$103,000 Traffic Ticket in Finland

Submitted by charlie.collins on Mon, 02/18/2002 - 08:47

Tagged:

Politics

In Finland, if you get a traffic ticket, the fine varies, it is based on a formula that includes calculating the income of the offender (which is available via tax records that are public in Finland). Apparently many Scandinavian countries have this system but most of them have a max fine amount. Finland does not have a max. Recently a Nokia executive got a 103,000USD fine for going 15km over the limit (under 15km there are standard fine amounts, no formula applies). Apparently many wealthy Fins have also gotten hefty fines lately. NHL star Selanne (Mighty Ducks) got a $71,400 fine for a traffic accident he caused, and the list goes on. I first heard about this on NPRsAll Things Considered last week, and then did a little more research and there are quite a few articles covering it. Here is the blurb from NPR (the audio of this story is not available, the entire show is available in real audio, here but not just this segment, the following blurb is from the archives search intro). Speeding In Finland Robert Siegel talks to Finnish journalist Jyri (YUR-ree) Raivio (RAY-vee-oh) about the system used to fine drivers who break the speed limits in his country. Last month a wealthy man was fined over $103,000 for going more than 15 kilometers over the posted limit. At that point a system based on a percentage of income kicks in. This man was an executive with Nokia. (4:00) Personally, I know most people are probably appalled at this concept, using income to calculate fines, but I think its a GREAT idea. The fine is proportional to what the offender makes and the fine has some impact. Currently most people in this country don't take driving seriously at all (which is another debate, but the evidence is in how many injuries and deaths we have DAILY). I think this would make a difference in how people drive and save lives. Driving and personal responsibility altogether is another matter, but I do think that this system is fair. Many of the offenders are upset (some even saying they are leaving Finland for good), but none of them are saying they didn't do it. Don't want a large fine based on your income, don't break the law! It's not that complicated. For more info see the links. All Things Considered: 02.13.2002

Add new comment

Comments

Oh, come on!

Submitted by jheimann (not verified) on Mon, 02/18/2002 - 10:02.

You actually like this idea, dude? How does the income someone makes affect the rightness/wrongness of their action? If someone is wrong, then they should pay the price - the same price as anyone else should pay. What if the situation were reversed? What if a more plutocratic government were in place? They could then pass a law saying that since richer people pay more taxes, then they shouldn't have to pay higher speeding fines because they pay for the roads in the first place. With this reasoning the poorer people would then be fined heavier because they don't pay for as much of the upkeep, right? Doesn't that sound fair? Hell, if we want justice to be based on incomes, we shouldn't even have courts, just automatic checking account withdrawals. "Um, Mr. Gates, you just killed someone." "Really? Well, darn. Here's my Visa. Boy this is gonna be a whopper of a monthly charge!"

Re: Oh, come on!

Submitted by atrox (not verified) on Mon, 02/18/2002 - 12:34.

