General Road and Highway Discussion

[danbrotherston]

As for a $500 dollar fine it definitely doesn't make the same impact on everyone.  For a well paid tech worker, a $500 dollar fine would be a bad day, but it wouldn't really practically impact anything they do.  A lower income individual but someone who's not a "low-income" person, they're going to feel some pain, they might forego a dinner out, or at the very least see an impact in their retirement savings.  For a CEO of a big company, they probably spend more on haircuts in a month, they'll barely care about a $500 dollar fine.

What I am saying is that most people (99.9%+) will feel that $500 is serious money, and will not want to just throw it away.  Maybe there are a handful of people in this city that wouldn't care about $500, but it's surely not even 0.1% (that would be 400 people or so).  And my point is that if the set fine is $500, people with financial hardship can get that reduced today.

So I'm saying fines (let alone demerits) can already have an impact today without switching to a % of income model (and the headline $10K fines).

That wasn't my point, even if 99.9% of people "feel" that $500 dollars is "serious" money, it still affects them very differently.  Someone working full time but earning minimum wage will see a $500 dollar fine as backbreaking, working out to over a week of work.  Someone making 20 dollars an hour, is still making decent money but 500 dollars represents several days of work, and probably some cut to their lifestyle or savings.  A highly paid tech worker or other professional that will represent less than a day of work, and will be upset, but otherwise unaffected, its a huge difference in impact, but they're all still well within the 99.9% you've defined, and I doubt any qualify for financial hardship relief.

The point is, the punishment is the impact a fine has on your life, not the monetary value of the fine, therefore, those fines should be scaled relative to their impact on your life.

Demerit point systems are good too, but they seem to not be acceptable to people for automated enforcement.