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Income adjusted traffic violation fines

theprestige said:
It's the insurance points and license suspension I worry about.

But to be honest the repeat offenders I see are all people with suspended licenses, no insurance, no registration, half the time the plates don't even match the car... And none of them are particularly wealthy.
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Really? How would you know any of that? Are you a judge? A lawyer? Or an internet pundit who thinks they know the facts?
 
acbytesla said:
The Republican manifesto. I got mine. Screw the rest.
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Yes, 100%, I stand for getting the worst drivers off the road, regardless of wealth. Your sympathy for the poor, crappy drivers probably does not extend to the people whose lives they ruin with their poor, crappy driving.
 
Brainster said:
Yes, 100%, I stand for getting the worst drivers off the road, regardless of wealth. Your sympathy for the poor, crappy drivers probably does not extend to the people whose lives they ruin with their poor, crappy driving.
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No. But I do have sympathy for those whose lives are ruined and made more difficult.
 
acbytesla said:
i know fines are a deterrent for me.
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I dunno, the fines aren't really that high. Like theprestige, I'd worry more about how my insurance rate is going to go up. But in any case, it isn't that hard not to drive badly. You wrote in this thread how you try to drive safely. Most of us do. Drive safely and this whole discussion is moot.
 
Trausti said:
I dunno, the fines aren't really that high. Like theprestige, I'd worry more about how my insurance rate is going to go up. But in any case, it isn't that hard not to drive badly. You wrote in this thread how you try to drive safely. Most of us do. Drive safely and this whole discussion is moot.
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You're right about a lot there. Especially when you say the fines aren't that high to you and I. But you're wrong that they're not that high for many drivers.
 
acbytesla said:
You're right about a lot there. Especially when you say the fines aren't that high to you and I. But you're wrong that they're not that high for many drivers.
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Then it's a really good incentive for them not to drive unsafely. You seem to be trying socialism via traffic fines but what about removing unsafe drivers from the road, rich or poor? Surely we can all agree that is the overall goal of traffic enforcement?
 
theprestige said:
Your tax information is confidential. The court cannot impose a wealth based fine without your consent.

Courts can subpoena your tax records to help it resolve child support and bankruptcy cases.

It's not at all clear to me that speeding tickets should be added to that list of exceptions. My hatred for rich people simply does not extend that far.

On the other hand, my hatred for people who come crying about how they can't afford a speeding ticket and it's just not fair? My hatred for those people knows no bounds.
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In the UK it seems to work

www.gov.uk

Speeding penalties

You could get a fine and penalty points if you're caught speeding, or could even lose your licence
www.gov.uk www.gov.uk
 
Trausti said:
Sure, you can contest it. But it's not that big of a deal.
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The whole point is to make it a big enough deal that people stop breaking the law.
Trausti said:
You can set a hearing and hope the cop doesn't show up. But if he does, you're stuck.
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You treat legal proceedings that casually in the USA? No wonder you are so ◊◊◊◊◊◊.
 
Trausti said:
Dude, the OP you started was about traffic infractions not murder, robbery, assault, etc. The penalty is possibly a fine and points against your license. The vast majority of people don't contest because (1) they know they did it and (2) the time/expense in challenging the ticket just ain't worth it. The points system is fair to everyone.
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A drunk driver once hit a friend of mine and his wife. She was killed and he was seriously injured. She is just as dead as if she had been murdered. The traffic regulations are there to try to stop this from happening. Stop trying to hand wave infractions away.

The justice system will never really be fair to everyone until poor people have the same access to legal council as rich people. I do not like that, but equally, I don't know how to fix it.
 
Anecdote not data, but when our local pub reopened one of the first big piss ups was a local landowner who'd hired a specialist solicitor who'd managed to get a drink driving ban overturned, presumably on a technicality since apparently the person concerned had wound up parked halfway into someone's front room.
 
Trausti said:
Of course, it's malicious envy. Your obvious motivation is to punish people because they are in a higher income bracket than you.
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In my case, in a country where speeding fines are linked to income, I would be in one of the higher bands but I still think it makes sense to link fines to income.

However because of the legal systems in the UK, I don't worry about local government tiers having access to my tax records because that's not how it works. I guess if it was a two-bit county that was having it. I might feel different.

The points system is a bigger potential deterrent, as if you lose your licence, it could be significant. I do think UK courts are too ready to accept hardship arguments from prolific offenders about why they shouldn't lose their licenses, but that is a different question.
 
Trausti said:
... I'd think the goal of traffic infractions and points should be to get bad drivers off the road.
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I'd think in the great majority of cases it's to make people better drivers rather than get them off the road. In a society where driving yourself around is a basic requirement for participation, actually stopping people from driving is a last resort. That's why I favour giving the option of a speed awareness course instead of a fine or points for a minor offence.

If people treat a paltry fine and a few points that never quite add up to a suspension as an occasional inconvenience, then their driving, and driving culture generally, will not improve. Getting a group of people who all did basically the same thing to talk about why they shouldn't do it, seems like a better way to reach the majority.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
I'd think in the great majority of cases it's to make people better drivers rather than get them off the road. In a society where driving yourself around is a basic requirement for participation, actually stopping people from driving is a last resort. That's why I favour giving the option of a speed awareness course instead of a fine or points for a minor offence.

If people treat a paltry fine and a few points that never quite add up to a suspension as an occasional inconvenience, then their driving, and driving culture generally, will not improve. Getting a group of people who all did basically the same thing to talk about why they shouldn't do it, seems like a better way to reach the majority.
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I've always liked the idea of the police stopping people for things like minor speeding on the motorway or bad driving that doesn't usually meet the definition of a crime, like lane hogging or rediculously slow driving on motorways, and just giving them a talking to fo a few minutes. Inconvenient, embarrassing, a little worrying, punishment without long term consequences but still something most of us would want to avoid.
 
Trausti said:
Of course, it's malicious envy. Your obvious motivation is to punish people because they are in a higher income bracket than you.
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The points system is based on the infraction and that affects everyone the same and I think that is fair, being poor or wealthy doesn't alter the potential harm of you breaking traffic laws (albeit as mentioned if you can pay someone to drive you a ban isn't the same as for someone who can't afford that). However if we are then also using financial penalties as a punishment and/or deterrent then for that to be fair it needs to be as "painful" to the wealthier person as it is to the poorer person, otherwise justice is subverted by having wealth.
 
acbytesla said:
True. Again you make my point. They have representation that puts them in a position to avoid the consequences that ordinary citizens face.
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In the UK there was an infamous solicitor with the reputation of getting you off traffic charges if you could afford him.

(The bloke's name is/was Nick Freeman - he was known as Mr Loophole as he usually wouldn't argue against the actual charge i.e. he wouldn't say the person wasn't speeding but find that the police hadn't dotted all their "i"s and crossed their "t"s. Now on the one hand there is the argument that he only got people off their charges because the police or prosecution had made a mistake, and the police and prosecution shouldn't be making mistakes, but it is very unlikely that only the wealthy folk he represented had cases with such mistakes.)
 
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