€202,000 Speeding Fine

RATM

From here http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0107/breaking66.htm

A Swiss millionaire motorist clocked up a record fine of 299,000 Swiss francs (€202,000) after police caught him racing through a village at 100 km per hour in his red Ferrari Testarossa.

A court in the northeastern Swiss canton of St Gallen gave the millionaire the hefty penalty after considering a string of previous traffic offences.

"The accused ignored elementary traffic rules with a powerful vehicle out of a pure desire for speed," the court said in its judgement of the motorist, who clocked speeds of up to 137 km per hour on country roads, said daily Blick.

The fine was calculated based on the man's wealth - said by the St Gallen Cantonal Court to be 23.3 million francs (€15.7 million).

It was also reported that the motorist owns a villa with five luxury cars.

The fine exceeds the previous record of 111,000 francs handed down to a Porsche driver in 2008 in Zurich.

Reuters

AFAIK Finland have a similar system whereby they calculate the fine based on your income. I seem to remember a Ferrari driver getting done in Helsinki for over €150k several years back. It turned out he was an executive of Nokia Mobile Phones and was worth an absolute mint.

haines35

I remember that,afaik he was the M.D of Nokia at the time.

Tipsy Mac

That's the way it should be here, a fine on a percentage of your wages, something like a weeks wages.

Hellm0

Proportionate response, it's like the idea of a congestion charge; Rich people love it because it clears the roads of the riff-raff. A fine which might be a pain in the a$$ for normal people means practically nothing to these guys.

lordnoah

This is a great idea. Fine people by how wealthy they are. Sure a fine of €100 or whatever would mean nothing to some who is loaded.
However our penalty points system is the one thing that would catch out the rich crowd aswell.

randomer

I think it is a terrible system. It means that a low income person can break any traffic rules they want and only get a tiny fine...

ChristyCent

randomer wrote: »

I think it is a terrible system. It means that a low income person can break any traffic rules they want and only get a tiny fine...

The whole point of it is to make it fair.

Sure at the moment its the opposite of what your saying. People with higher incomes can break any traffic rules they want and only get a tiny fine, proportionate to what they earn. Where as if a low income person was to do the same thing it costs them a fortune proportionate to what they earn

randomer

ChristyCent wrote: »

The whole point of it is to make it fair.

Sure at the moment its the opposite of what your saying. People with higher incomes can break any traffic rules they want and only get a tiny fine, proportionate to what they earn. Where as if a low income person was to do the same thing it costs them a fortune proportionate to what they earn

Following that logic, should we also implement the same system for buying cars, or for shopping in supermarkets, "just to make it fair"?

JD1763

Except what happens is they assess your income in the year the offence was committed and level the fine against you, but does not take into account other factors that may mean you are not earning the same amount of money and yet you still have this large fine to pay.

I think one of the motorists was challenging the fine on the basis that when it was calculated he had exceptional income that year. Link below:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1759791.stm

And before some paragon of virtue kicks off - I am not defending the speeding or contesting that an offence was committed or saying they cant afford the fine, woe to the rich people etc. - simply showing that there are faults with the way the system works.

MagicMarker

There's absolutely no point fining a bloody millionaire!!

Take their licence, burn it. Take their cars, give them to the homeless!!

Marlow

Denmark calculates the fine for drunk driving (over the 50g limit) based on your salary. You loose your license typically for a couple of years, a fine based on your last years income (I think 2 months) and maybe a jail-sentence, if it's really bad.

Other fines are fixed though.

/M

A fine should be the same across the board. Its completely unfair to increase fines based on income. It is basically saying that a rich person is committing a much worse offence. 200k for speeding is so far beyond ridiculous you couldn't make it up.

Marlow

Shaun Curved Newlywed wrote: »

A fine should be the same across the board. Its completely unfair. It is basically saying that a rich person is committing a much worse offence. 200k for speeding is so far beyond ridiculous you couldn't make it up.

There's nothing fair about fines. If you stay within the limits, you never will get a fine. If you go over the limits, it's supposed to hurt and it's supposed to hurt equally for everybody, so basing the fine on the salary is quite sensible.

If you can't afford the fine, don't break the limit

/M