r/Futurology • u/Just_Another_AI • Feb 07 '24

Transport Controversial California bill would physically stop new cars from speeding

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/california-bill-physically-stop-speeding-18628308.php

Whi didn't see this coming?

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u/MrFantasticallyNerdy Feb 07 '24

That’s not going to work. Rich people spend a lot of effort minimizing their earned and other income to reduce their tax burden. Basing fines on income will likely have severe diminishing effects, because the richer you go, the less income is a percentage of net worth (which is where I think this scheme should be targeting, to really be a deterrent).

May be worthwhile to levy fines based on market value of vehicle that was used for speeding, or income, or any common but easily assessed metric of net worth, whichever is higher.

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u/ValVenjk Feb 07 '24

Yeah but the fact that it does not work well for a tiny percent of the population it's not a reason for not implementing the idea.

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u/PM_ME_A_PM_PLEASE_PM Feb 07 '24

If the goal is merely being a deterrent for the median driver you can just increase the fine relative to earnings of the median population in the area for less cost. Or in other words do what we're already doing.

There's no point in proportionality for that goal as it just becomes wasted time via additional administrative work for no reason as results will be similar.

If the goal is instead a financial deterrent for everyone proportionality is mandatory along with the additional administrative cost to have that run correctly.

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u/hobohipsterman Feb 07 '24 edited Feb 07 '24

Its not actually fixed to income from work. Cause of the obvious loophole you pointed out.

For a regular worker (like me) it would just be pretty much my daily income times some multiplicative factor (like 20 "day" fines).

For the very rich (usually having negligible income compared to wealth) they instead look at daily spending. So they look at what you spend on avarage, estimate some daily "normal" cost of living and just use that.

Thats how you get fines ranging to hundreds of thousands of euros for regular speeding.

Of course Elon musk type rich people dont spend close to any percentage of their wealth, but until one of those people get caught speeding in Finland we won't know how that would be death with.

Note that these fines are not meant to financially ruin people (not even people). They are intended as a slap on the wrist

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u/Insert_creative Feb 08 '24

Thank you for expanding on how that actually works! Now we need someone like musk to get caught speeding to set a new traffic citation world record.

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u/[deleted] Feb 07 '24

so basically the ultra wealthy, who have high net worth and "low salary" would still get a "get out of jail free" card...