Safe Speed Forums

And if you've worked hard to achieve a reasonable standard of living and a modest cushion of savings, why should you be penalised more than a feckless scrote?

I recall this kind of thing being trialled in the early 1990s and resulting in an outcry, with wasters effectively getting away scot-free and responsible people with very ordinary incomes getting stung for hundreds of pounds.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

The problem is that regardless of how hard you’ve worked, how well off your parents are, how lucky you are etc, unless a punishment for a crime is actually a punishment then it becomes something less and when we are talking about fines then it has direct baring on that persons ability to earn regardless of how.

With a fixed penalty system you simply widen the rich\poor divide, when a fine is proportional the punishment is equal (or at least perceived to be)

That said I’m not honestly sure where I stand. If I get caught doing 36 in a 30 then I have committed no greater crime in my new Ferrari than say J Scrote in his beat up Corsa, so the punishment should fit the crime, but when doing so the wealthier I am the less I am affected and so less inclined to stay within the law.

I think the punishment should fit the crime, but should also seen to be equal across society especially when talking about financial punishment., other punishments I think are largely indiscriminate of wealth.

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It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

You'll likely find that your Ferrari will pull up in a shorter distance from 36mph than Scrote's knackered throwaway would at 30. That's another reason not to escalate the fine for the richer.

yes that's true, okay how about us driving the same cars when this occurs?

(some rich people have very bad taste in cars, you only have to watch top gears "star in a reasonably priced car" section to see this)

I think all I'm saying is that when the punishment for a crime is financial and fixed then the wealthier you are the better "deal" you get and so the incentive to not doing so again is less. I think such a system undermines the legal system to a certain degree.

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It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

Why should a fine be measured in £ and not %, just because thats the status quo?

We're so used to railing against the system here I think we forget that sometimes fines are merited, for motoring or other offences. The nature of the fine is not to take x amount of money (supposedly), it is meant to be a disincentive for the undesirable behavior or repeat thereof.

Try forgetting the motoring aspect, and think of another 'crime', one we can all agree is undesirable, say, I dunno, littering? How would you feel if Johnny Megabucks gets stopped by BiB/PCSO for chucking one of his empty money-bags on the ground in the high street. His response is to chuck £200 at the official and saunter off, certainly not suitably castigated, only to repeat the offence not too much later when he drops his still-lit cuban cigar butt in a kiddies play park? His disposable income is of such a level he is able to 'buy' the ability to offend with impunity.

The fact our fines are currently prefixed with £ is just current convention, many countries in the world successfully suffix them with %. It is normally from net monthly income for whomever asked.

It would make more of us use Freeman and the like - or are you suggesting that solicitors' fees should be postfixed with % too?

A problem with measuring it as a % is what you use as the base figure.

If it is "net income after tax", it takes no account of people's financial commitments. But if you attempt to factor in outgoings, then it penalises the careful person vis-a-vis the overborrowed spendthrift. And do you include income from savings, or even take some account of capital wealth?

It gets fiendishly complicated and, as I said before, when it was tried in the early 90s it ended up with workingpeople on modest incomes paying vastly more than scrotes, which seems grossly unfair to me.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Financial commitments are already taken into account when the repayment rate of fines is decided.

So, a Premiership footballer exceeds a limit and is fined. Should there be any maximum limit? Would one week's wages do for 36mph in a 30 limit? say £100,000. Any disincentive?

The footballer's girlfriend does the same. She doesn't work and is funded by the athlete. How much is she fined as she has no income?

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Is the £60 a fine or an 'administration charge'?

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Continuing with the premiership footballer example - would it be right that they are fined £100000 (say) if it was not them driving the car (they just happen to be the RK)? What happens to company/leased cars? What would happen if someone decided to make a pensioner/unemployed relative the RK (without being the legal owner)?

Is there a difference between automated (camera) offences and those where the person is stopped i.e. would it be possible to keep the existing points+fine penalty for offences where the driver is stopped (thereby retaining an incentive to not speed with relative impunity) while decriminalising automated offences which would then become a FPN (no points) to the RK?

I suppose there is still an issue of what happens if the details of the automated offence are disputed (cloned vehicle, disputed speed etc.) - there will need to be some mechanism to deal with this..? If the fine was means-tested (and potentially significant) would disputing the offences then become more common (another law of unintended consequences)?

All these questions!

Never forget people, google is your friend! I suggest those with straightforward questions have a look at how the policy works successfully in other countries, I believe Sweden uses it.

What makes you think that this system would be implemented in the UK in a similar way to that used overseas. We would, of course, base it all on social equality/envy (as usual) and not fairness.

Anyway, who says it works "successfully" in other countries? How do you measure success? Yes, more questions to challenge this bad idea.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Have you bothered looking it up yet?

Would it not be better to fine people units of time ie hours worth of earnings or hours worth of community service? It would then hit all equally as their time is worth the same to them as anyone else's.

Yes I think that could work quite well, 40 hours work is 40 hours work regardless of who you are, and for those that do not work a weeks income (in this example) could be used.

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It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

No, why don't you just explain it to me to save me the trouble. How would they cope in Sweden with the footballer and his WAG question above?


Not a fine (as this suffers from the same issues as described above) but the hours of community service might be a good idea. This is, at least, an equal sanction for all. Good heavens, the penalty would be related to the offence and not the offender.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

I haven't read the whole thread (sorry), but just wanted to pick up on the fact that magistrates are resigning over this and the magistrates association are against it.

quite serious really

There is a difference between being poor and being a 'waster'.

But the real trouble with the trial in the 90s was that the greed of the system took over. Instead of modifying the fines so that the average stayed the same, they just took the current fine and multiplied it by a number between 1 and 15. Any fair system should not lead to an overall rise.

To be honest, I am a bit surprised that people who I know are otherwise fair-minded think it is acceptable to fine a pensioner or unemployed person who has £10 a week spare the same as someone who has £200 a week spare. That is a 20-fold difference in the effect of the punishment.

Because if you're not bothered mate, I'm not bothered. One would just suspect its prudent to gather all the possible facts on a system before slating it. I'm not selling this system, so its no skin off my nose if you don't want to buy it.