Finnish man fined £83,000 for speeding because he earns £10.1 million

Elixir said:
Uncapped? I don't think it's fair. I think the fines could be proportional to earnings within certain limits, but getting fined six figures for what could be a simple mistake/oversight just because you earn a lot is not particularly logical.
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why not? a small regular fine is nothing to them and does not act as a prevention where as a fine tied to wages does.

It's ridiculous in this country didn't some football player keep his license because he can't travel on public transport incase he gets mobbed by fans?

the guy is rich enough to afford a driver...

goto london and see how many supercars are parking and happily taking the tickets
 
elmarko said:
A penalty is still meant to be a punishment, would we set a fine to be 1p?, or would that be so low it would be no longer be a meaningless punishment?.

If 1p is too low to be a punishment (because paying it is a joke) then by the same logic £100 is too low for somebody who has millions for the exact same reason.
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not necessarily and it doesn't have to have a strong punishment affect by affecting your wallet per say... a small penalty for breaking the speed limit by 6mph after you've been stopped by the police would seem to be OK, it costs some money to stop you and you pay an arbitrary amount, get a telling off by the police, have to do some admin... more importantly you've had points added on the license

In fact a 1p fine would be quite amusing if you say had to report to the police station at a set time with your documentation, queue up and pay the 1p in person...

but if you're going to means test then it needs to be done properly and that ought to be in court...
 
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Would it not be possible and/or prudent to double the fine each time it is received?

If I have 0 points on my license, I get the standard fine and points.
If I get caught again, with 3 points from speeding already on my license, the fine is doubled and I get another 3 points.
If I get caught again, the fine is doubled again and I get another 3 points.
Etc.

This could deter repeat offenders over and above the points system as it becomes exponentially expensive.

Just a thought...
 
Mat said:
Would it not be possible and/or prudent to double the fine each time it is received?

If I have 0 points on my license, I get the standard fine and points.
If I get caught again, with 3 points from speeding already on my license, the fine is doubled and I get another 3 points.
If I get caught again, the fine is doubled again and I get another 3 points.
Etc.

This could deter repeat offenders over and above the points system as it becomes exponentially expensive.

Just a thought...
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Doubling still takes quite a number to impact on the wealthy & actually just cripples the poor much quicker.

dowie said:
not necessarily and it doesn't have to have a strong punishment affect by affecting your wallet per say... a small penalty for breaking the speed limit by 6mph after you've been stopped by the police would seem to be OK, it costs some money to stop you and you pay an arbitrary amount, get a telling off by the police, have to do some admin... more importantly you've had points added on the license

In fact a 1p fine would be quite amusing if you say had to report to the police station at a set time with your documentation, queue up and pay the 1p in person...

but if you're going to means test then it needs to be done properly and that ought to be in court...
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My main argument is if we are going to have a fine, it shouldn't be ignorable. Really some form of community service would be a more fitting penalty - to be used in the offenders discretionary time after work as it would impact all equally.
 
elmarko said:
My main argument is if we are going to have a fine, it shouldn't be ignorable.
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It isn't ignorable. I don't see a huge reason for a standard fine for a minor offence to change, there seems to be very little benefit. It does seem more like just a vindictive thing at that level.

Really some form of community service would be a more fitting penalty - to be used in the offenders discretionary time after work as it would impact all equally.
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technically that doesn't impact all people equally though, for someone who works part time or doesn't work at all it has minimal impact... not that I'd be opposed to community service - but again that ought to be something imposed on people committing more excessive speeding offences
 
Mat said:
Would it not be possible and/or prudent to double the fine each time it is received?

If I have 0 points on my license, I get the standard fine and points.
If I get caught again, with 3 points from speeding already on my license, the fine is doubled and I get another 3 points.
If I get caught again, the fine is doubled again and I get another 3 points.
Etc.

This could deter repeat offenders over and above the points system as it becomes exponentially expensive.

Just a thought...
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I think we should apply some form of exponential growth to driving bans, prison sentences... but if we're going to adjust for serious fines then there should be proper means testing at the start.

But the idea in principle is fine... in fact I'd really like to see it applied to prison sentences - when you hear of a murder and the murderer has a long list of prior convictions for violent offences you do start to wonder why that individual was allowed out in the first place - a more dynamic sentencing system could be appropriate with automatic scaling upwards for repeated offences*... some time decay added between offences and extra rewards for progress in rehabilitation programs inside prison.

