I was trying to think of a place to stick the money that wouldn't incentivize over-policing and couldn't think of one. But your option is perfect. There's obviously no incentive for government employees to return money to tax payers, so if anything, this would incentivize under-enforcement of fines and fees.
Have the defendant bring the fine in cash, and ritually burn it with witnesses present. This is equivalent to collecting the money, because it allows the government to print slightly more money without inflation, but verifiably prevents anyone directly involved from pocketing it.
I thought long and hard about that one and decided that fines should be remitted to the social security administration and booked against the perps account as a contribution.
As far as I can tell this is extremely easy to implement. And utterly removes any mal-incentives.
It means the fine could have less of a deterrant effect on anyone who can afford it as they can frame it as money they'll get back in the long run. Why not speed if your ticket counts towards your retirement.
Having a inbuilt social good for breaking the law might make people more willing to do so as they can justify their illegal action as a contribution to public good.
Fines also need to be proportional to income, or you're (potentially) doing far more harm than intended or neccessary to the poorest violators, and failing to deter the wealthier ones.
You already have the problem that small fines aren't much of a deterrent effect on wealthy people. Though one might be surprised how butthurt well to do people can be over trivial amounts of money.
A mitigating thing is monthly SS insurance benefits max out.
That happens either way, the discussion is about having an effective fine to discourage people and crediting the person's social security account clearly doesn't do that.
Just saying someone doesn't understand something because they disagree with your idea is not a constructive argument.
You pay in monthly based on income up to a maximum amount. If you say a speeding fine just counts towards my monthly contribution and is deducted from what I have to pay anyway why not speed?
Ah misunderstanding, idea is paying the fine wouldn't effect normal FICA contributions. So a $100 ticket means your out $100 now with the small consultation that you might get it back in 30-40 years via a slightly higher SS check.
If you take a formal ethics class, you will study conflicts of interest. This sort of thing is brought up as a toy example that's too blatant to exist in the real world... except where government is concerned, apparently
In Canada, you get a 20-25% surcharge on your fines called the "Victim Fine Surcharge". It goes directly into a fund that pays out to victims of crime.
Aside from that, the fines go to the jurisdiction that charged you, which can then be used for whatever the jurisdiction wants; road repairs, school improvements, landscaping, administration, etc. etc. So if you were charged with a provincial fine, the money would go to the province, if you were charged with a regional fine, the money would go to the region.
In a way, that's a "tax-refund" pool, isn't it? We don't need to spend as much tax money on these things because the fines partially fund them.
The more progressive places in the US usually have a laundry list of surcharges like that they've built up over the years (the less progressive places simply haven't built up these kinds of practices over the years).
A $50 5-over ticket comes with a $100 surcharge that goes to the anti-DUI education fund, $100 toward the brain injury fund, $100 toward the reckless drivers victims fund, etc etc. All these fines get directed at various nonprofits that do things like run the mandatory classes people have to to take after getting a DUI or your 3rd speeding ticket or whatever. Of course those classes cost hundreds of dollars to attend. I don't think anyone is quite sure where the money goes. Of course this is all done with good intentions but the practical effect is that it just increases the fraction of the population who's one traffic offense away from sliding into poverty.
Awhile ago there was an article posted here about the breakdown of fines for a simple speeding ticket in CA and it was pretty disgusting the amount of fines that one has to pay in addition to the ticket itself and it all goes toward stuff that should probably be funded via the general budget or not at all. Maybe someone can find the article.
Its hard for some people to believe just how low budget some rural areas are for policing. I used to live in a west coast county that was about 6,000 sq miles. It had one city with a population over 25k. (about 66,000 total in the county) At nights, there was 2 county deputies, and 2 state police officers on duty. (the city had its own force with 2 officers on duty at night) Also, their costs were pretty high, since they had so many miles to drive (more fuel/maintenance, more replacing).
There was a small village (300-500 people) surrounded by my home town growing up.
