Finland, Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Maybe I am imagining it, but (anecdotally) I tend to see mainly expensive cars parked illegally in handicapped spots.
Income proportional fines seems to me like a fair way to apply a monetary deterrent to people that now get meaningless (to them) fines.
It's parasitical - you don't kill the host, only take what it can afford to give, repeatedly.
I love how UK does it - the fines are relatively small, but your insurance rates can go up so much you can pay a small fortune over next 3 years after getting a ticket. You get a 50 pound speeding fine,but your insurance goes up by a few hundred for years. It really really hurts.
Still, this doesn't hurt "rich" people as much - but that's what penalty points are for. If you get enough of them, you will lose your licence, rich or poor.
After all the point is to make people drive safely, not make money for the state.
I'd probably take the first 3 if I got caught speeding again. Four hours taking the course would be a world more hassle.
For big earners it still hurts, as you can read from the article (search for rhinos).
Not if you make 10 million.
A system that charges based on a fixed, high percentage of your income above a certain threshold (e.g. the living wage) would ensure that offenders lose most of their disposable income for a period, regardless of their wealth, and that they don't risk eviction and starvation, regardless of poverty.
Of course, if, due to your lack of spare cash, you're stuck in your mansion, swimming in your own pool, and unable to replenish your comprehensive cellar of fine wines as you drink through them (until your fine expires), it's still not as much of an impact as being stuck in your flat, unable to buy admission to the municipal pool or buy a single can of Special Brew; but it's fairer than a flat percentage, which in turn is fairer than a flat penalty.
A girl in my university class had some kind of wrist problem. She wrote slow because of it, though no slower than me - I am just a slow writer. She was officially classed as disabled and could have had access to such parking, as well as extra time in exams. Does she really need access to disabled parking spots? She was fit and healthy otherwise.
The other person I spoke to who had access to disabled parking "borrowed the permit from his aunt".
The question is, so what? Does the degree of abuse mean we should let more people park in disabled spots? Or should we enforce the rules more stringently?
Also, it is unhelpful to judge whether someone is 'fit and healthy' from seeing them. There are many hidden disabilities. And people with them are often accused (to their faces) of faking it, gaming the system, etc. The UK is currently suffering under a growing culture that assumes people on 'benefit' are scroungers. As a disabled person, I rely on Mobility and Care provision through Disability Living Allowance (I work, so I claim no disability benefit, or similar), I've felt the chilling effect of the disability doubt zeitgeist.
Did you mean an increasingly small proportion of the public? Because income inequality statistics seem to show that the rich are few in number and they are getting richer, whereas the vast majority suffer from stagnating or even declining wages. For the latter group, receiving a $500 ticket, followed by an increase in insurance premiums once that ticket goes on the driving record, is a pretty significant financial blow.
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.
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).
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.
Points and income-indexed fines are not exclusive. Point-based systems still include fines. The purpose of income-indexed fines is to make fines actually relevant to people with high income.
Norway has a points system, and its speeding fines can go up to 10% of the annual income (plus jail time)
And actually, with the flat fines that currently exist do any rich people do this right now?
Parking in the handicap spots was still a dick move though.
[1] http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/10/27/mystery-solved-why-st...
For example when Nokia board member Anssi Vanjoki got fined 116000€ for speeding (75 km/m in a 50 km/h zone), this was later lowered to 6000€ when he could show that the original amount was counted from exceptional earnings.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1759791.stm => http://www2.hs.fi/english/archive/news.asp?id=20020301IE1
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.
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?).
There are some exceptions (court can decide that each side pays their own way, or decide the winner can only reclaim a reasonable amount considering the position of the loser) but the frivolous speeding ticket challenge would not be one of them.
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 $100k defendant will be paying from a discretionary budget, not the money for food/rent.
A 1,000$ fine for somebody with 20,000$ yearly income is a catastrophe. A 1,000$ fine for somebody with 1,000,000$ yearly income is at most a small annoyance.
Since the whole point of fines is (to a large extent) to act as a deterrent, you must take into account the fact that money has a decreasing marginal utility.
Your point about due process is interesting, but similarly needs to be scaled to the defendants wealth: Once you go down the road of talking about different amounts of due process required based on the potential effects of the punishments, it is clear that the amount of due process must be based not on the absolute value of the fine, but rather on the punishment's effect on the utility/well-being of the defendant.
http://tabloidwhore.blogspot.nl/2006/07/mel-gibson-calls-pol...
Once inside the car, a source directly connected with the case says Gibson began banging himself against the seat. The report says Gibson told the deputy, "You mother fucker. I'm going to fuck you." The report also says "Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he 'owns Malibu' and will spend all of his money to 'get even' with me."
The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: "Fucking Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked the deputy, "Are you a Jew?
The deputy became alarmed as Gibson's tirade escalated, and called ahead for a sergeant to meet them when they arrived at the station. When they arrived, a sergeant began videotaping Gibson, who noticed the camera and then said, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" A law enforcement source says Gibson then noticed another female sergeant and yelled, "What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?"
At least the way it works in Sweden, you're not fined a specific amount, you're fined X days wages. The judge handing out the fine neither knows nor cares what the fine works out to be in actual money. So from a judicial point of view the punishment is exactly the same for everybody.
For instance, driving 15-20 mph too fast might be fined at 1% of your annual gross income, or $150, whichever is larger.
I know they had one in the $300000 range, there was also a Swede who risked a ~$1m fine but not sure he got it in the end.
The person could be destitute, and speed with impunity. Or the person could control lots of wealth, but all the wealth is in corporations and there's no actual income.
Or, what about the person who has high income, but also high expenses, such as for running a business and employing people? It doesn't seem fair to fine them $100k for speeding, causing their business to fail and people to lose jobs.