The $204,000 Speeding Ticket

In Finland they seem to have one of the most briliant and fair systems for traffic fines that I've heard of. If states want to start cutting into their deficits maybe they should have a look at Finland.

From US News and World Report...

In 2004 the heir to a family sausage fortune was caught driving 50 miles per hour in a 25 mph zone in Helsinki. His fine was 170,000 euros, then worth about $204,000.

The reason for such astronomical fines lies in Finland's lofty ideals of egalitarianism. The nation imposes graduated traffic fines based on the wealth of the lawbreaker as well as the severity of the offense. This system, adopted in 1921, is intended to ensure "equal severity of the fine for offenders of different income and wealth," according to a paper by Tapio Lappi-Seppala, director of the National Research Institute of Legal Policy. Traffic fines must hurt the millionaire as much as the minimum-wage worker.

But basically a police officer comes up with a figure called a "dayfine" equal to roughly half the offender's daily disposable income. The officer then multiplies that amount by a number between 1 and 120-reflecting the severity of the offense.

A typical drunk-driving charge might be worth 40 dayfines. An offender earning about $2,000 a month would be fined roughly $1,050; a person earning roughly $7,900 a month would pay closer to $5,000 for the same offense. Police used to rely on honesty to learn their income; now they can use cellphones to tap into tax records.

While some have protested what they see as exorbitant fines, surveys show that 80 percent of Finns think the practice is fair.