8 ms·

A Billionaire and a Nurse Shouldn't Pay the Same Fine for Speeding

80 points by rafaelc 9y ago

caseysoftware 9y ago
This seems like backdoor civil asset forfeiture but it would allow them to take assets that aren't even present and/or involved at the time of the "offense". Can you see a particularly cash-strapped town telling officers to skip the Toyota Camrys and instead pull over the BMWs? It seems ideal for abuse, selective law enforcement, and likely other bad behaviors. Oddly enough, this would likely go away with self-driving cars as high income people switch to vehicles who "can't" break the law.
- dopkew 9y ago
  It will put strong pressure to align the law with implementation. If the implementation treads into injustice, it (the law) is explicitly designed to be against those who can shrug it off, rather than drown.
- cheriot 9y ago
  There's a big gap between a "day fine" and taking someone's house because their kid stashed some drugs in the closet. One is proportional and happens on conviction while the other can be nuts.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- oblio 9y ago
  Are you really worried that _rich people_ are the ones that can’t protect themselves from abuse? :)
  - garmaine 9y ago
    Rich and powerful are not the same thing.
    - oblio 9y ago
      Even so, rich people have a lot bigger chances to protect themselves from abuse, than poor people. And secondly, what use is a punishment that is not punishment at all for rich people?
  - edanm 9y ago
    Not as much as poor people, sure, but keep in mind that even rich people are much less powerful than governments or even large amounts of people. I mean, obviously a completely different scenario, but, how many times have revolutions killed all the rich/powerful people? They don't have infinite protection just cause they're rich.
    - oblio 9y ago
      I'm from a country where that happened, I'm quite aware about this aspect. Even so, fining rich people more just makes sense, to me. Fines are supposed to be a deterrent. If we're reaching the point where we're discussing about revolutions and civil forfeiture, I think there's a bigger problem here. And it's not proportional fines.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
- RestlessMind 9y ago
  > Can you see a particularly cash-strapped town telling officers to skip the Toyota Camrys and instead pull over the BMWs? No I see a world where neither Toyotas nor BMWs are speeding. But if both are speeding, then owners of both should feel equal amount of pain. And equal amount of pain won't come from equal amount absolute fines (300$ is a drop in the bucket for a billionaire, significant for a poor person).
paulddraper 9y ago
This is already true for incarceration; a billionaire and a nurse lose the same amount of time. And one's time is paid more than the other's. Speeding is a weird example though. If I'm driving I pay based on my income, but if my driver is driving he pays based on his? > In 2015, it handed a businessman a $67,000 speeding ticket for going 14 miles per hour above the limit. I just don't see how going 14 mph with zero other damage is equivalent to compensating the public $67k. "Justice" is about balancing the action with its punishment, not gimmicks like this (that inevitably wind up with a super-complex system of loopholes, deductions, inefficiencies, etc.)
- k_sh 9y ago
  > "Justice" is about balancing the action with its punishment Right, that's the whole point of the income-proportional fines: to ensure that the same degree of punishment is given out to the billionaire and junior speeder.
- onion2k 9y ago
  I just don't see how going 14 mph with zero other damage is equivalent to compensating the public $67k. Speeding is a crime because you're risking the safety of other people. There's only "zero damage" if you're lucky. There's potential for a lot of damage. Considering the defined punishment is supposed to act as a deterrent I would argue $67k was actually too low.
  - paulddraper 9y ago
    The $67k penalty is merely for exceeding the speed limit by 14 mph, not for actually causing a crash or harm. You would of course be liable for any damages actually caused.
  - stmfreak 9y ago
    There is only actual damage if you are exceptionally unlucky. Almost everyone speeds to varying degrees, with wildly successful runs of luck. Ergo, speeding is not a crime, it is an easy revenue target for greedy municipalities with overpaid cops.
anabis 9y ago
Reminded me of Steve Jobs refusing to put a license plate on his car.
- cowholio4 9y ago
  I thought that was done legally by leasing a new car every few months. And that loophole is part of the motivation for the new temporary plates in CA. Edit: reference https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/07/steve-jobs-loophole-closed-california-wants-temporary-license-plates/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/07/steve-jobs-loophole-clo...
