(found at
MR)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100107/ap_on_fe_st/eu_odd_switzerland_huge_speeding_fineST. GALLEN, Switzerland – A Swiss court has slapped a wealthy speeder with a chalet-sized fine — a full $290,000.
Judges at the cantonal court in St. Gallen, in eastern Switzerland, based the record-breaking fine on the speeder's estimated wealth of over $20 million.
A statement on the court's Web site says the driver — a repeat offender — drove up to 35 miles an hour (57 kilometers an hour) faster than the 50-mile-an-hour (80-kilometer-an-hour) limit.
Court clerk Heidi Baumann-Becker said Thursday the unidentified driver can appeal the decision, handed down in November, to the Swiss supreme court.
The Blick daily newspaper in Zurich reported the fine was more than twice the previous Swiss record of about $107,000.
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Initially, when I heard about this, I thought it was actually a pretty good idea. A $200-300 fine just isn't much of a deterrent to people who have a lot of money, this seems like it (should) change that optimal choice arithmetic.
What do you think of this?
I said I "initially" thought this was a good idea because I then changed my mind. I started thinking about traffic fines and fines in general, and then I started considering: in America at least (not sure about the situation in other countries) there is a certain problem of police setting up speed traps as a revenue stream, which seems like a messed-up incentive to me. There's also the issue of scaled-to-income (or net worth) tickets not necessarily hitting people like me, a college student without a job and with a bunch of loans. I wouldn't personally mind getting a $0 ticket, but it's not much of a deterrent. If someone like me does receive a ticket, or someone of even lower capacity to pay, perhaps with a mandatory minimum fine (say of $100-200), it's going to affect that person a lot more than even a $300,000 fine would affect a wealthy person.
There's also the notion that a fine in a certain capacity should equal the expected harm, adjusted for the likelihood of not being caught.
Ugh.
How should fines, let's expand this to traffic
and otherwise, work? I've been drifting towards abandoning the idea of fines for lower-income people altogether and going with some other deterrent, but that just throws in additional problems. Is there a theory of optimal fines out there somewhere? Do the Swiss have it?
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Excellent idea.
Well, consider that this guy, in America, could drive however fast he wanted to (under double the speed limit), with the fine (when caught) equaling by percentage about the same cost as a tank of gas for most people.
I dunno how it works in Switzerland, but the fines here aren't the behavioral-changing aspect of the punishment. The points system takes care of that. Too many points and you lose your ability to drive.
Then again, I'm one of those evil people who thinks you don't just take money from people because you deem they can afford it.
Don't speed = trap becomes worthless. I hate when people bitch about cops trapping them. If you weren't doing something illegal, you wouldn't be "trapped".
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Hopefully a gigantic fine will get the job done just as well.
So, "you can't drive any more" works for shit.
I mean, in theory it is a good idea but it seems like it would be difficult to impliment smoothly.
I'm okay if well off people have a lessened disincentive for their first three or four tickets if they will be spending a week in jail for their fifth. I think that's adequate.
Speed traps in the sense of enforcing fines as a means to revenue enhancement as opposed to as a means to increasing public safety. Strictly enforcing a 35 MPH zone and fining me for going 38 strikes me as unnecessary and not conducive to public safety.
Enforcement of the law should not be dependent on how hard up for cash the police department is.
I'm fine with increased punishment for repeat offenses.
I'm in support of this.
Anyone actually doing that is being counterproductive and idiotic. The fine + court costs for a 3mph ticket can't possibly be worth the time and effort involved to ticket, convict, and collect.
Is this worse than police profiling cheap cars because the drivers are less likely to fight the ticket with a lawyer?
Does that really happen?
Or wealthy.
Unless it gets fought in court, it's generally a matter of someone taking the ticket to the court and paying the fine. The administrative costs, I imagine, are pretty damn low.
People don't get wealthy by pissing away money. You'd have to do something really egregious for your ticket to be more expensive than a lawyer, in which case you probably need a lawyer.
Lawyering up for a speeding ticket is only done by idiots.
But yeah, I'd say that IRO the OP, where a fixed-level fine is clearly pointless, revoking the licence is more appropriate than a stupidly scaled fine.
Additionally, some speed traps are set up in places were the speed limit is poorly posted, or the situation is otherwise ambiguous.
There used to be a common speed trap between Stanford University and highway 280. Basically, there used to be a place where you'get off of the 65 mph freeway, onto a 45 mph thoroughfare and then suddenly the speed limit dropped to 25 mph with very little warning. The police would pull people over who were slowing down to accommodate the new speed limit but hadn't braked enough to get to 25 by the time the 25 zone started.
