My sweet neighbor got hit with an "unfair Fine" (a Rant, Again)

My Neighbor, who lives on Social Secuity, didn't come to a full and complete stop last night while puttering down to the store.
This is going to hurt her BAD./ which reminds me of a Rant I posted
a while back. The System Sucks......

Ok, this is a rant. It’s a good and fair rant though…

About 2 weeks ago, my Boss received a speeding ticket for going 65 in a 40 MPH zone.
He was on the way to meet his buddies for a golf game. The fine was about $140.00.
When he told us peons, I said “Ouch that hurts”. He just laughed and said “Ah, Chicken Feed”.

My 35 year old neighbor and I were talking this morning (outside-raking leaves) and
She told me how her sister is just sick with worry and stayed up half the night crying.
It seems that on her way to her second job, she accidentally went through a stop sign.
A cop saw her and, rightfully so, issued a ticket.

Keep in mind that this woman has two children, works like a dog, her sorry ass husband
ran off to parts unknown with a younger woman and she’s doing the best she can, under the circumstances. This $85.00 ticket is an extreme hardship for this woman.

I suppose my rant is: What the hell kind of justice is this? One person says “Chicken Feed” and the other cries all night.

To those of you who answer back “well, don’t break the law and you won’t be fined”
I say “Bullshit…” Every person I know has at one time accidentally broken a driving law….
I mean, can you honestly say that while driving, you’ve never looked down at your speedometer and thought “whoa, I better slow down ?” Or done something that you know
in your heart, you would have gotten a ticket for if an Officer had been around?
Has every one of you ALWAYS come to a complete stop when turning right on red?
Sure, you have….mmmmm.

The solution to this Unjust Fine Crap is to institute a program of minor community service. If you’re given a ticket, you serve say, one hour for every 10 dollars of your fine.
At least that way, everybody gets a fair shake and some poor lady isn’t devastated by a mistake. Plus the Fat Cats can’t crow about it being “ChickenFeed”.

To those of you who say “Well, life isn’t fair” I say: Very true… but it’s up to the citizens of this planet to try to make it fair.

In the woman's favor is that nearly every local judge I've heard of will allow poor violators to pay off fines, even if the payment takes a long time. Rich people generally don't get as much slack, and it's considered tacky to whine poverty when you're dirivng a BMW or a Mercedes -- and it says so on the ticket.

And yes, your boss also sounds tacky to me, bragging about $140 being insignificant.

Most of these small administrative laws are tremendously unjust, and ought to be changed -- but probably won't be. People like the presence of punishment. They never think they could get stuck, fairly or unfairly.

--bkl

the people who 'accidentally' ran those stop signs? Or for the husband of the woman who was hit on her bicycle by the fellow going 65 in a 40 MPH zone?

No one INTENDS to do harm, but the point of such regulations is to prevent harm.

Better a ticket and caution than death?

http://www.jillmason.com

Let's keep things in perspective, here.

Stop signs are posted for a reason.

She won't accidentally run one again, that's for sure.

The rich people can speed and bounce around and do all they want, because what the hell is a $150 fine to them? Or even a $500 fine.

make it a percentage of income - so a speeding fine is equal to four hours work, or something like that.

Though I do like the idea of using community service as an alternative. But for those on the low-end of the economic pole, they might very well be working 60 hours a week or more, and finding time to go DO community service could be tough as well.

I thought it was Sweden I read about where fines are assessed as a percentage of income.

A friend in Sweden told me that DUI fines are 10% of your annual income. I don't know if it applies to other driving violations. Needless to say, very few Swedes get caught twice.

Germany and Finland do this.

Actually, on the autobahn they also very, very aggressively enforce anti-tailgating laws. Helps with safer driving...if only this was done here!

The record speeding fine in Finland is $216,900 for some millionaire.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/02/10/finland.speeding.reut/
The offense: doing 50 in a 25.

I don't see why this isn't done here in the US it would raise a lot of state revenue!

In Germany that is. Only if the case is brought to a judge the fine gets determined by the income of the offender.

The fine for not stopping at a Stop sign is 50 Euros and three points on the driver record, if the action did not endanger other traffic participants. (if it did endanger other people you can easily end up with 125+ Euros).

Where many fines are based on the offenders income. The more you earn, the higher the fine, the less you make the less the fine.

First, how do you treat people with chauffeurs who order their drivers (under threat of termination) to speed? What about the rich with NO appreciable income...the people like Paris Hilton who make a moderate amount of money from their jobs but really live off of previously accumulated wealth?

The only country in the world with a progressive traffic fining system is Finland, and I've been repeatedly told that their system has more loopholes than you can count, and that large fines are actually pretty rare. As always, the poor get pegged while the rich walk.

Besides, no progressive fining system here could survive a judicial challenge. The 13th amendment gurantees equal protection under the law, and the courts have consistently found that any system of tiered punishment violates this. You are not allowed to punish someone more severely simply because they fall into a particular class or race.