kosei 9y ago
I think I'd take the other approach than exorbitant fines for the rich. Perhaps they should grow (a $3,000 fine for a billionaire isn't unreasonable), but the more important part IMO is here: "For people living on the economic margins, even minor offenses can impose crushing financial obligations, trapping them in a cycle of debt and incarceration for nonpayment." I think it is reasonable that a speeding ticket for someone earning minimum wage could have a lower (say $50 instead of $150) penalty. The fines are made to disincentivize behavior, not put people in debt.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  The fines are made as a revenue source, not to disincentivize anything.
- deviationblue 9y ago
  > a $3,000 fine for a billionaire isn't unreasonable This sounds ridiculous to me because the idea of laws, and by extension fines, is that they apply uniformly, regardless of class, gender, whatever.
  - supermatt 9y ago
    Then it could be a percentage of total assets - that would be equal, no? I do think fines are stupid though. Making people sit a day through a speed awareness course seems a better punishment to me.
    - sushid 9y ago
      Then it ends up hurting the middle class yet again. The rich have their LLCs that purchase their houses and cars and trusts that keep the rest of their money invested. The middle class don't have the luxury and are hit with a disproportionate amount of the fine.
    - Someone 9y ago
      Better? Probably. More equal? I doubt it. “Sit a day through a speed awareness course” could cost people their job, and that’s more likely the lower paying the job is.
anabis 9y ago
At lease some kind of mention of equality under the rule of law should be done and refuted.
- singularity2001 9y ago
  Percental equality is still equality, even improved equality.
- sgift 9y ago
  The 'pain' (as in 'felt punishment') inflicted by the fine should be equal in all cases. If you have more money that means a higher fine is needed to inflict equal pain.
braptor 9y ago
The fine should be the same. No free lunch for someone who chooses to be a nurse instead of a portfolio manager.
- Ro93 9y ago
  the point of a fine is to act as a deterrent... billionaire isn't going to care about $100. They aren't going to care about $1000 either, but at least it's doing more social good.
  - commandlinefan 9y ago
    > care about $100 He will care if he loses his driver's license after a certain number of tickets, though, which is the law for everybody, equally applied.
    - russelluresti 9y ago
      In reality, even that isn't equal. A poor person who has moved out of the city because they can't afford housing inside of it losing their license would probably mean losing their job, as public transportation options may not even be available. A wealthy person could just hire an Uber everywhere and wouldn't even notice the cost. While the punishment is equal, the impact it would have on different populations is unequal (which is the same issue with a fine of an absolute amount).
- rahimnathwani 9y ago
  "No free lunch for someone who chooses to be a nurse instead of a portfolio manager." That's true. Portfolio managers are wined and dined pretty frequently by brokers and others who earn fees from the portfolio managers' employers. Nurses might occasionally get a $10 box of chocolates from a grateful patient.
- eertami 9y ago
  Yeah and while you're at it why not make tax a flat fee too?
volgo 9y ago
Hard pass
Osiris 9y ago
Why not just do away with fines all together rather than trying to come up with a complex system to try to make them fair. Perhaps instead of fines a more appropriate punishment should be that you're forced to sit in your car for an hour making you late to whatever you were in a rush for.
- sebazzz 9y ago
  What about people who drive hard deliberate because they can afford the fines, in their free time?
  - lox 9y ago
    In Australia we have a demerit point system, although technically if you have enough money you can pay to get around it.
    - supreme_sublime 9y ago
      The United States has the same thing. Get too many traffic infractions in a certain time window (a year or two, might depend on the state) and you get your license revoked.
      - mrguyorama 9y ago
        Certain states allow you to pay double the fine and ignore the points. This was used by groups[0] doing road rallies across America. [0]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1nstSui0tPnJtMF2OZx5tw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1nstSui0tPnJtMF2OZx5tw
- ravloony 9y ago
