Hacker News Reader

Just eliminate fines altogether and give some more appropriate punishment like traffic school (which must also be free...)

View on HN

After all, any law which is enforced by fines is a law solely for the poor.

You need fines, because some people don't care about anything else. You can set up a system of just points, with no fine, and people will just drive with revoked licenses. I don't know about you but my I am very rarely pulled over and there are several stretches of my life where you could have revoked my license for a year, or five, and I could have kept driving without a problem.

Maybe it's just your points idea that's not very good. If you were punished with traffic school and just ignored it they can still increase penalities and eventually come arrest you. Unless your plan involves hiding out in the mountains somewhere or something.

Laws aren't only for punishing people who have something to seize. How else do we deal with people who have no money but still commit minor infractions?

It's not my idea, it's how states take licenses away from repeat offenders, but yes I'm sure there's a better way to do it than that.

Either eliminate fines altogether or collect the fines and then burn the money in a furnace. Any system that derives revenue from lawbreaking has the perverse incentive of increasing lawbreaking.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com