Central New York Injury Lawyer Blog
As a recipient of more than a few speeding tickets within the last few decades, I took an interest in this NY Times article about a $58,000.00 speeding ticket in Finland.
The offender was clocked at 64 miles per hour in a 50 mile per hour zone. Doing the math, that works out to $4,143.00 for every mile per hour above the limit.
Why so high? What determined the high price was not so much the offense as the offender. The speedster was a multimillionaire in one of the few countries in the world where fines for traffic infractions are calculated based in large part on your income. The mindset in this Scandinavian country is that the sting of the fine should be felt equally by rich and poor. The sting of a $100 fine is felt by the street sweeper but not by the banking tycoon. Thus, in Finland Fine-land the government calculates your fine based on half your daily net income multiplied by the number of days of income you should lose according to the gravity of the offense. This particular $58,000 ticket represented a half-a-day’s income of the wealthy offender.
I wonder how Fine-land would handle the fine for a U.S. visitor like me caught speeding on its roadways? Would they subpoena my US income tax returns in order to calculate the “sting effect” of the fine?
I’m not anxious to find out. I think my next Scandinavian vacation will be in neighboring Norway.
Keep safe!
Mike Bersani
Email me at: bersani@mbk-law.com I’d love to hear from you!
Michael G. Bersani, Esq.
mbk-law.com Central NY auto accident Lawyers
Michaels Bersani Kalabanka
1-315-253-3293