  This is actually a very good idea. Time is the one asset we all have. Community service is also a good idea, but it lacks the immediacy of both fines and your suggestion.
- AckSyn 9y ago
  They're fair as they are. All this would do is punish more harshly those with more money. That's robbery.
timc3 9y ago
I would love to see this happen in many places. But in the US - probably the last place it will ever happen.
tbrownaw 9y ago
Or just do away with the fines completely. At least where I live, a speeding ticket knocks off a couple of your license's 12hp, and they take like a year to regenerate. Maybe that alone should be enough, or maybe you should also have to sit there one extra minute for every mph over the limit you were going.
- empath75 9y ago
  Yeah, the fine is never the reason I get upset about being pulled over for speeding. It was always the points on the license and the time spent waiting for the ticket.
agapon 9y ago
I thought that points were designed for that. At least in NJ you can get both fines and points depending on a type of a ticket.
Yaggo 9y ago
I'm from Finland where we have this kind of "relative fines". While I generally agree with the concept, it should better take into account the household's total income & wealth. E.g. I could get a fine of 1/2 of my monthly net income for driving 140 km/h (87 mph) on highway, which would hit hard our household (three kids, low income spouse, no savings), although no real harm or risk was caused to anyone.
- lox 9y ago
  That sounds pretty reasonable to me, frankly. That’s considerably over the limit, isn’t it?
  - paganel 9y ago
    The highway speed limit in a country like Romania is 130 kph, but you only risk getting fined if you exceed 140. As such, I usually do 130-135 kph on the highway in my small 1.4 l hatchback and I don’t feel unsafe at all. I feel much more unsafe on 2-lane national roads with lots of curbs and where you risk getting a horse-drawn carriage in front of you out of nowhere, even though on those roads people usually drive much slower (the limit is 90, I stick to 80-90 most of the times unless I have clear visibility for like one km, in which case I push it to 100). Point is that it’s not the speed that kills you, it’s NOT adapting the speed to the road’s conditions that does it. As such, imposing draconian speed limits on highways (like in Finland) is very counter-productive and frustrating, because those highways are actually built to “support” higher speeds (just look at Germany).
  - Yaggo 9y ago
    I guess my main point was that in some cases, like in my example, arguably harmless offence can result to relatively high punishment, because personal income doesn't often translate directly to disposable money. Of course irrational speed limits are also to blame. In exreme cases this can result to absurdly high fines, e.g. as a real-world example from Finland, overspeeding at 82 km/h in 60 km/h area have resulted to 34,000 eur fine.
- Dude2023 9y ago
  Three kids will benefit from a dad who learned to drive slower.
laci27 9y ago
On some of Italy's highways, they calculate the speeding ticket from gate to gate:) Meaning that if you entered the highway at 12:00 and you exited at 13:00 at a gate 120 miles ahead, you get a fine. Sometimes, I see people who like to speed, just sit it out at a parking cafe next to their exit.
boomlinde 9y ago
> But the United States doesn’t need to go that far. I see reasons to go even further, if the goal is a fair level of deterrence. If for a significant part of the population, the total wealth is less than or in the same order of magnitude as the money they earned that month, while for others, income is a relatively tiny portion of it, fines based on income alone will deter the former much more than the latter. The more fair option would be to fine based on wealth, not income. Then, yet further, if you all you have is $500 and lose half of what you own, that'll likely have a devastating effect, possibly resulting in homelessness. For a billionaire, losing half your wealth leaves you with $500M. You won't exactly be panhandling to make ends meet. Again, the deterrence is disproportionate. I'm not sure how to address it. Possibly by not using fines at all, but some amount of hours of social work that has to be completed in some short but manageable span of time, with the definition of "manageable" based on individual circumstances.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
fasteo 9y ago
I generally agree with this, but then, I would also take into consideration that driving at, say, 70MPH with a Camrys is not the same that doing it with a BMW. All other things being equal, you are way less dangerous for others drivers in the latter case and this should also be used to "equalize" the fine for speeding. Or is this too unfair for the people that cannot afford a BMW ?
