Hacker News Reader

Comment by tux1968 | Hacker News Reader

tux1968·

Like in Finland where speeding ticket fines are based on your income. For instance, in one well known case a businessman was fined €121,000 for going 82 km/h in a 50 km/h zone.

View on HN

And before anyone calls this crazy, note that jail time costs you your time, whatever that's worth. This is the same idea without the physical incarceration.

Most rich people still make money when they're in jail. Only people who work for a living stop making money.

Rich and retired are very different thing. A CEO can be out hundreds of millions due to a long prison sentence, but most fines don’t scale nearly that far.

That's considerably more than someone near me who was doing 245km/h in a 90 zone (Well 55mph which is 89km/h). I still don't know why that person didn't lose their license (other than the obvious fact that they were rich enough to afford the Lamborghini that they were driving in); it wasn't just any 55 zone, it was one with a reputation for being dangerous.

Damn, it sucks that people are allowed to get away with that kind of speed. Here in Denmark the mandatory minimum for doing over 200 km/h is losing your license for 3 years, confiscation of the vehicle and a ~$2000 fine. Unfortunately punishment isn't enough to get rid of this thing as around 1000 cars are confiscated each year. Some of them are confiscated for other reasons, like driving with a BAC above 0.2%.

If they had even temporarily impounded the car it probably would cost the driver more than the ticket, since exotic cars are likely to get damaged when towed.

Note that driving laws are entirely at the state level in the US, and this was California, which is among the most driver-friendly places in the (already driver-friendly) US. There are places in the US where the license could have been suspended for this (though typically with a duration measured in days, not years).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com