Opinion: Should speeding ticket fines be based on income?
They’re usually fined a few hundred dollars, and their fancy car is temporarily impounded. This doesn’t seem like an adequate punishment for playing Russian roulette with people’s lives.
It’s also unequal; rich people are more incentivized to speed than poor people. For someone earning $40,000 per year, a $200 fine can feel devastating, but for someone earning $400,000 per year, it’s nothing.
There’s a very simple solution: we need higher and more equitable fines for speeding.
Speeding tickets should be tied to income. This wouldn’t significantly affect the average person, but if you earn six figures, get ready to pay thousands of dollars for going over the speed limit. If you’re really rich, you could end up like this Finnish businessman with a €121,000 speeding fine.
We can go a step further, though. In Denmark, if you’re caught going more than double the speed limit, they take away your car and you never get it back. With very few exceptions, it doesn’t matter whose car you’re using; if you drive your parents’ BMW and go double the speed limit, it’s gone, sold, with the money helping to balance the provincial budget.
Sure, there would obviously be exceptions for cases involving stolen cars and the like, but this would address the loophole where rich teens race each other with their parents’ BMWs.
I see no downsides here. If you’re middle or lower-income, this won’t affect you, as long as you don’t go double the speed limit like some kind of psycho. If you’re rich and you want to keep speeding, you would be penalized accordingly.
Income-based fines, along with vehicle seizures for excessive speeding, would serve as a deterrent, significantly lowering the number of traffic deaths. It would also help lower ICBC premiums for everyone, both because of fewer accidents and because of heavier fines collected to help balance the books.
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