cousin_it 9y ago
Tiny brain: We should punish Zuckerberg for speeding! That'll show him! Normal brain: Wait a minute. Increasing fines for the 1% can solve at most 1% of the speeding problem. Okay, the 1% number is polemical, but any solution to the problem of speeding must fall mostly on poorer people, because they are the majority. Glowing brain: Why do we talk about speeding as a crime? Any economist would tell you that the optimal amount of speeding is nonzero, so it should be solved with a Pigovian tax equal to the negative externality. Since a rich speeding person does as much potential damage as a poor speeding person, the fine shouldn't depend on how rich you are. If you want a safety net, build a safety net, don't muck around with speeding fines. Galactic brain: Is speeding that much of an externality though? If you go fast and cause a crash, you bear about half of the cost. If you don't cause a crash, no one bears the cost. It's not like pollution where the polluter bears a millionth of the cost. So it seems like selfish decision making, with average human level of loss aversion, should already deal with the problem of speeding. Why isn't that happening? Buddha brain: People know the cost of a crash. Speeding happens because people misjudge the risk of a crash. So perceived risk, not cost, is the right variable to tweak if you want to fix speeding. Make enforcement of fines much more fast and certain, and you can solve speeding while lowering fines. The whole article about billionaires was a distraction from a distraction from a distraction.
- bryanlarsen 9y ago
  "Make enforcement of fines much more fast and certain, and you can solve speeding while lowering fines." If "solve" means legitimize it, yes, you've solved it. Google for "daycare fine study" and notice that adding a small but significant fine to a behaviour you wish to discourage increased that behaviour rather than decreasing it.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - cousin_it 9y ago
    The fine shouldn't be that low. Here's the best formula I could figure out. Let's say R1 = actual risk of harm to yourself and others, M1 = magnitude of harm to yourself and others, R2 = your perceived risk of harm to yourself, M2 = magnitude of harm to yourself. Both M1 and M2 should be based on market price of QALY (about 50K dollars?) without overvaluing you specifically. Then the fine should be set at R1⋅M1-R2⋅M2. That's a generalization of Pigovian tax to a spectrum of behaviors: pollution (R1=R2, M1>M2), skipping medical checkups (R1>R2, M1=M2), speeding (R1>R2, M1>M2). Does that make sense?
RhysU 9y ago
By what right should the officer be able to learn my net worth the moment he or she thinks I made a moving violation? Do you want possibly unscrupulous officers learning your net worth anywhere you travel?
- perpetualpatzer 9y ago
  Moreover, do we as a society want to spend money on discovery procedures to accurately identify speeders' net worth? What do you do if a corporate executive tells the officer he has no assets or income? Personally, if we think speeding is a problem worth spending on, I'd rather hire two more traffic officers than one lawyer and one accountant to adjudicate fine amounts. This may be one of those good ideas that falls apart on implementation.
  - mrguyorama 9y ago
    As far as I understand, Germany implements this system, and it seems to work pretty well
    - perpetualpatzer 9y ago
      Do you know how they validate income? I suppose you could take historical tax filings, which it looks like is what Finland does. Even with that, though, you create the potential to significantly over-burden people with irregular income streams. It looks like the UK tried day fines in the early 90s and dropped it (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4173913.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4173913.stm).
- beagle3 9y ago
  In most of the world, the officer looks at your id and puts your details in the system; They do not collect any money on the spot, and you have the right to appeal said ticket before paying. You get a copy of all the details (including how to appeal, how much to pay, etc.), and while there would be a need to cross this against the income tax database (the way it is done in Finland), it doesn't usually go through a person.
mcbruiser3 9y ago
where is all the hate for rich people coming from?
devnull791101 9y ago
the doctrine of equality of outcomes is evil which is what article is trying to achieve. being successful is not a crime or morally wrong as much as the likes of sanders/corbyn like to fantasise that it is. the fact that one person can handle a fine easier than another is no more consequential that the fact one can run faster than another.

