A fine should be allowed to be paid in installments, according to one’s financial situation.
The first offense is a fine and a warning that the next offense will result in suspension of license.
Rich or poor, if you can’t stop yourself from excessive speeding even though you are fully aware of the consequences, you shouldn’t be driving.
It would be tough, but everyone files, or at least should file, tax returns. That gives you an income to work off of.
That’s funny, I would have thought Jim Crow was discrimnation in its purest, finest, most blatant form.
This isn’t a problem if ticket revenues don’t directly affect the funding of the issuing agency, which isn’t a bad idea regardless. This is already the way it works in many jurisdictions, I’d guess including most of those with variable fines.
I think that drunk drivers who kill people should be punished according to how much money the victim had. Someone who is poor had a lot less to lose by dying than a rich person.
Well it be fair if that 80 would have some respect for the system and stay alive for his entire sentence.
I think your heading into a different argument entirely
On the fines thing, yes with flat fines the wealthy suffer less for their fines. Fines are not however the only deterrent to speeding. Multiple offenses do have other consequences.
We could go down this chain of logic forever though because a rich person losing their license suffers less because they have the means to pay someone to drive for them.
There are benefits to being rich. I’m OK with that so long as those benefits aren’t trampling over the rest of us. If we go to a fine based system for running people over then I’m definitely going to argue for a progressive structure.
I guess the first thing Id want to see is if there is a significant issue with richer people being more likely to speed because the fines dont matter.
Secondly Id want to see if fines matched to income are more effective than say points based systems heading towards loss of license and other penalties eg community service, jail etc.
Id also wonder if increases in fines led to more people fighting it in court to drag out outcomes, increases in casual bribery, people trying to make a run for it, etc.
Ie my concerns would be mostly pragmatic, and based on looking at outcomes, with a fair amount of doubt it would be as effective as other alternatives. I guess Id also wonder why its only being done for driving alone, it seems kind of inconsistent. Why not parking, littering, or any other offense?
Otara
Define excessive speeding. Some poor people get pulled over for DWB. Driving while black.
With so many foreclosures , some towns are trying to make the money up with traffic fines. There are a couple speed trap happy communities in my area.
Well, that’s a question that will divide everyone in to camps. I left it deliberately vague for the reason that it’s a quibble and can be defined by the whatever the “reasonable man” thinks it means in their jurisdiction.
Have people been fined for DWB?
I think you are taking a deliberately narrow view of what discrimination means, and how it is practiced. There is ALWAYS going to be discrimination based on arbitrary criteria or morally neutral factors. Some cops may decide to only pull over people doing 11 mph over the speed limit instead of 9. Can you really make an argument that one is much different than the other? Another example is bail. A rich guy with a private jet is far more likely to have a higher bail than a poor person. Why? Because we want to make the bail amount a relatively equal disincentive to not showing up to trial.
More generally, money (among other things) is often a factor when you are primarily interested in preventing a behavior. My problem with this plan is that too many municipalities rely on traffic fines for funding, and take steps to protect said funding irrespective of road safety or crime prevention. Alternatively, places like Albuquerque have even flirted with getting rid of red light cameras because they are no longer revenue makers.
There are other places facing the same decision. Since there is plenty of evidence to suggest that traffic fines are less about safety than they are about revenue, I don’t think rules allowing the state (or more often, private contractors) to collect greater revenue under the guise of bleeding the rich are a good idea.
No, because the 5 years at the end of your life is no more valuable than the 5 years at the beginning of your life. But, to a poor person a small fine is worth more than the same fine to a rich person.
Did you somehow miss the last paragraph in the quote in your OP?
“La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain.” Anatole France Le Lys Rouge
CMC fnord!
Consider a contrasting variation that I think exists in some places:
Some violations, in some places, are punishable by, for example,
“$1,000 fine and/or 6 months in jail”
Meaning the judge, at his discretion, could impose a fine or jail time or possibly both.
If the defendant can’t afford the fine, he may have no choice but to do the time. But a defendant who can afford the fine can pay it and not have to go to jail. This creates the appearance that a wealthier defendant can buy his way out of jail.
I saw this used in a case in Hawaii some years ago, which became a cause celebre when it happened in the early 1970’s but had long since fallen off the media radar when the case against the last defendant came to trial in the early 1980’s.
A professor was doing research with captive dolphins in Hawaii. Two of his assistants stole the dolphins from the laboratory and dumped them into the ocean. When the last defendant came to trial and was convicted, he argued at sentencing that he couldn’t pay any fine and it was therefore unjust to send him to jail because of that. As far as I know, he never did go to jail or pay any fine.
If one defendant can avoid jail by paying a large fine, should another similar defendant have to go to jail because he can’t pay the fine?
Cribbed from another message board, so the cites ain’t mine,
Take a guess who got sentenced to 40 months and who got 15 years?
40 months for Paul Allen, 15 years for Roy Brown.
Guess “Scarface” had it right “If you are going to steal, steal steal big and hope like hell you get away with it.” . . . not that it’ll matter all that much if ya don’t.CMC fnord!
I don’t see any reason to means-test the fines - because even if you make it proportional to measurable wealth, some people will still consider it good value for money for the ability to exceed the limit.
In the UK, we’ve got a two-pronged system - a fine as a penalty for the violation, and a points-based licence endorsement. When you’ve accrued 12 points, you’re no longer allowed to drive. If you accrue a few points, then change your ways, the points eventually tick back to zero after a number of years. Motor insurance premiums take into account licence points too.
So (assuming enforcement happens to a uniform, high standard), nobody can get away with persistent offending just because they can afford it.
No, THIS is discrimination in it’s purest, finest, most blatant form. Look, I know you’re just a kid, but really, you need to tone down your rhetoric. It’s tedious, and thoroughly irritating.
To someone living paycheck to paycheck a traffic fine can mean a month or two of living off potatoes, or doing without even that sometimes. Is that the same punishment to someone who makes $100,000?
If not, why does the poor person deserve the punishment of having food taken right out of their mouth and the rich person doesn’t?
Qin’s a kid?
Did not know.
I remember being a kid on the internet. (Well… on BBSs… 
)
Why not? IOW, a gratuitous assertion may, as you often remind us, be gratuitously denied.
As you know by now, the OP in a GD thread is normally expected not only to state a position, but to support it. So how about you do so? :dubious: