More on sliding scales for traffic fines: good or bad idea?
Commenter “Gorgasal” makes a point about differential speeding fines that I’ve seen made many times by proponents. In fact, it’s the main argument for them, and it goes like this:
Speeding tickets that scale with income are the norm in Switzerland.
The argument is NOT that a rich guy who does 20 over the limit is more dangerous than a poor guy at the same speed.
The argument is that a 50 CHF is utter peanuts to a derivatives trader with UBS and will not dissuade him from speeding – but a fine in the multiple thousands just might. (And yes, this is the monetary range we are talking about.)
Much as I usually agree with Neo and the commentariat here, in this specific case I agree with this proposal.
I understand the argument, but I don’t think it holds up under scrutiny, and I’ll explain why.
Whether you think of fines as deterrents or punishments or both, it does make intuitive sense that of course for a poor person a fine takes more of a bite out of his or her income and therefore one would think it’s a greater punishment and therefore a greater deterrent, and likewise such a fine is hardly any deterrent at all for a rich person. If that is true, one would think that, per capita, poor people would already be speeding less than rich people; after all, the punishment fine is much greater for them in terms of percentage of income.
But do they? I’ve never seen a demonstration that this is the case, except for self-reports about speeding which show poorer people report less speeding than rich people report. But self-reports are meaningless in that regard, because they merely measure what people are willing to own up to when asked in a survey, rather than their actual behavior objectively measured. And if someone is very poor, that person also may not be driving as much for the simple reason that he or she may have a problem affording gasoline, or might be more likely to live in an urban area where public transportation is the norm and is more convenient.
The most objective measure I could find of how much poor people speed versus wealthier people was a study of the violations found in New York by speed cameras. Such cameras don’t discriminate. And guess what? There was no difference in speeding rates between rich and poor communities, or between races:
New York City’s speed safety camera program saves lives. The program led to a 72 percent reduction in speeding and a 55 percent drop in all traffic fatalities at camera sites during hours of operation after its introduction. There is no correlation between the number of tickets per resident and race or poverty level.
Such cameras also come at a cost: constant surveillance (which we already have to a great extent anyway). And the differential fines proposed in California (that I wrote about yesterday) have an additional cost: a record must be kept or accessed of every driver’s income in order to set the scale for that particular person’s speeding fine. Another cost is the normalization of differential “justice” penalties based on income. And – at least as far as I can tell from the quick research I’ve done – all without any indication that these revised fines would act as a deterrence to speeding. In fact, logic tells me that reducing the present fines for poor people will be likely to lead to an increase in speeding among the poor and a rise in accidents and fatalities among the poor, because the deterrent for them would be weaker than it is now.
I think you see where this is going. Why limit this to speeding tickets? There’s really no reason. Let’s have differential fines for everything, differential tolls, and differential prices for goods. Why should a poor person pay as much for eggs as a rich person? After all, the poor person has to eat. That’s far more important than the right to speed. And rich people can afford to eat more meat; perhaps we should have a rationing system to make the consumption of meat more equal.
Also, do we care why a person is poor? For example, some people are poor because they abuse substances, and low income people are more likely to have substance problems (although which is cause and which is effect I don’t think we know). Is that of any important at all? How far does our futile quest for cosmic justice go?
I looked for articles about the effect of these laws on countries in Europe that already have them. Do the laws reduce speeding, and by whom? I couldn’t find any such articles, although they may indeed exist. What I did find is this sort of thing, which contains some interesting data:
In Finland, speeding fines are linked to salary. The Finns run a “day fine” system that is calculated on the basis of an offender’s daily disposable income – generally their daily salary divided by two.
The more a driver is over the speed limit, the greater the number of day fines they will receive.
This has led to headline-grabbing fines when wealthy drivers have been caught driving very fast.
In 2002, Anssi Vanjoki, a former Nokia director, was ordered to pay a fine of 116,000 euros ($103,600) after being caught driving 75km/h in a 50km/h zone on his motorbike.
And in 2015, Finnish businessman Reima Kuisla was fined 54,000 euro ($62,000) for driving 22km/h over the 50km/h speed limit.
Switzerland uses a similar system, and currently holds the world record for a speeding ticket. It was handed to a Swedish motorist in 2010 who was caught driving at 290km/h. He was fined 3,600 Swiss francs per day for 300 days – around 1,080,000 Swiss francs ($1,091,340) in total.
The UK introduced tougher speeding penalties in 2017. Drivers can be fined up to 175% of their weekly income, on a sliding scale depending on the severity of the offence. However, the amount is capped at £2,500 ($3,310).