80 points by rafaelc 9y ago

This seems like backdoor civil asset forfeiture but it would allow them to take assets that aren't even present and/or involved at the time of the "offense". Can you see a particularly cash-strapped town telling officers to skip the Toyota Camrys and instead pull over the BMWs? It seems ideal for abuse, selective law enforcement, and likely other bad behaviors. Oddly enough, this would likely go away with self-driving cars as high income people switch to vehicles who "can't" break the law.

dopkew 9y ago
It will put strong pressure to align the law with implementation. If the implementation treads into injustice, it (the law) is explicitly designed to be against those who can shrug it off, rather than drown.
cheriot 9y ago
There's a big gap between a "day fine" and taking someone's house because their kid stashed some drugs in the closet. One is proportional and happens on conviction while the other can be nuts.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
oblio 9y ago
Are you really worried that _rich people_ are the ones that can’t protect themselves from abuse? :)
- garmaine 9y ago
  Rich and powerful are not the same thing.
  - oblio 9y ago
    Even so, rich people have a lot bigger chances to protect themselves from abuse, than poor people. And secondly, what use is a punishment that is not punishment at all for rich people?
- edanm 9y ago
  Not as much as poor people, sure, but keep in mind that even rich people are much less powerful than governments or even large amounts of people. I mean, obviously a completely different scenario, but, how many times have revolutions killed all the rich/powerful people? They don't have infinite protection just cause they're rich.
  - oblio 9y ago
    I'm from a country where that happened, I'm quite aware about this aspect. Even so, fining rich people more just makes sense, to me. Fines are supposed to be a deterrent. If we're reaching the point where we're discussing about revolutions and civil forfeiture, I think there's a bigger problem here. And it's not proportional fines.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
RestlessMind 9y ago
> Can you see a particularly cash-strapped town telling officers to skip the Toyota Camrys and instead pull over the BMWs? No I see a world where neither Toyotas nor BMWs are speeding. But if both are speeding, then owners of both should feel equal amount of pain. And equal amount of pain won't come from equal amount absolute fines (300$ is a drop in the bucket for a billionaire, significant for a poor person).

paulddraper 9y ago

This is already true for incarceration; a billionaire and a nurse lose the same amount of time. And one's time is paid more than the other's. Speeding is a weird example though. If I'm driving I pay based on my income, but if my driver is driving he pays based on his? > In 2015, it handed a businessman a $67,000 speeding ticket for going 14 miles per hour above the limit. I just don't see how going 14 mph with zero other damage is equivalent to compensating the public $67k. "Justice" is about balancing the action with its punishment, not gimmicks like this (that inevitably wind up with a super-complex system of loopholes, deductions, inefficiencies, etc.)

k_sh 9y ago
> "Justice" is about balancing the action with its punishment Right, that's the whole point of the income-proportional fines: to ensure that the same degree of punishment is given out to the billionaire and junior speeder.
onion2k 9y ago
I just don't see how going 14 mph with zero other damage is equivalent to compensating the public $67k. Speeding is a crime because you're risking the safety of other people. There's only "zero damage" if you're lucky. There's potential for a lot of damage. Considering the defined punishment is supposed to act as a deterrent I would argue $67k was actually too low.
- paulddraper 9y ago
  The $67k penalty is merely for exceeding the speed limit by 14 mph, not for actually causing a crash or harm. You would of course be liable for any damages actually caused.
- stmfreak 9y ago
  There is only actual damage if you are exceptionally unlucky. Almost everyone speeds to varying degrees, with wildly successful runs of luck. Ergo, speeding is not a crime, it is an easy revenue target for greedy municipalities with overpaid cops.

anabis 9y ago

Reminded me of Steve Jobs refusing to put a license plate on his car.

cowholio4 9y ago
I thought that was done legally by leasing a new car every few months. And that loophole is part of the motivation for the new temporary plates in CA. Edit: reference https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/07/steve-jobs-loophole-closed-california-wants-temporary-license-plates/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/07/steve-jobs-loophole-clo...

