£180,000 speding fine . . .

[Dr Who]

If a footballer was caught doing 150mph on the Motorway he would be banned from driving. Just like you and me. Far more of a detterant than money - its why I wont do 150mph on the Motorway at least.

AND he will get a massive fine, as large as the law allows.

 

[Glaucus]

Do you want a deterrent just for the rich and not the poor? Present fines are not a deterrent. What would you do about that regarding fines? Scrap them altogether and have points only?

I'm talking generally and in law fines are the main deterrent and means tested. As someone said someone rich or average wage could buy themselves above the law if it was not means tested. means tested is not a bad idea and it is not screwing the rich like tax and other methods.

As i see it points are the deterrent and fines are a way of paying the fees involved with a heavy tax on top for government profiteering. As I said I am talking generally rather than just speeding.

The punishment for motoring offences are fine, but I wish they would stop the war on speeding and charge people for tail gating and the other 101 situations that cause far more crashes than speeding. The war on speeding is only make roads less safe as people think they are driving like angels.

 

[Jonnycoupe]

So why not charge rich people more for goods and services? It's really not on that they are effectively paying an insignificant amount for electricity and gas for example.

After all, then can afford it.

Cos they have worked hard to earn and pay for a luxury. Typically this means most rich people DO pay more for goods and services anyway... as they can afford thr premium stuff. It kind of falls into your own reasoning? Unless your weekly food shop is £50?

This is a premium fine.

I do no consider driving and breaking the speed limit a luxury that you can simply pay for with what is monopoly money, hence the deterant here is proportioned against someones income, which I dont think is a totally unreasonable concept.

Do the swiss have a point system?

They could have fined him or banned him.

 

[Fett]

Why stop at speeding fines? How about a sliding scale for all fines?

Parking ticket £1 if you are on the dole. £1000 if you are a millionaire.

Excess postage charge could get expensive.

They are all fines so why not?

I'd love to see this happen personally. Means testing speeding fines seems pointless as, already pointed out, the points are the deterrent for 99% of motorists and the fine should just cover the costs.

Where no point deterrent exists though, I'd be 100% behind non-endorsable sliding scale punishments. Seatbelts, parking, bald tyres etc...as the financial penalty is a ****take at the moment.

 

[stockhausen]

I don't know how you always manage to miss the point. <snip>

If the Swiss millionaire managed to avoid repeated speeding offences, he wouldn't get fined anything - regardless of his income or wealth.

You certainly seem to have absolutely no difficulty missing the point.

stockhausen likes to argue for the sake of being a ****.
and then when you question him, he ignores you and runs away

Alternatively, I have a life

 

[Angilion]

So clearly, fines are an inappropriate detterant. The answer is find a new detterant not fine you more the harder you work.

What makes you think that a person's wealth is dependent on how hard they work? You're using the two interchangeably, which is obviously silly and thus detracts from whatever point you might have. You don't get £20M from working harder. You might get it from being lucky, from being inventive, from being extremely skilled in business, from knowing the right people, from being a very good thief, from having a hugely marketable talent (e.g. mass-market writing, big name acting, top level sport)...but not simply from working harder.

 

[Angilion]

Regarding the points thing - does anyone know why the Swiss don't do it? I checked - they don't. It's a smaller fine for up to 30Km/h over the limit, then it becomes a criminal matter, goes through a court trial and results in a punitive fine if you're foind guilty.

Although being fined 1.2% of his wealth might be less of a punishment for him than a ban. Given how harsh Switzerland is regarding motoring offences, I would have expected them to issue a ban at a lower speed than in the UK.

 

[Will]

I can see both sides of the argument but all the people saying 'so a dole scrounger should only have to pay a £1 then?' really are going too far, nobody has actually suggested that as reasonable.

I believe there is some merit to the idea that those in positions of extreme wealth should have to pay more to make the impact of any such punishment equally felt as a deterrent and punishment.

To my mind its not jealousy at all - consider the time I saw some Arab guy parking his blinged up Bentley on double yellow lines in a posh part of Richmond, who was immediately pounced upon by a parking warden. The guy just completely ignored the wardens demands that he move, with a dismissive gesture, walking away despite the cars backed up behind him and the warden standing their filling out the ticket. £60 clearly made no odds to that guy, he probably collects parking fines like I collect used train tickets. Where applied, a fine should be both a deterrent and a punishment to the person who has wronged - if it fails to be that, then surely the law has failed?

A fine of 1p to someone on the dole wouldn't be sufficient as its so easily repaid, everyone seems agreed on that given the way such an idea has been bandied around in this thread, yet £60 to a multi-millionaire is just as much of a throwaway sum that is neither punishment nor deterrent, in just the same way that the penny is to the man claiming JSA.

