out of severe poverty or dire necessity of living to ask for a fine below the statutory level, or to do community or public-benefit work instead; and a person with no money to pay may ask to work instead on showing reasonable cause. The request goes to a court, which may set a lower figure, warn without fining at all, or order the work with the person’s consent. Nowhere in the Act is there imprisonment in default.

The clocks are short. Section 11 gives a two-year limitation from the date of the act unless the specific law says otherwise, and section 12 stops enforcement of an order or judgment more than five years after it.

Then the court threw out the ticket

Everything above describes a system in which someone exercises judgement about your particular case. The Thai traffic ticket, as it was actually printed and priced, did the opposite: it carried a fixed amount from a published table, and a recipient reading it would reasonably conclude the amount was simply due.

A member of the public, Supa Chotngam, challenged two announcements of the Royal Thai Police: the one prescribing the traffic officer’s ticket form, of 20 July 2020, and the one fixing the compounded fine amounts for offences under the Land Traffic Act, of 23 March 2023. On 27 September 2023 the Central Administrative Court held both unlawful, on two grounds: the form misled the recipient into believing she had committed an offence and had to pay with no right to dispute, which is in tension with the presumption of innocence; and fixing the amounts removed the discretion the traffic officer is supposed to exercise. That court ordered them revoked retroactively to July 2020.

On 5 February 2025 the Supreme Administrative Court, in red case Or. 50/2568, agreed that the announcements were unlawful but changed the remedy. Wiping them out retroactively, it reasoned, would not serve the public interest in a country with rising traffic violations. Instead it ordered the revocation to take effect 180 days after the judgment, giving the police time to write rules that let a ticket be disputed and a fine be considered individually. The judgment was published in the Royal Gazette the following month.

A hundred and eighty days later, on 4 August 2025, a new ticket form took effect — drafted around the vocabulary of the Act on Administrative Fines, so that what the officer now issues is described as an order to pay an administrative fine rather than a demand for a compounded criminal one. Three forms exist: a four-part paper set, of which the white copy goes to the driver and the yellow, pink and blue copies go to the central system, the enforcing officer and the issuing officer; a postal ticket; and an electronic ticket.

Nobody has to stop you, and the ticket accuses whoever owns the vehicle

Section 140 of the Land Traffic Act, as replaced in 2019, lets a traffic officer act on an offence that appears to them “whether found in person, or by the use of equipment, or by any other means”. For an offence that is fine-only or carries no more than a month’s imprisonment with a fine, the officer may either give a verbal warning or issue a ticket.

If the officer cannot find the driver, the ticket is tied, attached or displayed on the vehicle where the driver can easily see it. If that is impossible for any reason, the ticket and the supporting evidence go by registered post with acknowledgement of receipt to the domicile of the owner or possessor of the vehicle. The same applies where the officer sees an offence but cannot tell who was driving — which is what a camera produces.

Section 140/1 is the provision worth memorising. Once the ticket has been attached or posted, the owner or possessor is deemed to have received it fifteen days later, unless it is proved that it never arrived or arrived later. And once they have received it, they are presumed to be the person who committed the offence.

There are exactly two ways out. The owner may notify the inquiry officer, within thirty days of receipt, that somebody else was driving — and that person must accept that they were. Or, where nobody accepts it and the owner is a natural person rather than a company, the owner must produce evidence that satisfies the inquiry officer that they were not the driver.

For a visitor this is the single most expensive paragraph in Thai traffic law, because it is the machinery underneath the charge that appears on your card five weeks after you returned a hire car. The rental company is the registered owner or possessor. It receives the ticket, it declines to be the offender, and it identifies you. The point system follows the same logic: the joint regulation on driving-conduct points defines “driver” to include the owner or possessor whom section 140/1 presumes.

Where and how a ticket is actually paid

Section 141, as replaced in 2019, gives two routes, and the second is more generous than people expect.

The first is remote: a postal order or a bank draft sent by registered post, made payable to the Commissioner-General of the Royal Thai Police with a copy of the ticket, to the address printed on it — or payment by electronic transaction, credit card or another method through a bank or a payment service, in the amount stated on the ticket, under the Commissioner-General’s regulation. The Royal Thai Police runs a public online ticket portal at ptm.police.go.th/eTicket, titled in Thai simply “traffic tickets online for the public”; it answered when we checked it in preparing this page.

The second is in person: at a police station, either in the amount on the ticket or in the amount the inquiry officer compounds — and the section says expressly that inquiry officers in every locality have compounding jurisdiction throughout the kingdom. You do not have to return to the district where you were ticketed. When the fine is paid in full, the section says, the case ends.

The twelve points, and what each thing costs

Thailand has had a points system on paper since 1999. What exists now is different, and dates from the 2019 amendment: section 142/1 required the Royal Thai Police to run a driving-conduct point system with rules for assigning, deducting and restoring points, set out in a joint regulation of the Commissioner-General and the Director-General of the Department of Land Transport and published in the Gazette. That regulation was signed on 20 June 2022, published on 12 July 2022, and came into force 180 days later — in January 2023.

