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So the laws of the road are changing


DaddyCee

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Next thing you know if you commit murder and are on a low salary its only 2 years but 20 if you are a CEO ;)

 

Call me Mr Cynical but seems like a bit of a money making exercise out of motorists...cannot believe the government would do that ;)

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There's a little communist in me now, thanks to the Greek crisis showing how the rich who caused the problems are insulated, while the poor people pay for it, makes me all for this kind of thing.

 

I actually believe all monetary penalties should be based on the earning ability of the perpetrator. Simply because a 5 grand fine is indeed unlikely to hurt a high earner, such as a football player or partner of a law firm, which funnily enough are the ones with the fast cars.

 

Sounds alright to me. At least it makes the deterrent the same for everyone, I'd say a win for road safety and equality. :)

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If its about affordability, then thats something else. Because someone is on say £50k a year it doesn't mean they can suddenly rustle up and pay a £5k fine at the drop of a hat. People on high salaries already fund the roads more than those on lower salaries. I think when it comes to crime, its a fixed rate and then a licence removal - I cannot see why authorities have to wait for four convictions before even looking at a licence removal.

 

I think you are including the uber rich who have tonnes of disposable income, sure footballers and the like, thats a whole different ball game.

 

If the government can show some data that shows higher earners are flouting speeding laws much more than lower earners then sure I can go with the argument, my guess is that they don't have that. It wont stop lower earners speeding, it might stop higher earners speed but if lower earners are say 80% of the problem then the government are going to fail in reducing speed related incidents with this measure.

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For me it's simply the fact that if you are in the top 30% of earners in the UK, you are not going to care all that much about getting a 500 quid fine, whereas if it's ten times that, you will. It also ensures that people with no income aren't bankrupted by a silly speed camera offence. Even if it is intended as a money grabbing tactic, the real world benefits seem obvious to me.

 

Just out of curiosity, how is it that the rich pay more for the roads in the UK? Here in Greece, it has nothing to do with income, just the size of the engine and CO2 emissions.

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From what I read briefly skipping through though it was going to be much more than £500. As above (I did edit) unless I can see evidence this kind of fine system will work in the UK why implement it and ignore the real problem.

 

In the UK income tax and corporation tax funds the road infrastructure maintenance, not VED. VED goes towards road 'projects' but there is no way a couple of hundred quid a year on each car can fund the whole thing - as higher earners pay more tax, its fair to say they contribute more to the upkeep.

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For me a better implementation is to prevent repeat offenders across the board. The fine should go up for repeated offenders. £65 is never going to bankrupt anyone, even on £15k a year. But second offence put it up to £165 and so on. Remove licence earlier than 4, 3 pointers? Maybe take it down to 9? Put in shorter ban for 6 points of say a month?

 

I guess I get a bit fed up of seeing headline stuff like this to try and politically make a government more popular (hit the bankers in the pocket damn them type headlines) and am more interested in sorting out the deaths caused by speeding.

 

PS, I am not a high earning banker and have never got a speeding ticket!

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That's not a bad idea, but I can't get away from the fact that it makes no difference to the person you killed, if you killed them on your first or latest offence, the goal is surely to make the deterrent big enough in the first place that nobody gets killed.

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...which makes me feel that earnings based fines will make no difference. If someone can 'afford' the fine then they will still speed, a billionaire as you say can always afford a £5000 fine. The only deterrent I can see if removal of driving privileges early on, a sort of yellow card if you like. Which makes this policy so ridiculous, its a nod to 'common man' out there that 'hey we are looking out for you guys' from the government but not actually doing anything practical to stop speeding. They probably spent months in meetings coming up with it instead of thinking of something that affects the demographic that cause most speeding incidents in the right way.

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What a @*!# new law !!! It's hard not to speed in the zed lol

 

its only a @*!# law if you get caught ;)

We'll all be getting caught going from this sentence in the article...

 

If you are caught at between 31 and 40mph in a 30mph zone you will get three penalty points and a fine of between 25 and 75 per cent of your weekly income.

 

Speedometer variations alone would get a lot of us caught. :wacko:

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I believe there is more that can be done to make to roads safer than just penalising speeders. Im not justifying speeding, I work on a busy stretch with a primary school and get p***ed off idiots speeding past. Traffic calming measures cause people to swerve and focus more on hitting it the right way rather than whats happening on the road, people getting too close to the car in front on motorways, lorrys with more light in the cab than blackpool pleasure beach, pretty girls in fiats, all cause distractions. Since fitting my dashcam I'm more aware of what Im doing, I think they should be compulsory.

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...which makes me feel that earnings based fines will make no difference. If someone can 'afford' the fine then they will still speed, a billionaire as you say can always afford a £5000 fine. The only deterrent I can see if removal of driving privileges early on, a sort of yellow card if you like. Which makes this policy so ridiculous, its a nod to 'common man' out there that 'hey we are looking out for you guys' from the government but not actually doing anything practical to stop speeding. They probably spent months in meetings coming up with it instead of thinking of something that affects the demographic that cause most speeding incidents in the right way.

 

Billionnaire got a half million pound fine in Switzerland under this model.

 

Screw it, let's bring back the law from the late 1800s as stated in that article... 10 lashes!!

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They clearly just see this as a way of generating even more cash through speeding fines. Currently if you get caught and as long as you werent doing some silly speed then its likely going to be a £100 fine and points. If they can up that to 75% of someones weekly income, then even if your only on £25k a year its going to be a lot more than £100. Its all about just making money for them and not making the roads safer. If they wanted to make them safer then they should be out there cracking down on dangerous drivers, not speeders.

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I remember when Abramovich took over Chelsea he was on a million pounds a day salary, £500k, pah, chicken feed!

 

As Stew said this is not tackling speeding, speed cameras do not tackle speeding (many people just speed between them). Speed cameras cover I am guessing, 0.0000001% of the road network, they are never going to address the speeding issue. Its money grabbing and it will not deter the super rich, once someone is earning over £100k they are probably very well off in terms of disposable income. There is nothing there to convince me this will have any real world effect on speeding - unless someone can show me actual figures that clearly shows significant numbers of rich people are speeding vs poorer people.

 

As an aside, you could argue someone living in Manchester on £30k a year is likely to have more disposable income and ability to pay than someone living in London on £40k a year - just a point.

 

As an additional aside. Not sure if anyone read the actual document in the article, which states you can get fined for doing 31mph in a 30mph zone? Given inaccuracy of both speedos and cameras, how they got to that conclusion.

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GPS based speed is more accurate (i believe), the cameras allow for 10% over the predetermined limit to account for those discrepancies. Which means if you're caught doing 31 and have a dashcam with GPS and speed awareness you should be able to over turn it. Also worth noting that when my speedo says 30, the other usually says around 27-8.

 

 

Oh I and Im not trying to flog dashcams

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...and those not in the 'most' group? Just seems daft to have a 1 mph difference when every single driver in the country will at some point in their car slightly push over 30mph and hit 31mph they are then means tested for a fine for being a speeder when they are anything but...

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