Such fun! Stick it to the rich!
In my search for evidence on the effect of “progressive” speeding fines, I did find research on the effect of raising fines for speeding in general. The upshot:
During the years 1995-2004, the rates for fixed penalties for traffic offences in Norway increased substantially. This paper evaluates the effects on compliance of these increases. Regression analysis was performed to determine the effects of increases in fixed penalties. For speeding in general, no effect of increasing fixed penalties can be found. For speeding close to speed camera sites, there is a weak tendency for the violation rate to go down. This tendency is not statistically significant at conventional levels.
In other words: no deterrent effect for increased fines (this paper found similar results). My conclusion is that people either speed or don’t speed for a number of poorly-understood reasons, but fear of substantial fines is probably not a big factor.
As Alfred Doolittle said,
“But, my needs is as great as the most deserving widows that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. Heh, I don’t need LESS than a deserving man, I need MORE. I don’t eat less hearty than he does, and I drink… oh, a lot more.”
I think you see where this is going. Why limit this to speeding tickets? There’s really no reason. Let’s have differential fines for everything, differential tolls, and differential prices for goods. Why should a poor person pay as much for eggs as a rich person? After all, the poor person has to eat. That’s far more important than the right to speed. And rich people can afford to eat more meat; perhaps we should have a rationing system to make the consumption of meat more equal.
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Speeding tickets are an imposition by the state on members of the public. They’re a penalty. Whether sliding-scale tickets are an advisable idea or not, they are not a price for goods or for services rendered.
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Prices economize on information. You can seldom improve on price setting by vendors (or, in lieu of that, negotiation between buyers and sellers) as a means of regulating what is produced and how much is produced. Quite a bit of literature in microeconomics on the topic.
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You’re concerned about the well-being of impecunious people, you should consider income transfer programs. Their additional income in such a scheme will be allocated according to their extant household utility function, and that differs from household to household. The only anxiety here is if they have an immoderate appetite for vice goods.
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Sectoral subsidies in the realm of medical care, long-term care, schooling, legal services, and shipping-and-transportation one should consider. Even in these circumstances, there are trade-offs.
Well, I’m honored to have been picked up (or on?)!
Thank you for taking the argument seriously enough to actually collect data, which to be honest never occurred to me. (I believe I have had all of two speeding tickets in over 30 years behind steering wheels.)
Of course, punishment is said to have multiple main objects (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punishment#Possible_reasons_for_punishment):
1) deterrence – OK, we see that the data does not really support a differential effect of sliding scales
2) rehabilitation – irrelevant here
3) incapacitation – also irrelevant
4) retribution – and this is a little more relevant, because it’s exactly that a “normal” fine won’t hurt those Nokia executives
5) restoration – irrelevant
Yes, I do get that having rich people pay more in fines sounds a lot like “sock it to the plutocrats”, which I am no fan of. But even without a deterrence effect, I would say that fining reckless drivers (and yes, someone doing 290 km/h in Switzerland, where the Autobahns have a speed limit of 120 km/h, IS reckless) should impose pain. And per above, if you want to impose pain through monetary fines, there is no way around the fact that people’s financial situation differs so vastly that a single fine will be a joke to one person, but a major calamity to another one – so here is another argument, beyond deterrence, for sliding scales of traffic fines. (And lots of countries use that “day fine” system, e.g., Germany, just not all for traffic violations, but for other misdemeanors or crimes.)
Funnily enough, as a European I always have the impression that the retributive aspect of punishment resonates most with Americans, much more than, say, rehabilitation 😉
Gorgasal:
Please read Thomas Sowell’s book The Quest for Cosmic Justice, It is a masterpiece. Sowell maintains, among other things, that cosmic justice fans are uninterested in evidence and would much rather virtue-signal.
I am not saying you are uninterested in evidence. But you are certainly less interested in it than I am, if you didn’t think to seek any.
Americans are very interested in rehabilitation. I certainly am. I was a sociology major for a while and then switched to psychology, and have a law degree and an interest in criminal law. But I am also interested in punishmen and deterrence, and I believe the problem with rehabilitation is that I don’t think we know enough about how to achieve it.
I took your argument seriously because it’s the best argument for these sliding scales for speeding. I happen to strongly disagree with it, however.
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There is a very easy way to eliminate the economic factor from the issue: eliminate fines and replace them with incarceration. Rich or poor, same punishment. Perhaps some “community service” for a first offense, then increasing time in the slammer for recidivists. Problem solved.
