Comment by DigitalSea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DigitalSea | Hacker News Reader

This 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.

> 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).

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.

I was thinking about describing the german system, but interestingly there's a very elaborate Wikipedia article summarizing the schemes used in many countries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_system_(driving)

It's also worth remembering that Finland has, in addition to income proportional fines, a rule that three offences during a year or four during two years will lead to losing your license. And if you go too far above the speed limit, you will lose your license for <=6 months.

> I'm not sure that either income-proportionate fines or license points are better. Just different approaches to the same problem.

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)

A problem with a points-only or points+trivial fine system, is that although it might scare straight a generally good driver who occasionally has a heavy foot; it only becomes a deterrent for persistent recidivists when they near the disqualification barrier. Even then, it's only a deterrent if driving whilst disqualified carries a heavy enough penalty.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com