The difficulty comes though in taking this line of thinking relating to proportionality and just punishment and actually applying it fairly in the real world - morality is all well and good but ensuring everyone gets to feel the same pain, be it from fines for breaking the law or taxation, is incredibly difficult to get right, as the inequalities that exist within our legal and financial systems shows, both for the very poor and for the very rich.

 

[growse]

Whatever happened to justice being blind?

 

[Wilderbeast]

Those advocating means testing as a valid way to go:

Instead use community service, means tested by your available free time.

The fine is 1 week community service for said offence.

Working person - 5 days a week worker, get fined the 2 remaining days.
Job seeker - having more available free time, gets all 7 days.

How is that fair? It doesnt work either way and nor should it. Repeat offenders should be banned, and if that still doesnt work they should be escorted to nearest dungeon.

 

[Glaucus]

How is that fair? It doesnt work either way and nor should it. Repeat offenders should be banned, and if that still doesnt work they should be escorted to nearest dungeon.

except most people are talking generally, not just about speeding where we have a points system. and speeding above a certain speed is already means tested. It is fair and nothing wrong with it. It is a punishment. You should not be able to buy your way out from the Law, which would happen in many cases in the UK if fines were fixed.

 

[markweatherill]

So why not charge rich people more for goods and services? It's really not on that they are effectively paying an insignificant amount for electricity and gas for example.

After all, then can afford it.

Rich people do pay more in taxation than poor people, of course.
The gas and electricity the rich buy is the same as what poor people get.
If the rich shop in the supermarket they get the same produce as the poor. If they go to Harrods they pay more, but the poor person also has the option to go there.
That's just part of everyday life.
Crime and breaking the law should not be part of everyday life and hence punishment can't be reduced to one-size-fits-all.

 

[[TW]Fox]

punishment can't be reduced to one-size-fits-all.

Can't it? It mostly is like that in this country

We dont have £180,000 speeding fines - if you are a billionare or a student if you do 35 in a 30 you'll get a £60 fine. Now you tell me this can't happen even though it does.

How odd. Am I expected to give credibility to the rest of your points if you've managed to miss something so glaring?

 

[markweatherill]

Can't it? It mostly is like that in this country

We dont have £180,000 speeding fines - if you are a billionare or a student if you do 35 in a 30 you'll get a £60 fine. Now you tell me this can't happen even though it does.

How odd. Am I expected to give credibility to the rest of your points if you've managed to miss something so glaring?

Hello Fox. If you do 100mph in a 30 limit you will not get a £60 fine. You'll go to court and your punishment will be decided there.
In the olden days, all motoring offences were dealt with like this. The concept of the fixed penalty was to streamline things for relatively minor offences. No, it isn't equally fair to everyone based on wealth. But it makes out system workable. (The points system means that even the rich can be banned regardless of wealth)

I wasn't saying that something 'can't happen' because obviously our system does in fact deal with the minor offences in the same way for everyone. I haven't missed that, glaring as it is!
But, more serious offences are in fact dealt with as such.

 

[stockhausen]

Can't it? It mostly is like that in this country

We dont have £180,000 speeding fines - if you are a billionare or a student if you do 35 in a 30 you'll get a £60 fine. Now you tell me this can't happen even though it does.

How odd. Am I expected to give credibility to the rest of your points if you've managed to miss something so glaring?

I suspect that markweatherill means that "Crime and breaking the law should not be part of everyday life and hence punishment shouldn't be reduced to one-size-fits-all.", as I am pretty confident you know perfectly well.

The legal system in the UK, as is probably the case everywhere penalises the rich less than the poor, even if only from the point of view that the richer you are, the better the legal representation you can afford; fines should not perpetuate this inconsistency.

 

[kaiowas]

Side stepping the argument of whether the fine was justifed or not, surely it would have been more effective to take the car off him rather than the cash. If he's driving around in an old Ferrari it's not likely to be a case of driving one just to be flash, it'll be a car that means something to him and he'd be more likely to feel the effect of having the car taken off him than he would having some pocket change taken from his bank account.

 

[The Running Man]

On a side note I find it amazing that anyone in the OcUK Motors forums thinks that stiff motoring fines are a good idea, especially given the dubious motives of our governments.

because fines like this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8447784.stm

do NOTHING as a deterrant.

 

[Dolph]

So what impact does this have on road safety then? Or is it more of a jealousy/gloating thing?

 

[The Running Man]

it depends doesnt it, whether the driver who got fined £180,000 does it again and therefore drives unsafely, compared to Harriet with her £350 fine... who is more likely to re-offend?

no jealously allowed.

 

[Dolph]

it depends doesnt it, whether the driver who got fined £180,000 does it again and therefore drives unsafely, compared to Harriet with her £350 fine... who is more likely to re-offend?

no jealously allowed.

That wasn't the question I asked. What road safety benefit does this massive fine provide, given the very limited impact exceeding the speed limit has on road safety in the first place?

Harman should have been banned from driving, driving without due care and attention causes far more accidents than speeding ever will.