They had a part-time mayor/police officer. When he wasn't running the town, he was bringing in revenue by sitting in his car outside the courthouse waiting for a "speeder" to "blow through" his 15 mph zone and pay him the $75 ticket.
Since I didn't live there, I'm not sure if calling 9-1-1 called this cop/mayor directly, or if it went to my town's dispatch.
That's one of the near-future threats to government funding that is going to cause some very interesting public arguments that don't match the private fears.
- Autonomous cars will massively reduce income from speeding fines
- Electric cars will reduce the incoming tax revenue from buying fuel (in Australia this is a large component that also goes into funding the maintenance of the roads)
- Solar power reducing overall household spend on power, which is potentially another large source of tax revenue
The last two things keeps more money in the pockets of consumers, which will therefore probably get spent on other things, so could be closer to a zero-sum game than it looks.
Until some kind of rule change comes in to create new government revenue streams, it's the early adopters getting the benefits so far (for example, Australia is considering additional taxes on electric cars to make up for the 'road maintenance' component the government won't be getting due to their not buying fuel. No word on incentives for "clean air" or "reduced emissions" benefits though...).
Not to worry. I'm sure there will be a new autonomous vehicle registration fee to implemented to help offset any losses. This registration will of course be on top of any existing registration fees.
They could also use some sort of algorithm that looks at each driver's record. If you have a history of speeding, they can just go ahead and asses extra fees for you since the algorithm extrapolated you would have had more tickets anyways. If you have a clean record, then the algo will go ahead and decide you're "due" for a ticket, and charge you accordingly. Why not, insurance companies do it.
Well I imagine step one will be to keep raising the penalties for speeding on the remaining manual drivers. After all it will be like 20 years before autonomous cars are a significant minority.
Some people will refuse to buy them for years. People will be buying cheap used cards for years, and those will be normal cars for quite a long time. Dollars to doughnuts the sensors and cameras and whatnot on a lot of autonomous cars will fail before the car itself does, rendering them back to manual. And again the used car market isn't going away.
There might be plenty of manual drivers in fifty years.
I don't think self driving cars will even have a steering wheel. It would probably be cheaper to buy a new car than to convert a self driving car back to manual operation.
i really dislike speed traps. i'd even support a proposition to convert all speed limits to suggested speeds (thereby abolishing fines for speeding). you could and should still punish dangerous driving, but speed by itself wouldn't serve as the threshold for unsafe driving.
>> "...convert all speed limits to suggested speeds (thereby abolishing fines for speeding)"
The State of Montana had this until the late 1990's, when the Fed's finally forced Montana into having a speed limit again by threatening to pull all Federal highway funding.
Other fun facts are that you could get a driving license at 14 years old (or a "ranch driving license" at 12 in some semi-rare cases), there was no seatbelt law, no motorcycle helmet law, and no law against drinking and driving[0].
[0] There was a law against being drunk while driving, but not a law against drinking while driving. This lead to the classic canard: "How far is it from Butte to Helena?" "Oh about four beers."
Problem with that is that for the most part speed is a pretty objective measure —whereas “dangerous driving” isn’t, so will result in uneven interpretation/application.
As someone who was ticketed for going the speed limit on a bright sunny day on a rural highway with no other cars around, where the cop wrote down two different speeds and it just happened to be the last day of the month... I assure you it is not always objective. Cost me 5x to fight it what the ticket would have been, but it's the principle of the matter.
I'm not discounting this issue. I'm sure it happens but: 1. having a speed limit allows you to know the cop was objectively wrong (barring broken speedometer). 2. Imagine the leeway cops would have if they had the discretion in determining "dangerous driving". The abuse would be even worse.
Choosing to enforce a speeding law is still subjective though, so this wouldn't change much. We speed all over California, police choose to go after the most dangerous (or least conforming to community standards, or... some other even less good measure, like race).
