Income-Based Speeding Tickets in Finland Can Lead to $100,000 Fines

Everyone has proper motivation not to speed.

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Image via Complex Original
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If you can afford a Ferrari or a Lamborghini you can afford the fines that come along with driving it fast enough to maximize its fun potential. That's just a perk of the broken system we have here in America. In Finland getting busted for speeding doesn't become less annoying as your pocket fills up with more guap. The country has income-based fines, leading to six-figure speeding tickets for the wealthy. 

The Atlantic explains the Finnish policy:


"Finland’s system for calculating fines is relatively simple: It starts with an estimate of the amount of spending money a Finn has for one day, and then divides that by two—the resulting number is considered a reasonable amount of spending money to deprive the offender of. Then, based on the severity of the crime, the system has rules for how many days the offender must go without that money. Going about 15 mph over the speed limit gets you a multiplier of 12 days, and going 25 mph over carries a 22-day multiplier."

A Finish businessman was recently fined $57,000 for doing 65 mph in a 60 mph zone, and NHL player Teemu Selanne was notoriously fined $39,000 for speeding back in 2000. Meanwhile in America people like Steve Jobs can afford to park in handicapped spaces and shun license plates altogether. 

"There’s a renewed interest in this because of the outrageous kind of fining and gouging that has become well-known out of Ferguson," Judith Greene, who founded Justice Strategies, a nonprofit research organization, told The Atlantic. "The criminal fines should come into the picture as they were originally intended, which is a criminal sanction—a penalty for crime—and then scaled appropriately." 

What do you think: should America adopt income-based speeding tickets?

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