Finland, Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket
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Finland, Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket
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Re: Finland, Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket
#2How I wish this was the norm. It's clear that fines have different deterrent effect depending on how much people earn, so why not have them be proportional?
Re: Finland, Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket
#3This is actually a genius way to approach fines. If you're rich and you get fined doing well over the specified speed limit but you only have to pay at most a few hundred dollars for potentially putting someone else's life in danger, what is the deterrent?
I would love to see something like this implemented here in Australia. Fines based on your income is a great idea, given the outrage some have over the idea of sliding scale fines, I would argue that it sounds like the system is working. If you knew that you could possibly be fined $100k for speeding, would it deter you? Most definitely.
I have had similar thoughts about drink drivers. If you get caught being over the limit, you should have your licence instantly taken off of you for a set period of time. It does happen, but only in extreme cases where someone is so over the limit it is ridiculous. If you drink and drive no matter how much you're over, you should lose your licence (a sliding scale starting at 3 months and going up to 24 months).
Lets get serious about more than just fines, but people who knowingly break the law in their vehicles without a care in the world.
Re: Finland, Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket
#4This is actually a genius way to approach fines. If you're rich and you get fined doing well over the specified speed limit but you only have to pay at most a few hundred dollars for potentially putting someone else's life in danger, what is the deterrent? I would love to see something like this implemented here in Australia. Fines based on your income is a great idea, given the outrage some have over the idea of sli…
> If you're rich and you get fined doing well over the specified speed limit but you only have to pay at most a few hundred dollars for potentially putting someone else's life in danger, what is the deterrent?
Many US states have a system of "points," which are assigned based on the severity of the driving offense. You might hear someone say "He got three points on his license for speeding."
The points expire over time, and points can be subtracted by attending driving school (and possibly other ways, too), but there are some limits on how quickly and how many points can be expired. Accumulating too many points at one time (the limit is usually an integer in the range 5 to 10) will lead to having one's license and driving privileges revoked.
The number of points earned for drunk driving is somewhere close to the maximum (in my state), and there are more restrictions on retiring these points, so being caught driving drunk puts one perilously close to losing one's license.
I'm not sure that either income-proportionate fines or license points are better. Just different approaches to the same problem.
Edit: Actually, after thinking about this a little more, I feel that the proportionate fines are probably better. Not all states have points systems, and points generally do not transfer between states. So someone from another state could come here, be caught speeding, and not face any long-term consequence (because the points would expire before they return).
Re: Finland, Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket
#5How I wish this was the norm. It's clear that fines have different deterrent effect depending on how much people earn, so why not have them be proportional?
In the US at least, our legal system frowns upon excessive punishments without lots of due process (i.e. giving your trial lots of time and attention).
That's why, for example, the death penalty requires an extreme amount of due process. Your trial is lengthy and ideally involves a massive amount of proof before you're given a death sentence. It's also easy to appeal.
That's actually one of the legal arguments against the death penalty here: you can never be 100% certain someone committed a crime, so you should never give them the 100% punishment of death.
People who advocate for instant death penalty for heinous crimes, like murders or rapes, don't consider that. You can just never be sure that someone is guilty, even if they confess, and our legal system has decided to err on the side of allowing a guilty person to go free rather than punishing an innocent person. At least in theory.
For traffic fines, you get almost zero due process. Most of the time, you just plead guilty on the spot. A judge won't spend much time on your case, and you have to pay the court for using that time (often nearly as much as the fine itself).
So if someone making, say, $100,000 had to pay $1,000 for a speeding ticket, there'd be more due process required. It's not fair to basically assume someone is guilty (as we currently do with speeding tickets) when the fine is that high.
Even if we accommodated the due process required, it would add more load to an already way overburdened court system. It's just not possible.
There's also an argument to be made that $1,000 is a punishment that does not fit the crime of, say, driving 85 mph in a 70 mph zone without causing any harm or damage. Again, there's the concept of guilt, and whether the radar gun malfunctioned or the cop was being malicious or whatever.
Re: Finland, Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket
#6How I wish this was the norm. It's clear that fines have different deterrent effect depending on how much people earn, so why not have them be proportional?
In the US at least, our legal system frowns upon excessive punishments without lots of due process (i.e. giving your trial lots of time and attention). That's why, for example, the death penalty requires an extreme amount of due process. Your trial is lengthy and ideally involves a massive amount of proof before you're given a death sentence. It's also easy to appeal. That's actually one of the legal arguments agains…
With a fine of 103,000$, I'd assume the person would be willing to pay a ton of good lawyers to try and fail the ticket.
It would probably discourage wealthy people to drive fast, but the price in trial/lawyers would probably be too high for the police department for it to be feasible (also, if the ticket lacks proofs, I assume the defendant could file a suit against the departement?).
Re: Finland, Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket
#7I wonder if there is anything in statute or precedent that prevents this from being applied in the United States. There should, of course, be a minimum fine because it is possible to live without "income."
For instance, driving 15-20 mph too fast might be fined at 1% of your annual gross income, or $150, whichever is larger.
Re: Finland, Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket
#8This is actually a genius way to approach fines. If you're rich and you get fined doing well over the specified speed limit but you only have to pay at most a few hundred dollars for potentially putting someone else's life in danger, what is the deterrent? I would love to see something like this implemented here in Australia. Fines based on your income is a great idea, given the outrage some have over the idea of sli…
> If you're rich and you get fined doing well over the specified speed limit but you only have to pay at most a few hundred dollars for potentially putting someone else's life in danger, what is the deterrent? Many US states have a system of "points," which are assigned based on the severity of the driving offense. You might hear someone say "He got three points on his license for speeding." The points expire over ti…
Australia has more or less exactly the same point system except (I think) points are nation wide. I would say that the cooldown periods are statistically forgiving though. You recover 4 points every year and most fines are 2-4 points.
It's generally only pretty extreme cases (as the GP points out) that cause a license to be completely suspended (and even then it sometimes doesn't stop people driving anyway). Hence the GP (and me, personally) agreeing with income based fines as an actual deterrent.
Re: Finland, Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket
#9How I wish this was the norm. It's clear that fines have different deterrent effect depending on how much people earn, so why not have them be proportional?
In the US at least, our legal system frowns upon excessive punishments without lots of due process (i.e. giving your trial lots of time and attention). That's why, for example, the death penalty requires an extreme amount of due process. Your trial is lengthy and ideally involves a massive amount of proof before you're given a death sentence. It's also easy to appeal. That's actually one of the legal arguments agains…
Where I live, you can be fined $1000 and confined for 1 year for misdemeanors, including many driving offenses such as exceeding 85mph or 20mph above the speed limit. These punishments can be dealt by the District Court, which is not a court of record and the processes and standards are very relaxed. In this lowest court, these driving misdemeanors are prosecuted (on behalf of the state) by a police officer, just as a non-criminal traffic ticket ("infraction").
Sentencing judges already have the opportunity to impose fines and consider the defendant's means when deciding the amount to be levied. I would personally say that "$1,000 is not a lot of money," and that if a $150 fine for 85mph (reckless here) is appropriate for a person earning $15000 p/a then that actually favors $1000 for a subject earning $100k in an ends of justice/deterrent argument. Maybe more than that because the $100k defendant will be paying from a discretionary budget, not the money for food/rent.
Re: Finland, Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket
#10Simple solution for the rich: Hire someone to drive for you, cover any fines, then rotate them when they get too many tickets (and a suspension risk).
And actually, with the flat fines that currently exist do any rich people do this right now?