Sliding Scales of Justice: Should Your Traffic Fine Reflect How Much Money You Make?

The Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal, but when it comes to paying for legal discretions in the country it created, that equity can be hard to find.

Flat fees for traffic violations may seem like the fairest way to ensure everyone pays the same price for their actions, but the financial penalties are felt with varying degrees of pain by drivers in different economic situations.

A $100 fine could represent to some an insurmountable debt that could lead to a dizzying number of late fees and court dues, sucking those already struggling into an even deeper financial hole if they fail to cover the cost.

For the more affluent, the same price is mere pocket change, its intended sting dulled and message of misconduct lost. Indeed, several studies show that those with more money are less likely to behave ethically, including on the road, with the lack of financial discomfort registered by their actions being a factor.

Many states have already tacitly acknowledged the lopsided effect such penalties have on their residents and have moved to correct the imbalance with a flurry of recently-passed legislation, but most of those laws focus on what happens after a fine is already issued. Would the country be better served by changing how the fines themselves work?

Playing the Percentages

There’s an alternative to the flat fee structure, and it’s already widely in use around the world.

Called a daily fine, the idea bases a financial penalty for traffic incidents on an amount of money deemed reasonable to take from the violator.

“Reasonable,” is, of course, quite subjective, but therein lies the point: the system aims to make offenders bear equal economic burdens for their blunders, relative to what they earn.

While there are slight variations of the mathematical formula used to derive that sum, most of the laws account for the same general factors: how much money the violator has, and how severe the violation in question is.