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Comment by indoordin0saur | Hacker News Reader

I'll add that it could create some really perverse incentives. Small town cops encouraged to pull over any newer or more expensive car and ignoring ones that look janky.

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That would be the case in systems where the fines go to the local police force. I don’t know the prevalence, but in the countries where I’ve lived, the fines go to the central government, so local cops don’t have this (completely perverse, as you say) incentive.

I would argue that fixing that is important, even without income-based fines. Particularly if you have things like civil forfeiture (which also needs some fixing and really sounds like something that belongs in a banana republic).

In the US there are speed traps in small towns already where it's known that it is a major source of government income. To be somewhat fair, people often speed through these small towns they'll never see or think about again and cause issues.

Outside the US, it's somewhat less common for units of government with the power to levy fines to be anywhere near that small. In the UK, "safety camera" income goes to national (Westminster, Scottish, NI) government, not local government. And to the general fund, not to any road- or policing-specific department.

It's an American oddity where (crooked) local police departments fund themselves off fine revenue. Most countries centralise fine revenue with the state or federal government to remove such incentives.

They also don't have the government sanctioned theft through the ridiculous notion of civil forfeiture...

I'm Black. This is such an abstract incentive problem such that I can't much care, given the obvious real ones we already have.

If they drove properly, that wouldn’t be a problem.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not going to shed any tears for a Ferrari driver who has to pay a $50k fine for going 30 miles over the speed limit. It would just make society strange if this is how we enforced the laws.

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