Just because a person is rich doesn’t mean they should pay more for everything.
You want to prevent speeding, you use the point system and revoke a person’s license when they have too many violations. There is no need whatsoever to hammer the hell out of a person financially, you already have your violation limiting strategy. Want to prevent illegal parking, you tow or use a boot which will work perfectly on a sidewalk. That way you can also give the driver a moving violation for driving on the sidewalk.
I agree, loss of driving privileges would be a huge pain in the ass to almost everyone. Even a wealthy person who could afford a chaffeur and a limo would probably find it a pain in the ass to have to be driven everywhere. It’s a better system.
I’m just saying IF the plan is to use punitive fines … which it arguably is at present … then it’s only fair to take into account the punitiveness of those fines on people at different income levels.
Good point. The same logic that justifies rich people paying larger fines for traffic tickets could be extented that rich people should pay more for everything.
Look, rich people have an advantage over poor people in lots of ways. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s to be expected. This is how a free capatalist society should work. It’s not some problem that needs to be fixed with social engineering laws. If you are poor and you don’t like it then start working hard, saving your money and soon you too will be rich. (Or, at least richer!)
I like the idea in principle. In practicality I don’t think it makes any sense. You drive through Mayberry and Barney Fife pulls you over for going 40 mph in a 20 mph zone. The case comes up in Andy Taylor’s courtroom. Andy asks “how much do you make?” How is Andy going to know that my declaration of $10K per year is accurate? Is the IRS going to have to supply the Mayberrys of the world with the income data of everyone that commits a traffic offense? As an advocate of individual privacy, I don’t think I want all the police departments in the country to have access to my tax records. I have no problem with the rich paying more in fines, to make their pain proportionate to what the rest of us experience. But I see no way to do this without opening the floodgates of personal information to any and all law enforcement entities.
Cops already don’t give tickets to tons of people based on monetary donations. My friend’s dad gives money to the PBA every year so that he can basically be above the law. It works for him and many others.
The average cop rarely deals with an infraction that could mean a 100K punishment for a person (which is what speeding could become under this system). Most cops aren’t investigating murders and rapes all day, and most of those dealing with those crimes aren’t responsible for giving tickets. I just don’t feel putting cops in that position would have a positive outcome.
This is an American board. Get over it. They have cameras here too in many cities. Here’s the problem with your counter argument. Cops want to get the most money with the least amount of hassle. Having people fight tickets means cops have to come to court (around here at least), the courts become backed up, and administrative fees add up. When you do fight a ticket, and go to court, they will settle for more money and no/less points 90% of the time. The whole idea behind giving points is to punish reckless drivers, why would erasing them do anyone anygood? That’s the same reason why cops pull over people doing 25 over the speed limit, and only give them tickets for 15 over (appox.). If you think you are getting off lightly, you are less likely to fight the ticket, and involve a lawyer. Plus, most cops I know are decent people who don’t particularly like giving tickets and ruining people’s days.
I disagree. If the fines were only meant to deter, then they aren’t working. Considering the number of tickets given, it hasn’t deterred many people from breaking the law.
Cops don’t write the most expensive tickets because people will complain and avoid whatever area the tickets are being given, thereby reducing a necessary revenue stream. That’s why cops hate it when people begin to discover the locations of speed traps. I’ll give you an example of this in action. This site I linked to earlier explains some of the backlash the NYC police dept. received when they started issuing too many valid tickets for quality of life infractions. People got really pissed, began writing about it, and hiring lawyers. They soon stopped. The point of this increase in ticketing was to raise money, however you can’t maximize profits by giving out the most expensive tickets to everyone.
I would imagine most people making minimum wage don’t usually own cars and houses. If $200 fine could break you, where would find money to own a car with insurance and pay a mortgage?
You do what you can- often driving without insurance and praying to god every day that no cops check your tags- because your car is how you get to work and be able to “work hard, save money, and get richer” (I’m still not sure which of those nice people at Taco Bell arn’t working hard and what part of $6.75 they are supposed to save, but that is neither here nor there).
And just like you or I, they don’t enjoy throwing money away on rent and try to find ways to own homes- even crappy homes in bad areas. This may be part of their “work hard, save money, get rich” plan.
Also, you get thrown out of your house if you don’t pay up even if you are renting.
Sure, but I hope you realize that most anything on this topic will be somewhat lacking. It is illegal to have quotas, thus nobody inside the police dept. administration is going to admit to doing so. I don’t know if you caught the most important quotes in the cite I linked to.
This isn’t some group of uninformed people making an anecdotal claim. The PBA is saying it exists, why would they lie?