Mandatory community service, proposed by someone else here, also isn't an option. Involuntary servitude is a right reserved to the federal government in times of war...no other private or government group can legally use it. In the areas where public service is now available, it is a VOLUNTARY program that allows the poor to work off their fines rather than pay them. The rich still just write a check and shrug it off. I agree that this should be an option everywhere for the poor and young who cannot afford large fines, but it does nothing to bring equality to the system.

The solution? I think it lies in a change to the way we assign points to licenses. We need to lower the fines slightly, and then lower the points needed to suspend a license, and change to a two tiered suspension system wherein all license suspensionss first fall into a "to and from work only" mode. If the violations continue, they lose that as well. Driving without a license, or with a suspended license, should garner an automatic 2 week stay at the local jail for ANYBODY caught...irregardless of age, income, or family situation. These changes will conpire to get the truly bad drivers off the road while lessening the impact on good drivers who make the occasional mistake. Even the rich guy, used to writing off tickets like they were lunch bills, will have to take notice when he's staring at a potential license suspension.

I had to sit in juvenile court with my teen for 4 hours. Some of the hardship stories are heartbreaking. There was a legal immigrant who was ticketed for speeding and he didn't have insurance. The judge reduced the fine a little but the fine was still over $500. He agreed to pay $10 a month. There was a good chance he would lose his green card. There was another young man who was hit from behind. He also didn't have insurance. For everyone else who didn't have insurance, the judge waived that fine if you showed proof of insurance at the hearing. She couldn't for this young man because the insurance companies wouldn't settle the case. He had to pay about $800. The Mother was there and almost crying because they were about to be homeless. Many teens there just had their parents casually pay the fines. The whole system seemed incredibly unfair even with a judge who was very sympathetic.

I think the fines should be based on income.

If you want to have a car on the road in MA, you are required to have insurance. Is this not the case in CA?

because they didn't have proof in the car. Most were allowed to show proof at the hearing and the judge waived the fine.

if you have the little insurance card, you get the fine waived.

because a minor was involved in an accident. :shrug:

think of what wouldhave happened if this young man had rearended someone else, without insurance? that person would be stuck with the tab.

if you can't afford insurance, take the bus.

is it has an equal opportunity cost. Now my girlfriend has almost 200 hours of vacation leave lined up, at your rates, she could pay off a 2000 fine, without missing an hour of paid work. I am a consultant, every hour I don't work is an hour I don't get paid for. In the case of your neighbor's sister, maybe she can't afford to take three days off from work, unpaid, to deal with the fine.

...solution would be to do away with ALL fines for speeding (except maybe a small amount for administration...20.00 ?? )

I'm not sure what kind of punishment could be netted out, perhaps stiff points on your license, but at least, the poor wouldn't be saddled with such a burden on their lives...

should consider not breaking the law. Iknowit sounds callous and hard, but one $200 speeding ticket is going to make me doubly cautious on the roads. a 50 dollar parking ticket makes you take a double look at the street signs to avoid tickets. that's the whole idea.

"perhaps those people who can't afford the fines
should consider not breaking the law".....while true, fails to take
in the reality that people are not machines. People rich and poor
make mistakes. I mean, I've seen English majors pause and think
"Damn, how do you you spell (some simple-ass word)"
My point being that the human mind is not perfect and always "on track"
To fine, and cause hardship to the poor just because they are not perfect thinking machines is grossly unfair when we assign the burden of "chicken feed" to those individuals who have the same
inconsistencies of the human mind but just happen to be rich.

I would certainly agree with your statement if everybody who broke the
driving laws did so with full knowledge of what they were doing at the time.... unfortunately, that's not true.

should be focusedon that alone (I say this as someone who haslost friends to careless driving) you are operating a 2-3,000 pound killing machine, try focussing on what you are doing. Running a clearly marked stop sign is inexcusable. Driving twenty miles over the speed limit is inexcusable, especially if you don't know how fast you are going. Driving really is a privilege, not a right, and one that not enough people take seriously, in my opinion.

... I've lost loved ones to drunken drivers, myself.

I suppose, in my opinion, the true solution would to have a small fine (for administration costs) but have more severe driving privileges placed on ones license.

Maybe a "tiered" system would work: 20 dollars for the first offense, 75 for the second, 150 for the third etc....

I should have posted (in my original) that the woman who ran the stop sign had not had a ticket in her entire life but my boss was a
$#@%$ driving maniac who racks up tickets like popcorn...

In short, I'll admit, I don't have all the answers...shoot, I don't even have all the questions!

In the past, lots of stuff was overlooked if the person was otherwise law-abiding. Police weren't to quick to give out tickets.

Now with city budgets coming up short, they admit to needing ticket income, and sadly things that used to get ignored are now ticketed. Not right, but there it is.

If she were to pay $5 a month for 17 months it wouldn't seem so bad