Wish I could remember where I heard it. “Envy is the only one of the seven deadly sins that isn’t any fun.”
Not true at all. Backwards.
As it happens, most jurisdictions have a speed limit above which one is “speeding”. That has an upper bound. Beyond that, it’s “reckless” and the penalties are far more severe, as they should be, since the risk to others is much higher. “reckless” includes more than speed above the “speeding” upper bound and all the other stuff like crazy lane changes and so forth.
Talked to a couple of cops over the years and they say that, when on traffic duty, “reckless” is their favorite stop because they HATE it when they have to pick up after a “reckless” causes a tragedy. Speeding…meh, but it gives them a chance to look at ID, insurance, so forth and, once in a while find somebody who needs to be picked up for…something else.
Americans are very interested in rehabilitation
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Which Americans?
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(Personally, I’m happy to let age and a dislike of discomforts to do the rehabilitating).
How about skip all fines and just go back to the points system.
“You have one point left on your license.”
How about skip all fines and just go back to the points system.
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In which state was one present without the other?
WA does not use a point system.
I’m surprised that no one has pointed out the way some municipalities use speeding tickets as a funding mechanism by having “speed traps”: abrupt or unexpected changes in the speed limit along a part of the road continuously monitored by police, or sections where the tendency for one’s speed to creep up is geographically facilitated.
Why, I’m surprised they haven’t used the variable fines system before!
Granted, my knowledge may be out of date, and they may be obsolete in most jurisdictions, but they were a big feature of moderate-to-small towns in Texas in the past.
One notorious trap was on the highway running south from Houston.
A little town incorporated itself so that it’s jurisdiction extended across the highway in a series of “fingers” about a mile or two wide, separated by about the same distance. So, as you drove, the speed limit dropped from 70 to 55, went back to 70, then dropped to 55 again, and so forth. Even if you knew that was happening, it was hard to keep alert to the changes. If you were not familiar with the area, you were almost certainly going to get caught speeding across one or more of the fingers. (This was pre-GPS days, where you had a map showing the speed limit, but even so they would have been hard to adjust to.)
Eventually, the state made the city quit doing it.
https://ww2.motorists.org/blog/what-is-a-speed-trap/
if we go in this direction base it on wealth not income.
A newly hired lawyer right out of school may have a decent salary but no wealth, but a trust fund brat working in a food coop may have far more wealth
“There is a very easy way to eliminate the economic factor from the issue: eliminate fines and replace them with incarceration.”
First, a minor legal issue. Most traffic tickets are what some jurisdictions term “civil infractions”. Because incarceration is off the table, many of our Bill of Rights are lessened, if not waived. For example, no jury trials, no proof beyond a reasonable doubt required, etc.
But also, when it comes to fairness, the rich can afford to hire attorneys, and the really rich to hire really good attorneys. Many of us here remember OJ Simpson’s Dream Team. The simple reality is that the police screw up – a lot. And we saw with OJ how that can come back to haunt them, if faced by a good attorney. Heck, I rarely went into court in the 35 years since graduating from law school, but haven’t had a ticket stick on my record during that time, while I lost my license twice before I was 21. Usually, I could swing a non-penalty deal just by showing up and looking like an attorney. One time, I got a sweetheart deal by comparing LS profs with the young city attorneyette handling the case. Another time, the judge recessed court for a half an hour, inviting me and the county attorney back to his new chambers, to show them off, leaving dozens less well dressed waiting in the courtroom.
The moral of the story here is that life’s not fair, and the rich can afford to hire good attorneys, and the poor cannot.
Well Tesla owners and dealers are finding that the sliding scale of justice isn’t blind at all, and just like that you become a Nazi. So you deserve what is comming.
Lost your license to drive twice before 21? Amazing how many teens live to adulthood.
i understand everything is so expensive, a traffic fine just makes it worse, but then again you could lower all the drivers behind the prices, like Gruesome Newsom’s every word, he leg’s ridiculous mandates on crime, on energy
on forestry handling,
The moral of the story here is that life’s not fair, and the rich can afford to hire good attorneys, and the poor cannot.
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The moral of the story in your last several sentences is that judges are sh!tbags and courts are run for the convenience of lawyers.
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Yes, I remember OJ Simpson’s dream team. I also recall the weirdly stacked jury, Lance Ito’s hundreds of sidebar conferences, and Steven Brill’s assessment of Marcia Clark as a trial prosecutor. (“She spent days questioning witnesses when she should have spent an hour…”).