However, since you asked for more examples, I will provide them. This site includes the following quotes:
No mention of his desire to make the streets safer during that meeting. One more to illustrate my point.
A bill that was only necessary because a town got greedy. It’s pretty clear to me that this is a common practice. Based on this, and the cops I’ve known, I don’t know how I could come to any other conclusion.
You made a statement that I doubt the facts would support. I don’t know many home owners making minimum wage. Also, if they own a home, you can always find a loan or something that will net you $200 bucks. You paint a bleak picture that doesn’t seem too realistic to me. Besides, if you are “saving money to get richer”, then how is $200 gonna cost you your house?
Plus, you neglect the fact that most courts will give you time to pay a fine if you are in truly dire circumstances. Your whole scenario of $200 forcing people into a life of deeper poverty is ridiculously remote.
I’m kind of torn here. On the one hand it seems that the crime of speeding is or parking illegally is not changed at all by the income of the offender. 55 in a school zone is no more likely to kill or maim if the driver is Bill Gates versus Emperor Norton I. There is no reason to believe the rich are less competent drivers than lower income groups. A car parked on the sidewalk is a car parked on the sidewalk. It doesn’t matter if it is a BMW or a Yugo.
The difference then seems to boil down to the punitive or deterrance aspect of the fine. I once was nearly run down by an tractor-trailer with no trailer doing about 95-100 MPH in a 70 MPH zone. I was in the passing lane and passing at a reasonable rate of speed( ~ 80) a couple of cars who were going closer to 75. So I was not in the passing lane very long and the truck driver really had no justification to ride up on my tail as closely as he did. A slight tap on the brakes on my part and he would have literally run me over. Less than 30 seconds later I merged back into the right-hand lane and the trucker flew by while making an obscene gesture at me.
When I saw he had no trailer it was immediately obvious why he was driving like a maniac. He was on his own time and no one was paying him for this particular trip. Those rigs are extremely expensive to operate and if you don’t have a load then you are paying for the mileage and wear and tear out of your own pocket. The more time you spend without a trailer the less money you take home not just in lost income but in negative income because of having to pay for your own fuel and maintenance for those miles. The incident quite unnerved my wife and we started talking about why someone, presumably a professional driver, would drive in such a manner. We sat down and did some analysis based on travel time, mileage, costs per mile, and a few other factors, and we came up with some suprising conclusions.
According to our figures, if a tractor-trailer has a load then it is economically positive for them to obey traffic speed limits. The delay costs more time on the trip and could cause them to miss delivery deadlines. Plus there are serious costs to having an accident and spilling your employers load all over the road. However, when driving alone and unloaded the costs of a traffic ticket are less than the benefits of making it to your next pickup faster. These costs can be managed if you know the area and where the speed traps are. According to our numbers a trucker could easily afford three citations per year in various counties(since they don’t drive in those counties often enough to get in real trouble with the county court as a repeat offender) and still come out ahead by speeding at 90+ mph. The reduced non-load traffic times and increased amount of time they would be hauling a load gave economic incentive for driving like a maniac when you’re on your own time.
We were quite disturbed by this analysis and generally avoid tractor-trailers with no trailers when we’re on the road these days. In general we favor non-fine punishments for traffic offenses. Community service, license suspension, etc. Especially for so-called “professional drivers” who may be engaging in these unsafe behaviors because of a cold-blooded economic cost-benefit analysis which says it is better for them to put minivans full of families at risk than to slow the fuck down.
I would argue that anyone who deliberately acts in a behavior which increases the risk of injury to life and limb for their fellow citizens because the costs of those behaviors are relatively small for someone in their situation(i.e. the trucker or the very rich) should either suffer increased cost or some alternate punishment which makes the analysis come out negative again.
It’s an interesting idea. I do think there’s a certain segment of the population that is so wealthy that traffic and parking tickets are simply a cost of doing business to them, and they’d just as soon break the law and just pay the fine. I think this every time I have the unfortunate experience of having to drive somewhere in West Los Angeles. People in very expensive cars routinely ignore signals, proper lanes, and right-of-way. When you think about it, how likely is someone who paid 1/4 million for their car to care about a $200 traffic ticket? Of course I don’t think they’re the only ones who break the law, but I do think they’re the only ones who make a deliberate calculation that they don’t really care if they get a ticket.
But the idea seems impractical to me, not only for the reasons other people pointed out, but also because it would give an unfair advantage to tax-evaders who hide their income. A person who rightly declares all his income would pay a higher fine than one who doesn’t. That doesn’t seem fair at all.