I understand that but at least you know what to expect: “I’m going 42mph in a 35 zone, I might get pulled over and issued a ticket”, vs. “hmmm I wonder if going 35mph is dangerous driving, does passing a bike mean it’s dangerous? Does it being dusk mean it’s dangerous? Huh, I don’t really know”.
After the US national speed limit was repealed in the 90s, Montana had no posted daytime limit. The law stated you had to drive "reasonable and prudent for conditions". The law got tossed by the state supreme court because there is no objective standard for reasonable and prudent.
that's a good policy change that mitigates the moral hazard of fines in general. i know it'd never happen, but i'd love to see something similar with fines from all sorts of companies, to reduce their use all over the economy as a way of hiding the true cost of products (particularly internet and phones).
however, i'd challenge the idea that solving more crimes is necessarily a better use of our tax dollars.
cars are the number one killer of people in america that police can directly affect. so why wouldn't we want more enforcement of traffic rules (which is where most of those fines come from), to reduce traffic fatalities? (we need to know which rules best reduce fatalities of course, but that's a given)
suicides are also high on that list. community policing techniques can help there.
and don't get me wrong, homicide investigations are important, for both prevention and justice, but homicides shouldn't dictate spending on, and the attention of, our police force.
at the bottom of the list are mass shootings (basically a rounding error of yearly gun deaths), yet police forces spend disproportionate amounts of money on (reacting to) mass shootings (assault weapons, active shooter gear, tanks, etc.).
cars are the number one killer of people in america that police can directly affect. so why wouldn't we want more enforcement of traffic rules
I think automotive industry innovation can do more to bring the fatalities down than any practical amount of policing. Also, I'm tired of the low standards for actual driving ability in America, combined with the lazy speed enforcement approach by cops. My life has very, very rarely been threatened by a speeder, but it has regularly been threatened (particularly when I'm cycling or walking) by negligent or outright incompetent drivers.
Hmm, Asian based car companies have some interesting features in their topline models. Once on cruise control, the vehicle warns the driver when they are about to move out of their lane, the vehicles will automatically slow and stop if the traffic requires it (in some case even turns the engine off when stationary) and as the traffic starts moving again, will start the engine and as it is able brings you back up to speed set.
You responsibility is to direct where the vehicle goes.
I would love to see this as standard on all vehicles.
the automotive industry has done a good job improving auto safety already, and i'm sure will continue to work on it, but i imagine the improvements are marginal at this point. auto makers would have to rip out all screens and install sensors to detect eating, drinking, phone use, newspaper reading, makeup application, etc. to make a large dent in the problem.
but i'm with you about distracted and incompetent driving. let's better enforce unsafe driving laws, like blowing through stop signs or careening across 4 lanes to exit the freeway at the last minute (both of which i see all the time). and let's incorporate simulators in driving tests that put people in a variety of potential accident scenarios that they must successfully maneuver. or something even better. but something real, not this safety theater we have now.
>let's better enforce unsafe driving laws, like blowing through stop signs or careening across 4 lanes to exit the freeway at the last minute (both of which i see all the time).
>something real, not this safety theater we have now.
Exactly.
I don't really care if you eat a hamburger while driving an overloaded truck with a manual transmission and manual steering so long as it doesn't result in you blowing stop signs or cutting me off trying to make your exit.
but i imagine the improvements are marginal at this point
Existing improvements have barely entered the market. Consider what is probably the single greatest innovation since ABS: automatic emergency braking. Having watched quite a number of dashcam videos on YouTube, it is amazing how many people just plough into others, either not braking at all, or not braking at anywhere near the limit of their car.
Incidentally, this is the same reason I find those clickbait articles about "what would a self-driving car do if faced with hitting a school bus or running off a cliff". The correct answer is "brake to the full potential of the car and aim straight", since reducing kinetic energy should be the primary focus!
It should be the same for govt asset sales. It should go into some common pool and have delayed release so you dont get politicians financing their budget via community owned assets.
