$3,000 Speeding Ticket

I have always found it interesting that traffic fines discriminate against poor people and yet I never see anything said about it. My basic understanding is that when you break traffic law you receive a punishment that will hopefully encourage you to not break the law again. It seems that the severity of the punishment should be equal for all violators. But it isn't.

A poor person who gets a speeding ticket is going to experience some real pain. At best the kids are going to have to make that milk stretch a lot farther and they can pretty much forget about meat protein for a few weeks. But that ticket also has the potential to cause them to fall behind on a payment, face higher insurance premiums, ruin their credit rating, get evicted, or even lose their job depending on the circumstances. Those are some pretty serious consequences.

Compare that to a rich person who gets the same ticket. They've lost 15 minutes of their day. And... And... And... Well, I can't think of much else. I guess if they do it enough times they can lose their license.

So here is my solution. Everyone's Adjusted Gross Income should be rounded up to the nearest thousand, divided by a thousand, and be readily available to law enforcement. Make $20,000 a year? Your number is 20. Make $76,000 a year? Your number is 76. A speeding ticket is then issued using that number in a formula.

For example, let's say the find is going to be 3 x your AGI. Make $20,000 a year? You pay $60. Make $50,000 a year? You pay $150. Make $100,000? You pay $300. And if you make $1,000,000 you pay $3,000.

Of course this still is far from perfect but it would be a step in the right direction. Maybe you would have to make some adjustments so that millionaire really feels the same pain. And I can already hear people saying that it won't work because rich people will simply hire lawyers. I have a solution for that too. Make the legal process to fight a ticket with a private lawyer require a lot of hours to accomplish. That way if you really want to hire a lawyer to fight a ticket it is still going to cost you a lot of money.

Guess who got passed the other day by a very nice Mercedes that was traveling at high speed.