kosei 9y ago

I think I'd take the other approach than exorbitant fines for the rich. Perhaps they should grow (a $3,000 fine for a billionaire isn't unreasonable), but the more important part IMO is here: "For people living on the economic margins, even minor offenses can impose crushing financial obligations, trapping them in a cycle of debt and incarceration for nonpayment." I think it is reasonable that a speeding ticket for someone earning minimum wage could have a lower (say $50 instead of $150) penalty. The fines are made to disincentivize behavior, not put people in debt.

thaumasiotes 9y ago
The fines are made as a revenue source, not to disincentivize anything.
deviationblue 9y ago
> a $3,000 fine for a billionaire isn't unreasonable This sounds ridiculous to me because the idea of laws, and by extension fines, is that they apply uniformly, regardless of class, gender, whatever.
- supermatt 9y ago
  Then it could be a percentage of total assets - that would be equal, no? I do think fines are stupid though. Making people sit a day through a speed awareness course seems a better punishment to me.
  - sushid 9y ago
    Then it ends up hurting the middle class yet again. The rich have their LLCs that purchase their houses and cars and trusts that keep the rest of their money invested. The middle class don't have the luxury and are hit with a disproportionate amount of the fine.
  - Someone 9y ago
    Better? Probably. More equal? I doubt it. “Sit a day through a speed awareness course” could cost people their job, and that’s more likely the lower paying the job is.

anabis 9y ago

At lease some kind of mention of equality under the rule of law should be done and refuted.

singularity2001 9y ago
Percental equality is still equality, even improved equality.
sgift 9y ago
The 'pain' (as in 'felt punishment') inflicted by the fine should be equal in all cases. If you have more money that means a higher fine is needed to inflict equal pain.

braptor 9y ago

The fine should be the same. No free lunch for someone who chooses to be a nurse instead of a portfolio manager.

Ro93 9y ago
the point of a fine is to act as a deterrent... billionaire isn't going to care about $100. They aren't going to care about $1000 either, but at least it's doing more social good.
- commandlinefan 9y ago
  > care about $100 He will care if he loses his driver's license after a certain number of tickets, though, which is the law for everybody, equally applied.
  - russelluresti 9y ago
    In reality, even that isn't equal. A poor person who has moved out of the city because they can't afford housing inside of it losing their license would probably mean losing their job, as public transportation options may not even be available. A wealthy person could just hire an Uber everywhere and wouldn't even notice the cost. While the punishment is equal, the impact it would have on different populations is unequal (which is the same issue with a fine of an absolute amount).
rahimnathwani 9y ago
"No free lunch for someone who chooses to be a nurse instead of a portfolio manager." That's true. Portfolio managers are wined and dined pretty frequently by brokers and others who earn fees from the portfolio managers' employers. Nurses might occasionally get a $10 box of chocolates from a grateful patient.
eertami 9y ago
Yeah and while you're at it why not make tax a flat fee too?

volgo 9y ago

Hard pass

Osiris 9y ago

Why not just do away with fines all together rather than trying to come up with a complex system to try to make them fair. Perhaps instead of fines a more appropriate punishment should be that you're forced to sit in your car for an hour making you late to whatever you were in a rush for.

sebazzz 9y ago
What about people who drive hard deliberate because they can afford the fines, in their free time?
- lox 9y ago
  In Australia we have a demerit point system, although technically if you have enough money you can pay to get around it.
  - supreme_sublime 9y ago
    The United States has the same thing. Get too many traffic infractions in a certain time window (a year or two, might depend on the state) and you get your license revoked.
    - mrguyorama 9y ago
      Certain states allow you to pay double the fine and ignore the points. This was used by groups[0] doing road rallies across America. [0]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1nstSui0tPnJtMF2OZx5tw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1nstSui0tPnJtMF2OZx5tw
ravloony 9y ago
This is actually a very good idea. Time is the one asset we all have. Community service is also a good idea, but it lacks the immediacy of both fines and your suggestion.
AckSyn 9y ago
They're fair as they are. All this would do is punish more harshly those with more money. That's robbery.