Uh, yeah, ok, did you work in the basement for that company in "Office Space" and do you like to set fires? You seem a little unstable. You have run away with what I have said and turned it into "the sky is falling." Somehow we got from fines for crimes after convicted (you can still go to court) to death automatically and "shouldnt even have courts." HAHAHAHA, yeah, ok. If you want to actually debate the point then we can do that, but chicken little style exagerration aint helping anything. Back to the original point, fine proportionate to income, GREAT idea. you made a few points in your first sentences, after that paragraph you got lost in the hysteria and hype of the "slippery slope" argument which is totally crap (in this context and every other where it is used, its just a convenient cop out to actually debating the points.) 1. "dude? How does the income someone makes affect the rightness/wrongness of their action?" It doesnt. Irrelevant to the point. How does making the fine proportionate to income affect the "rightness/wrongness", there is no correlation. Yes the fine is related to the offense, ie the formula is different for speeding than it is for insider trading, etc, but its the ratio of crime to fine percentage that matters there, not the income. Then when you factor in the income it makes the fines FAIR regardless of income. The rightnesswrongness has nothing to do with the income part. 2. "If someone is wrong, then they should pay the price - the same price as anyone else should pay. What if the situation were reversed?" If someone is wrong then they should pay the price, the SAME price. That is EXACTLY the POINT, THANK YOU. 100 bucks to a millionaire is NOT the same as 100 bucks to a thousandaire. It should however be the SAME. The factoring in of the income accomplishes this. As to "what if the situation were reversed", that I dont understand, if it were reveresed, and a poor person was going over 15km over the limit then they should pay the SAME fine proportionate to income same amount. 3. "What if a more plutocratic government were in place? They could then pass a law saying that since richer people pay more taxes, then they shouldn't have to pay higher speeding fines because they pay for the roads in the first place." Sorta off the point here, but related enough to address. This goes to taxes and modifying the formula, not whether or not there should be a formula. As far as taxes go, I think our system sucks, I think all people are taxed far too much and that government does a terrible job of managing money. I think it should be a flat sales tax, no income tax at all. But as to this situation, taxes are a good example of how income proportionately matters. Income taxes are based on your percentages that vary based on your income. Same principle. Should rich people get a break because they paid more to build the roads, no, I dont think they should pay "more" in the first place. I think taxes should be a single, simplified flat rate percentage. Throw out all the tax code and start over, sales tax or not, but I really like the national sales tax idea. The point here is, what is the "SAME", is it the same dollar amount or the same percentage. I understand that you think it should mean the same dollar amount, I disagree. I disagree because that is just not the same, we use these percentages all over society when calculating taxes, loans, finiancial aid, grants, etc, there is legal ground that income matters in ration to dollar amounts. It should be the same for fines.

Re: Oh, come on!

Submitted by jheimann (not verified) on Mon, 02/18/2002 - 14:15.

OK, ok, little bit of a slippery slope on my part... "Then when you factor in the income it makes the fines FAIR regardless of income. The rightnesswrongness has nothing to do with the income part." Gee, where did you get the idea that life was fair? Perhaps it would be fair to charge more for items depending on the person's income? Perhaps toll-roads should look at the type of car a person is driving and set the toll amount according to the make and model? How is it fair to charge me more for speeding just because I happened to pay my way through college, study hard, and then worked hard to get where I am? (OK, maybe the working hard is a stretch). Could we maybe take into account student loan amounts and deduct that from the equation? Maybe then the police would owe me every time I speed! Personally, like you mentioned, I prefer a usage tax or something like a sales tax. The more you use, the more you pay. That is the ultimate in fairness. So, following this logic, the more you speed, the more you pay. No mention of income calculations, right? Any other form of income-proportionate fines or taxes is merely a system of wealth redistribution. You are essentially penalizing people for being more successful, which is illogical. You feel that setting it as a percentage of income is the proper way... "we use these percentages all over society when calculating taxes, loans, finiancial aid, grants, etc, there is legal ground that income matters in ration to dollar amounts. It should be the same for fines." But before that you were preaching about how the current system is broken. So why should we base fines on a broken system? OK, I've blabbered enough.

I agree with the previous

Submitted by Jenny (not verified) on Mon, 12/27/2010 - 10:15.

I agree with the previous opinion! Thank you for the article. poker

Re: Oh, come on!

Submitted by atrox (not verified) on Mon, 02/18/2002 - 14:28.

1. fairness - life aint fair, by my 2 cents says speeding tickets should be more fair. making them proportionate to income IMHO makes them more fair. lets not throw out everything on the "life aint fair" wisdom. 2. - work harder, college, its my money - YES, exactly right, I agree and it pisses me off when taxes, etc are put more on the rich because they have more. seems contradictory to my speeding thing, not really, its not the same thing. once you have committed a crime, and been convicted then the penalty should be fair. economic penalties are not fair unless they are proportionate. after all its supposed to be a PENALTY, its supposed to be punitive and prevent future similar crimes. it is your money, you went to college, you should get more of it if you work harder, etc, that applies to taxes, etc, but not once a crime has been committed. then you shouldnt have a lesser penalty just because you have more. dont want to give up your money, DONT SPEED. the whole point of the poportionate income is again to make the FINES fair. the best way to do that is to take into account "ok, so how much should this hurt." the hurt is to make it matter to people and the whole point of the fine is to prevent it from happening again. if speeding fines were proportionate to income you would get to keep your damn money, you would just have to slow down, and thats the objective here. where did you go to college anyway, go get THAT money back, you got ripped off!!!!