Its first substantive rule is the one to hold onto: every licence holder has a total of not more than twelve points however many kinds of licence they hold, and everyone started at twelve.

Two mechanics matter as much as the table. A single incident that breaks several rules is scored charge by charge, but the total for that incident cannot exceed eight points. And when the balance reaches zero, every licence the person holds is suspended for ninety days at a time.

Restoration is automatic but slow: each deduction comes back on the day after the first anniversary of that deduction. After a ninety-day suspension, eight points return the day after the suspension ends, and the remaining four only if the driver goes a full year without losing another point. Completing the Department of Land Transport’s course on driving and traffic discipline returns all twelve instead. A driver whose balance has fallen below six can also take the course without waiting for a suspension: the first course in a calendar year tops the balance back up to a maximum of twelve, a second course to a maximum of six, and there is no third — twice a calendar year is the limit.

Note where the deduction for an unpaid ticket lands in the sequence. The regulation records it on the day after the deadline in the registrar’s notice of unpaid fines — so ignoring a ticket is itself a scored offence, on a clock that starts when the Department of Land Transport writes to you rather than when the ticket was issued.

Above the point system sits a second, blunter suspension power. Section 142/5 lets the Commissioner-General or a Commissioner-rank officer suspend a licence for up to ninety days where the offence caused, or was likely to cause, serious public danger, or where the driver fled after causing damage — regardless of points. More than two suspensions in three years can be escalated to the registrar for a longer seizure or suspension, and a further offence within a year of that can be escalated to revocation. Any suspension order can be appealed within fifteen days, and the appeal has to be decided within thirty.

The speed limits, as the regulation actually writes them

Thai speed limits are not in the Act. They are in the Ministerial Regulation prescribing speed limits for driving on roads B.E. 2564, made on 27 October 2021, which replaced a set of numbers that had stood for decades. It divides the country by the kind of place and the kind of road, not by signage.

Three details in that regulation are worth carrying around. Frontage roads — the parallel service carriageways beside a main road — take the city limits wherever they are, so leaving Bangkok on a frontage road does not raise your limit. On an expressway with three or more lanes in one direction, the rightmost lane carries a minimum of 90 km/h, not just a maximum, except where traffic, visibility, an obstruction or another problem makes it impossible. And clause 12 settles every argument about signs: where a sign fixes a lower limit than the regulation, the sign is the limit.

Speeding itself is section 67 paragraph one, and its maximum after the 2022 amendment is 4,000 baht under section 152 — along with, in the same section, the offence of not having your licence with you.

The helmet rule is two rules

Section 122 requires the rider and the passenger of a motorcycle to wear a helmet made for the purpose. Its second paragraph then separately forbids the rider from riding while the passenger is not wearing one. That is why the widely repeated claim that the fine “doubles” for an unhelmeted passenger has a real mechanism behind it, even though no doubling appears in the text: a bare-headed rider carrying a bare-headed passenger has broken two prohibitions rather than one.

The type of helmet and the manner of wearing it are left to a ministerial regulation. The only people the section exempts are monks, novices, ascetics, clergy and adherents of religions that cover the head with cloth by custom, plus anyone a ministerial regulation adds. There is no exemption for a short trip, for a soi, or for a pillion on a motorbike taxi.

The maximum is 2,000 baht, under section 148 as replaced in 2022 — the same maximum as for a driver not wearing a seat belt. That 2022 amendment also rewrote the seat-belt rules entirely: every passenger in every row must now be belted, a child of six or under must be in a child seat or an equivalent arrangement, and a passenger no taller than 135 cm must be belted or otherwise protected wherever they sit. Pickups with side-facing seating and similar vehicles get an exemption for passengers behind the front row, but only if the vehicle is not overloaded, nobody is riding in a risky position, and it is driven at no more than 80 km/h.

What an unpaid ticket now costs, in order

Ignoring a Thai traffic ticket used to be a quiet decision. It stopped being one in stages.

First, the point system scores it. Clause 11 of the joint regulation makes “receiving a ticket and not paying without reasonable cause” a one-point offence for the schedule of charges annexed to it, recorded the day after the deadline in the registrar’s notice.

Second, since 1 August 2026, it reaches your vehicle. Under a revised data-sharing arrangement between the Royal Thai Police and the Department of Land Transport, an owner with linked unpaid fines may still pay the annual vehicle tax, but receives only a temporary document valid for thirty days in place of the tax disc, which is withheld until the fines are paid. Once that document expires, driving the vehicle without a valid disc can be a separate offence with a fine of its own. The police have described the change as bringing the earlier scheme into line with the Administrative Court’s rulings, and have said that tens of millions of tickets remain unpaid.

Third, it becomes a court case. Section 23 of the Act on Administrative Fines is triggered by either denying the charge or not paying within the time set: the official summarises the facts, the law and the evidence and sends the file to the public prosecutor, who brings the case to court. At that point the fine is set by a judge, and section 32 forbids any appeal on the facts or on the amount — only a point of law may be appealed, and the appellate judgment is final.