The signage and limits have since been adjusted, but I knew a lot of people who got caught there.
There's nothing morally wrong with disobeying an unfair law, or an unfair enforcement of the law. It might be a bad strategy for saving money, but it's not wrong.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Do you know what a speedtrap is and the problems associated with them? But first, can you tell me that you always drive the speed limit and you never go over even five miles an hour? Speed traps are meant to enforce the speed limit as it's posted so it catches people who go a little bit over. Under normal conditions, even in the presence of a police officer (say parked to the side of a highway), this would not be cause for being pulled over and issued a ticket. Enforcement of the speed limit is already inconsistent but speedtraps make it even more so. This isn't even touching on the fact that some speedtraps are set up specifically to fine a bunch of people as a source of revenue. With this in mind it would be extremely difficult to set up a progressive system of traffic fines that worked.
Don't dismiss something with a single anecdote. That is complete nonsense. Your anecdote doesn't matter. Just because a minority of people might not be deterred by the suspension of their license doesn't mean other people aren't deterred and it doesn't mean we should stop suspending licenses. In order to argue for or against this practice actual data needs to be collected and analyzed to see how effective the points system is as a deterrent.
I don't think that's the reason, but coming from a law enforcement family, yes the police do profile shitty looking cars, mainly because people on parole and probation tend to drive shitty looking cars.
I don't really have a problem with this.
That's not necessarily the case, especially with the recent increases in insurance premiums.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Speed limits are not adjusted to reflect the actual road conditions under which they occur. This is why speed traps are called as such - they're setup in areas where it is unbelievably safe to go faster then the posted limit, or where it is likely people will cruise 5-10km over the limit (say, along a road with periodic ups and downs where continually breaking is actually more dangerous) for the express purpose that they generate a lot of tickets.
The general societal pressure is "slow down", yet in something like 60+% of accidents driver fatigue, rather then speed, is the main cause. As a motoring group recently pointed out - accurately - knocking a 110 limit down to 100 will add an hour to an inter-city trip. Does that really make the roads safer?
I mean, as a multi-millionaire, you could potentially afford the fines and just speed all you want, not caring. So you scale up the fines so he can't do that.
Of course, where I live they just use a point system instead. Big Speeding tickets get you points. Too many points and you lose your license. Drive without a license and shit gets BAD for you.
Or if you have a firm on retainer.
I think most places have a point system in addition to the fine system, but I still don't see why everyone should pay the same for speeding tickets.
That's how it works here in NH as well, and there isn't much that a defense attorney can do to save you in those cases either.
The millionaire owner of the restaurant chain I worked for a few years ago had to go to the county jail just the same as any other guy - so it seems to work out.
Unless this wealthy person does not want to start driving slowly, and does not want to risk eventual further penalties. (Also, I'm not sure how insurance companies deal with tickets where the charges get dropped.)
But the assertion that wealthy people do not spend more money than is necessary on things is kinda silly.
I would like to yell about this some more too: the exact same logic works in reverse. If someone had been fined a bunch of money would it have stopped them driving? If you're going down for a DUI after killing two people, the problem was clearly not limited to a lack of a deterrent to breaking the road rules.
This type of bullshit is why speed limits constantly move down and yet - mysteriously - the roal toll fluctuates essentially randomly year to year, barring notable events usually being widespread car safety features hitting the market.
I don't know how much a traffic lawyer costs, but if I were looking at an insurance hike of $1000, I'd at least look into lawyering up.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
At least in the US, Section 1 of the 14th Amendment has something to do with it.
But the speed limit is still 35, and you were doing 38. I'm not arguing getting pulled over for an extra 3 miles isn't a hassle, but you still disobeyed the law.
And of course I've done more than the speed limit, but if I got pulled over, I wouldn't call it BS. I did something wrong, I got punished. Thats what happens if you get caught.
As for not knowing the speed limit, ignorance is no excuse from the law. If I'm not sure what the speedlimit is, I slow down to the limit I *guess* it is, and speed up when I see what the limit is. It's not that big of a deal.
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I agree, we should add a shitty roads clause.
If the road condition are really shitty, you're fine and point penalty is doubled, if the road conditions are perfect it is halved, if neither applies then you get the standard fine.
We double fines/penalties when passing road workers because of the increased risk, seems like doing the same for poor driving conditions would be reasonable.
What about minorities driving expensive cars? Or is that just in movies?
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I know in Virginia, road and weather conditions affect the threshold for what can be considered Reckless Driving.