andrewducker | Speeding Fines

Speeding Fines

octopoid_horror let me know about the Finnish system of administering speeding fines:
KPH over the speed limit x daily salary.

So if you're 10KPH over the speed limit and earn hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, then you're in for quite a large fine.

Apparently this is how all reasonable sized fines work in Finland - they're expressed in days of pay.

I'm in favour.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

In what way?

As you said, a really poor person could otherwise get away with whatever they liked. A minimum fine level, and an alternative of prison in the case of people who cannot pay seems reasonable to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine

So the poor and unemployed are more likely to be sent to jail than those who aren't? Really? How, precisely, is it fair to tell the poor that they are more likely to go to jail for their crimes compared to a rich man? Sorry, but what you have here is a system that either favours the poor or discriminates against them, which is why I'm currently boggling slightly!

I don't understand. How is it not fairer than the system in the UK with fines, where the poor will be more discriminated against (because it doesn't scale down to their level) and the rich will be less affected (because it doesn't scale up).

The UK system fails to work at both the bottom and top end, being "fair" only for a small region in the middle. This system scales up and down far better.

Do you have a counter-proposal?

It's not fairer because IMO an increased likelihood of jailtime is far worse than financial discrimination. Money is less important than freedom! :)

How is it increased? In the UK system the fine would be set, and you'd be sent to prison if you didn't pay it - exactly the same as it is in Finland.

Yes, you're quite right, ignore that one. However, I honestly don't believe that the Finnish system is any better than the British system for the poor, and it will just encourage the rich to move away, so I'm not sure what it achieves... Maybe I'm being cynical.

It seems unlikely to me that people will move away from the UK to avoid speeding fines. But that could just be me :->

No, but being fined more money for being rich is just going to further encourage people like Lewis Hamilton, who move away because other countries are less critical of success. And don't get me wrong, I think that the rich should pay taxes to support stuff like the NHS - I'm just unsure that this fine system is as good a way to get that support.

Maybe I'm cracked, here, but I fail to see how "getting caught speeding" and "success" are supposed to be correlated.

And a set rate of "0.5% of your annual income per X full km/hr over the limit" has a much better case towards being fair than "an extremely variant percentage, heavily weighted towards punishing the poor far more than the rich".

I *do* totally see your point with regards to minimum limit, inability to pay, and odds of jail time - but, right now, there are all kinds of things a poor person can do where the punishment is far less than that a rich person would experience, simply because the poor can't pay fines and have no wages to garnish, etc. And yet, for some reason, we have yet to see rich people saying "Well, shit, I want to piss in public and sleep under bridges without consequences! It's not FAIR! Quick, I need to become poor in a hurry!"

Rich people don't like paying money for things. Rich people move to country that makes them pay less as a result. Same reason that richer people tend to move to tax havens, as Lewis Hamilton has done in his move to Switzerland.

And then you have fewer inconsiderate rich twits running other people off the roads and thereby driving up insurance rates; I fail to see the down-side of this.

-- Steve frankly doesn't care much about the bruised egos of the super-rich, especially given the huge economic car-wreck resulting from others' coddling of them.

What I love about you left-wingers is the consideration you have for others. :)

Happy to oblige.

In this case, though, I actually think that I am looking out for others; we're talking about fines for exessive speed in traffic, aka "breaking the law". Law and order types interested in strict enforcement as an effective deterrent to criminal behaviour should be all over this like ants at a picnic.

-- Steve thinks that you have nothing to fear from indexed traffic fines if you have nothing to hide.

Yeah, I agree with you. Same principle as ID cards - there's no harm to them as long as you have nothing to hide. :)

Nice try, but "not needing to identify yourself without cause" is different in many significant ways from from "paying an equivalent price for breaking the law."

Oh, it's not that part I was disagreeing with (although I was interested to see the counter argument, nicely put). It's the part where all rich people are twits who are menaces on the road that pissed me off - that just seemed, well, rather bigoted.

Ah!

Okay. In understand. The argument is not that all rich people are twits and menaces.

It's that, without income-indexed fines, rich people are *free* to be twits and menaces while poorer twits and menaces lose their licenses and go to jail.

Isn't a fairer way to do it to eliminate fines completely, and go after people's time? I suppose it could be argued that a rich person's time is worth more than a poor person's, but to me, community service would be a better suggestion.

(And surely the rich person loses their license either way?)

Possibly, but that's not what they're doing. They're charging money, and that means either income-indexing or rich people ignore it.

And no, no, the rich person doesn't lose their license, not always. In general, you will lose your license fast if you can't pay. In particular, you'll get a fine that suspends your license UNTIL you pay.

But if you get 12 points, you get banned. Regardless of fines.

Sorry, what country are we working in, again?

(Regardless: Someone who can't pay the "pay or lose it" fee will lose their license. Somone who can will pay, then get another pay-or-lose-it, then another, and another, and then finally lose their license. And still be able to pay the fines for driving without a license.)

Britain. Once you get twelve points on your license, your license is taken away, regardless of how promptly you pay your fine. And I don't believe failure to pay the fine gets you more points, either, so actually, in this country, the likelihood of losing your license doesn't depend on financial status in any way. I'm assuming you aren't from round here.

(no subject)

andrewducker - 2009-04-26 10:52 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

theweaselking.livejournal.com - 2009-04-26 14:17 (UTC) - Expand

Going after people's time would be a fair way of doing it, yes. I'd be absolutely fine with that.

I believe that the Finnish system is still regressive, just not as regressive as fixed fines; if we consider the daily wage less basic living costs, a rich man has a far higher disposable income with which to pay the fine than does a poor man. The Finnish system is still biased in favour of the rich.

Thank you!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All