61–70 of 106 posts
Why not just do away with fines all together rather than trying to come up with a complex system to try to make them fair. Perhaps instead of fines a more appropriate punishment should be that you're forced to sit in your car for an hour making you late to whatever you were in a rush for.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is only actual damage if you are exceptionally unlucky. Almost everyone speeds to varying degrees, with wildly successful runs of luck. Ergo, speeding is not a crime, it is an easy revenue target for greedy municipalities with overpaid cops.
Drunk drivers make it home safe most of the time as well. Just because you can break a law and it usually works out, doesn't mean that what you're doing isn't a crime.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drunk drivers make it home safe most of the time as well. Just because you can break a law and it usually works out, doesn't mean that what you're doing isn't a crime.
The issue here is that most of the time something like half of people are speeding and some of the time literally everyone on the highway is speeding. The people who set the speed limit set it with the goal of causing a certain kind of psychology on the people driving, not because "past this point your car is going to lose control and kill everyone", and the law is then defined to follow the signs (which expect peopl…
Actually that is one of the reasons for the speed limit being what it is. Part of the speed limit is determined by the reaction time and stopping distance of a typical driver. That's not you per se, but it has to work for everyone. While a fit young person driving a 2017 Mercedes might feel they can safely drive much faster with all the modern safety features of their car like ABS, traction control, ESP, etc, the speed limit has to also work for an 85 year old in a 1981 Toyoto Corolla that has no safety features, tyres 0.1mm above the legal minimum, and the reaction times of an asthmatic snail.
Why not just do away with fines all together rather than trying to come up with a complex system to try to make them fair. Perhaps instead of fines a more appropriate punishment should be that you're forced to sit in your car for an hour making you late to whatever you were in a rush for.
The fine should be the same. No free lunch for someone who chooses to be a nurse instead of a portfolio manager.
Or is this too unfair for the people that cannot afford a BMW ?
I'm from Finland where we have this kind of "relative fines". While I generally agree with the concept, it should better take into account the household's total income & wealth. E.g. I could get a fine of 1/2 of my monthly net income for driving 140 km/h (87 mph) on highway, which would hit hard our household (three kids, low income spouse, no savings), although no real harm or risk was caused to anyone.
That sounds pretty reasonable to me, frankly. That’s considerably over the limit, isn’t it?
In exreme cases this can result to absurdly high fines, e.g. as a real-world example from Finland, overspeeding at 82 km/h in 60 km/h area have resulted to 34,000 eur fine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you really worried that _rich people_ are the ones that can’t protect themselves from abuse? :)
Not as much as poor people, sure, but keep in mind that even rich people are much less powerful than governments or even large amounts of people. I mean, obviously a completely different scenario, but, how many times have revolutions killed all the rich/powerful people? They don't have infinite protection just cause they're rich.
If we're reaching the point where we're discussing about revolutions and civil forfeiture, I think there's a bigger problem here. And it's not proportional fines.
I'm from Finland where we have this kind of "relative fines". While I generally agree with the concept, it should better take into account the household's total income & wealth. E.g. I could get a fine of 1/2 of my monthly net income for driving 140 km/h (87 mph) on highway, which would hit hard our household (three kids, low income spouse, no savings), although no real harm or risk was caused to anyone.
Three kids will benefit from a dad who learned to drive slower.
Highways are generally super safe compared to anything else and speed alone is almost never a cause for an accident (I'm strict about keeping safe distance etc).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not as much as poor people, sure, but keep in mind that even rich people are much less powerful than governments or even large amounts of people. I mean, obviously a completely different scenario, but, how many times have revolutions killed all the rich/powerful people? They don't have infinite protection just cause they're rich.
I'm from a country where that happened, I'm quite aware about this aspect. Even so, fining rich people more just makes sense, to me. Fines are supposed to be a deterrent. If we're reaching the point where we're discussing about revolutions and civil forfeiture, I think there's a bigger problem here. And it's not proportional fines.