*currently we're lenient with first time offenders and then we give standard sentences to people who have multiple offences... whereas some areas are blighted by a few individuals who become one man crime waves in their own right - multiple violent offences but nothing sufficient to lock them away for a significant amount of time... exponentially increasing their sentences would be a good way of dealing with this
 
dowie said:
It isn't ignorable. I don't see a huge reason for a standard fine for a minor offence to change, there seems to be very little benefit. It does seem more like just a vindictive thing at that level.
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I guess an ideal* solution would be one of a choice of punishments depending on the perp's circumstances, e.g. the judge would pick one (or more) of the following:

  • £X fine
  • Y hours of community service
  • Z points on your licence

E.g. for the benefit's claimant with very little money, but plenty of spare time, the fine would be more of a deterrent, whereas for the multimillionaire footballer, the fine would be pocket change, but the community service would eat into valuable training/drinking/practicing falling over blades of grass time.


* Or at least as close as we're going to get!
 
yeah something more like that could work for say offences which warrant a court appearance... though for really excessive ones I'd still leave the option open for a large means tested fine too
 
As soon as I saw the title I knew Dolph would hate this idea...

It has nothing to do with jealousy and everything to do with having an effective deterrent. It is only a deterrent if it is scalable to the effect on the person.
 
BuffetSlayer said:
I think to some degree it is fallacy to believe that just because a person earns X amount they can afford a fine of Y amount.

Most people live to their means, so even though a person may be on a good wage it does not mean they can afford a higher fine. My brother earns twice what I earn, but he also gets taxed more and runs a household on a single wage where as my wife and I have two wages coming in. Under this system he would have to pay a lot more than me when in reality I am better placed to pay more - not him.
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I hardly think the differences between someone earning 20k a year and someone 40k a year are going to cripple someone economically (and shouldn't he not be speeding in the first place?).

The differences between someone earning 20k a year and 10,000k a year however? 80k fine seems fair to me. At the end of the day, if the person earning 20k a year gets banned from driving he is in serious trouble with regards to getting to work and such more than likely. The other guy just pays someone to do it for him.
 
MookJong said:
As soon as I saw the title I knew Dolph would hate this idea...

It has nothing to do with jealousy and everything to do with having an effective deterrent. It is only a deterrent if it is scalable to the effect on the person.
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Do you have any evidence that it is an effective deterrent? That would be the interesting bit... if it is then OK, but it certainly isn't clear.
 
dowie said:
Do you have any evidence that it is an effective deterrent? That would be the interesting bit... if it is then OK, but it certainly isn't clear.
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It wont work for everyone no, but in other areas of life people are far more likely to place a low value bet than one that will actually impact their life temporarily if they loose.

If we set a law to reposses peoples houses if they were caught speeding, you can guarantee people would loose their homes but also far less people would speed.
 
MookJong said:
It wont work for everyone no, but in other areas of life people are far more likely to place a low value bet than one that will actually impact their life temporarily if they loose.

If we set a law to reposses peoples houses if they were caught speeding, you can guarantee people would loose their homes but also far less people would speed.
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yes taken to extremes it may.. but no one is proposing that, just means testing a fine... there doesn't seem to be much evidence to suggest it works

you said "everything to do with having an effective deterrent. It is only a deterrent if it is scalable to the effect on the person."

but you don't necessarily know it has any effect as a deterrent even if means tested...
 
Xire said:
This is terrible.

Why should the rich be penalised more for being more successful?
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because fining a millionaire £50 means nothing, fining a regular averager guy £50 could be the difference between paying a bill or skipping a bill until the next wage and a lot of worry and anxiety

How is the current system fair? percentage of earnings is the only fair way.
same way rich people cry about paying tax your earning more so you pay more it's simple.

if you don't like it then earn less and pay less
 
As much as I can see that a small fine on a wealthy person is not going to act as a deterrent, you could easily see with a proportional system you would likely find most people chasing down expensive cars to fine simply because the odds of someone driving a Lamborghini is much more likely to be wealthier than someone driving a mk1 Ford Focus.

The sad part is the more dangerous drivers are likely to be the chavved up kids in the rickety old golf (considering insurance prices reflect such a thing) showing off to their friends than the wealthy person in their Ferrari on the weekend. It could likely lead to more harm than good when the police officers ignore such a thing because it is only a £50 fine and try and bag the guy in the Ferrari so they can get the £100k and maybe get some new toys, staff or pay rises in their local department.

At least in the current system everyone is treated equal.
 
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