While I agree with you that this proportional fine system doesn’t seem like a great idea, I don’t know that I agree with your reasoning. A fine is a punishment, not a cost. I don’t really think you can equate it with goods and services that you “pay for”.
I think your analysis is extremely flawed. Truck drivers are known for depriving themselves of sleep while delivering goods (ie. with trailer). I don’t see why you would think they would be worse on their own time. Many get bonuses for getting things delivered early. Besides, the costs the payload are minimal when you are in an accident. Most people worry about physical injury and punitive damages, not the loss of a few thousand cans of Pepsi, or some appliances. Here is a cite which states the following:
Also, your analysis fails to take into account that truckers talk to each other and warn each other when a cop is lurking around. A trucker knows when he/she he is in at increased risk of getting a ticket, so he/she slows down. They are not at the same risk of getting a ticket as a normal driver without access to that information. I can’t see a reason why they would behave in the way you state.
It’s pretty common for poor folks to simply abandon their junker cars when towed. The immediate hit of paying fines outweighs the long term benefits of having a car. One of my friends cars was towed for not having registration (which he couldn’t afford) and since he couldn’t afford registration, much less the tow fees, he gave the car up to the tow yard. Luckly he lives in a town where not having a car isn’t devestating, but he has lost a fair amount of oppertunities because of it.
And, uh, loans are a really bad idea for the poor. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you why.
Because they don’t earn any money when they’re not hauling a load. So they cut the travel times from their last drop-off to the next pick-up as much as possible, and that means speeding.
One guaranteed outcome from this: A lot more speed traps in Brentwood. And every other rich area.
The consequence of this law is that the state would begin to have a much greater interest in busting rich people. That Mercedes better not have a mud flap infraction, because the Precinct could sure use the $5,000 fine.
Money is usually a better motivator than free time. They get paid to deliver things as fast as possible. It’s not like an hourly wage job where they want to stretch out the work to receive more pay. They want to deliver things as fast as possible. That is when they are typically speeding and depriving themselves of sleep and food, not when they are off the clock. There is no logical reason for them to drive more recklessly when they have no payload. It’s like when Domino’s used to have the 30-minutes or less deal. Do you think a delivery driver would speed more on the way back to Domino’s than they would trying to deliver pizza within a often unreasonable window?
I’ve no idea what you mean by this - care to explain?
Surely most cops are dealing on a regular basis with things that have the potential for serious punishment (i.e. prison)? And if you aren’t prepared to put any trust in the police whatsoever, you’ve got a far bigger problem than that posed by a few speeding drivers.
Fines based on offender’s income? Sounds like a ridiculous idea to me, making it almost inevitable that corruption will take hold and twist the system like a pretzel. I have to ask, what exactly are we trying to accomplish here? Another veiled attempt to soak the rich? Or just to punish them so that they feel the pain as much as ordanary Joe Blow citizen who gets the same ticket? Well, if its the former than all I’ll do is point out things like the Spanish Inquisition for how things can escalate out of control and take on a life of their own…all unintended.
If the goal though is to punish folks for breaking the law, why involve fines at all? For a first offense require some kind of community service as well as a mandatory drivers safety class. Failure to attend will automatically revoke your drivers license for some period without appeal. For a second offense have a stricter punishment, more community service, additional mandatory drivers safety classes, blah blah blah. Third offense and your license is suspended for a year, no appeal. If you are caught driving without a license during that time your driving privilaged are perminently revoked, again without appeal. After your privilaged are resumed after your suspension, the next offense will be again community service/driver safety classes. Another offense though will have your license perminently revoked with no appeal.
The states would howl of course because the speed limit system in the US is a huge scam to bring in money to the state via a hidden tax system. What the OP and others are proposing is that we take our already corrupt system and turn them loose on the rich (for the good of the people of course ).
Its the same ole punish the rich (by taking their money) mantra that has tiredly been waved about for decades. I say we first fix the system we have so that the speed limits set are realistic for the road conditions and usage and then come up with new ways to automate detection of law breakers such that the evidence against them is not disputable (take cops with quotas out of the equation, use electronic systems that can capture the speed of the car and its license number and pin point the other relevant data). And set the punishments to be non-fines…which should take some of the corruption and scam out of our current system, and also level the playing field for punishments reguardless of being rich or poor. No one likes to take time off on a weekend or evening or some other time that is ‘their free time’ to be forced to do community service and take some boring driving classes. Having the system escallate in some what so that repeat offenders are eventually taken completely off the streets is also a good thing.
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