timc3 9y ago

I would love to see this happen in many places. But in the US - probably the last place it will ever happen.

tbrownaw 9y ago

Or just do away with the fines completely. At least where I live, a speeding ticket knocks off a couple of your license's 12hp, and they take like a year to regenerate. Maybe that alone should be enough, or maybe you should also have to sit there one extra minute for every mph over the limit you were going.

empath75 9y ago
Yeah, the fine is never the reason I get upset about being pulled over for speeding. It was always the points on the license and the time spent waiting for the ticket.

agapon 9y ago

I thought that points were designed for that. At least in NJ you can get both fines and points depending on a type of a ticket.

Yaggo 9y ago

I'm from Finland where we have this kind of "relative fines". While I generally agree with the concept, it should better take into account the household's total income & wealth. E.g. I could get a fine of 1/2 of my monthly net income for driving 140 km/h (87 mph) on highway, which would hit hard our household (three kids, low income spouse, no savings), although no real harm or risk was caused to anyone.

lox 9y ago
That sounds pretty reasonable to me, frankly. That’s considerably over the limit, isn’t it?
- paganel 9y ago
  The highway speed limit in a country like Romania is 130 kph, but you only risk getting fined if you exceed 140. As such, I usually do 130-135 kph on the highway in my small 1.4 l hatchback and I don’t feel unsafe at all. I feel much more unsafe on 2-lane national roads with lots of curbs and where you risk getting a horse-drawn carriage in front of you out of nowhere, even though on those roads people usually drive much slower (the limit is 90, I stick to 80-90 most of the times unless I have clear visibility for like one km, in which case I push it to 100). Point is that it’s not the speed that kills you, it’s NOT adapting the speed to the road’s conditions that does it. As such, imposing draconian speed limits on highways (like in Finland) is very counter-productive and frustrating, because those highways are actually built to “support” higher speeds (just look at Germany).
- Yaggo 9y ago
  I guess my main point was that in some cases, like in my example, arguably harmless offence can result to relatively high punishment, because personal income doesn't often translate directly to disposable money. Of course irrational speed limits are also to blame. In exreme cases this can result to absurdly high fines, e.g. as a real-world example from Finland, overspeeding at 82 km/h in 60 km/h area have resulted to 34,000 eur fine.
Dude2023 9y ago
Three kids will benefit from a dad who learned to drive slower.

laci27 9y ago

On some of Italy's highways, they calculate the speeding ticket from gate to gate:) Meaning that if you entered the highway at 12:00 and you exited at 13:00 at a gate 120 miles ahead, you get a fine. Sometimes, I see people who like to speed, just sit it out at a parking cafe next to their exit.

boomlinde 9y ago

> But the United States doesn’t need to go that far. I see reasons to go even further, if the goal is a fair level of deterrence. If for a significant part of the population, the total wealth is less than or in the same order of magnitude as the money they earned that month, while for others, income is a relatively tiny portion of it, fines based on income alone will deter the former much more than the latter. The more fair option would be to fine based on wealth, not income. Then, yet further, if you all you have is $500 and lose half of what you own, that'll likely have a devastating effect, possibly resulting in homelessness. For a billionaire, losing half your wealth leaves you with $500M. You won't exactly be panhandling to make ends meet. Again, the deterrence is disproportionate. I'm not sure how to address it. Possibly by not using fines at all, but some amount of hours of social work that has to be completed in some short but manageable span of time, with the definition of "manageable" based on individual circumstances.