Re: Oh, come on!

Submitted by jheimann (not verified) on Mon, 02/18/2002 - 14:43.

Well, I did try to get my money back, but Sally Struthers never returned my call. Honestly, that get your diploma at home thing sounded like a really good idea! Maybe poor people just shouldn't speed? Or maybe they should get a "tax break" to help them with their income disproportionate fines? Of course, how can it be a tax break when they DON'T EVEN PAY TAXES???? I will admit, that if the object of a fine is to "hurt" then maybe it should be proportionate to the person's means. But should it stop there? what if a fine is imprisonment? An older person could argue with the same logic that it is unfair to jail them for the same time as a younger person because that term is a disproportionate amount of their remaining lifetime... just a thought! Of course, I feel that speeding fines are not meant to hurt but are merely a form of local revenue generation. But, that could just be the conspiracy theorist in me.

Re: Oh, come on!

Submitted by atrox (not verified) on Mon, 02/18/2002 - 14:57.

we have some different views , well except that it is agreed that sally struthers is a bitch (i still havent gotten a call back either.) dont get me started on jail. i dont understand it. its not rehabilitative, yet we give people 8 life sentences. we tell them, your never getting out, and we pay to keep them alive and furnish them with cable tv. lets not go to the prison thing. we are talking about fines, prison is not a fine, thats different. prison is meant to be punitive in its own way, our judicial and prison system is a mess and not very effective, but the original point was punitive. now its a damn jobs program for people convicted of murder multiple times. anyway. i think fines for traffic violations are punitive. i dont think they are just for local revenue generation. i agree that this probably gets abused, and probably should be addressed (such as all fines dont go to local municipality but instead go to state or federal fund that is put back into roads, transportation, etc, that aint perfect i know ,just something different than sherrif jeds back pocket.) in sum, i think fines are punitive and are a deterrent. i think fines should be proportionate to income in order to make them an equal punitive measure for all. we need to take personal responsibility, in ALL areas, MUCH more seriously than we do. I think that would fix a lot of our current problems. dont want a big fine, then dont speed, stop bitching about the fine, and who gets the money, and dont SPEED!

Re: $103,00 Traffic Ticket in Finland

Submitted by flamebait (not verified) on Mon, 02/18/2002 - 18:00.

you both suck, there should be no speed limit!

Re: Oh, come on!

Submitted by cooper (not verified) on Tue, 02/19/2002 - 09:59.

I gotta go with atrox on this one. As a person who lived on very little money for several years, I can tell you that if you get a $100 speeding ticket making $12k/year and can't make your rent because of it, that means a hell of a lot more that if you make $100k/year and get the same ticket. I think the idea of imposing a hardship of somewhat equal proportions on people for violations is certainly reasonable.

It is legally questionable on multiple levels in EU legislation

Submitted by Sirkuspelle (not verified) on Thu, 06/14/2007 - 02:06.

This day-fine system is dependent on the police instant access of personal economic data via SMS messages. Most or all of the other European Union member states interpret the EU Data Protection directive as defining that this type of personal data is not to be used in law enforcement, nor to be fetched via mobile SMS messages. When enforcing traffic violations, police are therefore put into a situation where they are possibly nationally discriminating - that is giving a person who resides in Finland a salary based fine, and giving a person who resides in another member state a minimum default fine for the same violation. Nevertheless, persons who reside in other EU member states can freely drive in Finland with a valid EU driver's license. A person from another EU member state, if stopped for a traffic violation in Finland, if the police asks what his or her salary is, he or she very well has the right to say "none of your business". That data is protected as private under the law in most of the EU countries. The fine is also adusted for property ownership, which can seen as a human right violation in the European Union Convention for Human Rights under the article regarding discrimination. A person recieving this sort of speeding ticket should immediately report in a complaint it to the European Commission. The Finland government interpretation of the Personal Data Protection directive is also under investigation in the European Commission and the EU Court. The Finnish government currently allows selling, publishing, putting in the internet, selling as mobile SMS services of personal economic data from the tax authority. This also has consequences with the day-fine system. See www.verosirkus.com for more information.