The offences that never converted

The conversion in the Act on Administrative Fines reaches only offences punishable by fine alone. Section 41 says so, and excludes anything that carries imprisonment or worse for a natural person, and anything whose fine-only character depends on it being a first offence.

In traffic law that exclusion has a short and predictable list. Driving while drunk, driving under the influence of narcotics or psychotropic substances, causing damage to a person or property and failing to stop, and racing on the road all carry imprisonment and remain criminal offences in the ordinary sense — with arrest, a criminal record and a court. Section 145, as replaced in 2022, makes the point from the other direction: the inquiry officer may compound or warn in respect of all offences under the Act except those in a named list, which is essentially that same set plus a public-transport driver whose passenger is seriously hurt.

The 2022 amendment also tightened the racing provisions considerably. Gathering on a road or in a public place near one with five or more vehicles, by appointment to race, or with vehicles modified out of legal condition, or with any behaviour showing an intention to race, is now treated as attempted racing unless the person proves otherwise; advertising or organising a race is an offence in itself; and a workshop that modifies a vehicle out of legal condition is treated as having committed the modification offence if the vehicle is then used on the road, and as supporting a race if it is raced.

There is also a power worth knowing about because it looks arbitrary and is not. Under section 140/2, an officer who has warned or ticketed a driver may seize the licence — or record an electronic seizure — or stop the vehicle being used temporarily, where the driver is in a condition in which continuing to drive could endanger life, body or property, and must return it when the driver is fit or the officer is satisfied they will not drive in that state. Disobeying that order is its own offence, with a 2,000 baht maximum after the 2022 amendment.

What to actually do, as a foreigner, in the order it matters

Carry the licence, and know that a screen counts. Section 31/1 requires it on your person and produced on demand, and expressly accepts an electronic display or a photographic copy in the form the Department of Land Transport prescribes.

Read the rental agreement for the ticket clause before the insurance clause. Section 140/1 makes the registered owner the presumed offender, so every hire contract in Thailand contains a mechanism for passing that to you, usually with an administration fee attached. Ask what that fee is; ask how they will notify you; ask whether they pay the fine themselves and bill you, which removes your ability to dispute it.

If a ticket is genuinely not yours, act inside thirty days. That is the whole window in section 140/1, and it runs from receipt — which is itself deemed to be fifteen days after the ticket was attached or posted. A ticket discovered late is a ticket already presumed against you.

Do not treat the printed number as the last word. The instrument that fixed those numbers was revoked in August 2025, and the statute that replaced the criminal fine requires the amount to reflect the seriousness of the offence and your circumstances. Asking, politely, for the basis of the figure is now a question the law contemplates.

Check before you renew the tax. Since August 2026 the tax disc is the pressure point. If you own a vehicle here, look at the ticket portal before the renewal date rather than after it.

Keep the drink-driving line bright. It is the one place where none of the softening above applies: still criminal, still not compoundable by the inquiry officer, still four points at a stroke, and still capable of a suspension under section 142/5 on top of everything else.

Questions people actually ask

Is a Thai traffic fine a criminal conviction?

Not for ordinary offences, since 25 October 2023. The Land Traffic Act is in the first schedule of the Act on Administrative Fines, and section 39 converted its fine-only offences into administrative-fine offences. Section 5 says these are not criminal penalties, and section 34 forbids recording them as criminal history. Anything carrying imprisonment — drink-driving, hit-and-run, racing — did not convert.

How much is a speeding ticket?

No published instrument answers that any more. The statutory maximum is 4,000 baht under section 152; the table that fixed the amount actually charged was revoked by the Supreme Administrative Court with effect from August 2025, and the amount is now supposed to be set with regard to severity, circumstances and economic status.

Why did a hire-car ticket reach me weeks later?

Section 140/1: the ticket goes to the registered owner, who is presumed to be the offender, and has thirty days from receipt to name whoever was actually driving. The rental company does exactly that. Receipt itself is deemed to happen fifteen days after the ticket was attached or posted.

How many points do I have?

Twelve, whatever licences you hold, under clause 7 of the 2565 joint regulation. Zero means every licence suspended for ninety days. One incident can never cost more than eight.

Do I have to carry the licence itself?

You must have it with you and show it when asked, under section 31/1 — but the section accepts an electronic licence or a prescribed photographic copy as satisfying that.

Can I pay a ticket from another province?

Yes. Section 141 lets you pay remotely by post, card, bank or payment service, or in person at a police station — and says that inquiry officers in every locality have compounding jurisdiction throughout the kingdom.

What happens if I never pay?

A point comes off, dated from the registrar’s notice; from August 2026 your annual tax renewal produces a thirty-day temporary document instead of the disc; and the file eventually goes to the public prosecutor and to a court, whose figure cannot be appealed on the amount.

Is there any way to get points back faster?

The Department of Land Transport’s driving and traffic-discipline course. Below six points it restores you to a maximum of twelve on the first course in a calendar year and to a maximum of six on the second; after a suspension it returns all twelve at once instead of eight. Two courses a calendar year is the limit.

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