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fasteo 9y ago

I generally agree with this, but then, I would also take into consideration that driving at, say, 70MPH with a Camrys is not the same that doing it with a BMW. All other things being equal, you are way less dangerous for others drivers in the latter case and this should also be used to "equalize" the fine for speeding. Or is this too unfair for the people that cannot afford a BMW ?

cousin_it 9y ago

Tiny brain: We should punish Zuckerberg for speeding! That'll show him! Normal brain: Wait a minute. Increasing fines for the 1% can solve at most 1% of the speeding problem. Okay, the 1% number is polemical, but any solution to the problem of speeding must fall mostly on poorer people, because they are the majority. Glowing brain: Why do we talk about speeding as a crime? Any economist would tell you that the optimal amount of speeding is nonzero, so it should be solved with a Pigovian tax equal to the negative externality. Since a rich speeding person does as much potential damage as a poor speeding person, the fine shouldn't depend on how rich you are. If you want a safety net, build a safety net, don't muck around with speeding fines. Galactic brain: Is speeding that much of an externality though? If you go fast and cause a crash, you bear about half of the cost. If you don't cause a crash, no one bears the cost. It's not like pollution where the polluter bears a millionth of the cost. So it seems like selfish decision making, with average human level of loss aversion, should already deal with the problem of speeding. Why isn't that happening? Buddha brain: People know the cost of a crash. Speeding happens because people misjudge the risk of a crash. So perceived risk, not cost, is the right variable to tweak if you want to fix speeding. Make enforcement of fines much more fast and certain, and you can solve speeding while lowering fines. The whole article about billionaires was a distraction from a distraction from a distraction.

bryanlarsen 9y ago
"Make enforcement of fines much more fast and certain, and you can solve speeding while lowering fines." If "solve" means legitimize it, yes, you've solved it. Google for "daycare fine study" and notice that adding a small but significant fine to a behaviour you wish to discourage increased that behaviour rather than decreasing it.
- deleted 9y ago
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- cousin_it 9y ago
  The fine shouldn't be that low. Here's the best formula I could figure out. Let's say R1 = actual risk of harm to yourself and others, M1 = magnitude of harm to yourself and others, R2 = your perceived risk of harm to yourself, M2 = magnitude of harm to yourself. Both M1 and M2 should be based on market price of QALY (about 50K dollars?) without overvaluing you specifically. Then the fine should be set at R1⋅M1-R2⋅M2. That's a generalization of Pigovian tax to a spectrum of behaviors: pollution (R1=R2, M1>M2), skipping medical checkups (R1>R2, M1=M2), speeding (R1>R2, M1>M2). Does that make sense?

RhysU 9y ago

By what right should the officer be able to learn my net worth the moment he or she thinks I made a moving violation? Do you want possibly unscrupulous officers learning your net worth anywhere you travel?

perpetualpatzer 9y ago
Moreover, do we as a society want to spend money on discovery procedures to accurately identify speeders' net worth? What do you do if a corporate executive tells the officer he has no assets or income? Personally, if we think speeding is a problem worth spending on, I'd rather hire two more traffic officers than one lawyer and one accountant to adjudicate fine amounts. This may be one of those good ideas that falls apart on implementation.
- mrguyorama 9y ago
  As far as I understand, Germany implements this system, and it seems to work pretty well
  - perpetualpatzer 9y ago
    Do you know how they validate income? I suppose you could take historical tax filings, which it looks like is what Finland does. Even with that, though, you create the potential to significantly over-burden people with irregular income streams. It looks like the UK tried day fines in the early 90s and dropped it (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4173913.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4173913.stm).
beagle3 9y ago
In most of the world, the officer looks at your id and puts your details in the system; They do not collect any money on the spot, and you have the right to appeal said ticket before paying. You get a copy of all the details (including how to appeal, how much to pay, etc.), and while there would be a need to cross this against the income tax database (the way it is done in Finland), it doesn't usually go through a person.

mcbruiser3 9y ago

where is all the hate for rich people coming from?

devnull791101 9y ago

the doctrine of equality of outcomes is evil which is what article is trying to achieve. being successful is not a crime or morally wrong as much as the likes of sanders/corbyn like to fantasise that it is. the fact that one person can handle a fine easier than another is no more consequential that the fact one can run faster than another.