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Comment by davekeck | Hacker News Reader

A much fairer system would charge people based on their income. Parking tickets, speeding tickets, towing charges, and really fines of any kind, would be much more just if they took into account how much money a person has, so that it stings the same for everyone.

As the article mentions, a poor family getting their only vehicle towed could devastate them, while it's only a mild inconvenience for someone that can afford a limo to pick their towed Ferrari up. That doesn't seem like the optimal system.

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But if your "sting" is, let's say, a percent of your 100,000 salary, yeah that's going to not be fun but to get your car back, you'll do it and learn your lesson.

If it's a percent of your $30g salary and you're living paycheck to paycheck while trying to feed 3 kids, the effect is going to be substantially worse. I'm not saying we can just waive penalty fees situationally but the inequality is definitely going to be there regardless.

Of course -- the fines don't have to relate linearly to one's income, in the same way that taxes aren't linearly related to one's income. But a system that relates fines to some function of income could be a lot more just than the current system.

These types of things are usually progressive scales.

That's actually what I was told after running a stop light - the fine was relatively small, but the point was that in order to pay it you lost a morning going to traffic court even if you made a million dollars a year. Surprisingly nice cop overall! (This was in Berkeley).

Where do you live that you have to go to court to pay a traffic ticket?

Again, this was in Berkeley (2009 or 2010). The cop said I'd have to go to court and pay the fine there, and told me why. I actually thought it wasn't a bad idea.

The Ferrari is probably safe, it would take a while to rig up for towing, and with a high risk of damage at that.

Towing the Civic is a safer bet for the towing company.

My perception is that when towing cars unnecessarily (ie: in places where a fine is more than sufficient and a main thoroughfare isn't being blocked), the mid-range cars are preferentially towed, they can pay and they're not hard to rig up.

What determines whether a car is hard to rig up or not?

Some cars are rear wheel drive, some are all wheel drive. Many expensive cars require a flat bed tow truck. Cars with double clutch transmissions do not have a "neutral" setting and cannot be easily towed (when you put a BMW DCT into neutral it becomes park, for example).

If towed in the wrong way, it can severely damage an expensive car, and considering Ferrari owners can also afford lawyers, it's safer to tow the Civic, especially the towing fee is the same either way.

Every time I see LADOT towing a car it's on a flatbed, they don't literally tow it behind some other car. I imagine it's cheaper to use a flatbed if you are in this business.

Just a couple guesses, but sportier cars will have less space between the ground and the body, making it difficult to raise them at an angle or pull them up a ramp onto a tow bed. They would also probably have more sophisticated anti-theft measures.

You think these towing fools care how much damage they do to your car when they tow it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqjomKz_t-8

Why should it be more if they're rich? Just make it easier for poorer people. Pain is supposed to have bounds.

The principal expense the article referred to is the towing charge. I don't know you make that sliding scale - the tow company is a private business.

Illegally parking in a red zone causes the exact same disruption regardless of how much the car is worth or how much the driver makes. I don't see how it is more fair to fine a poor person less for committing the exact same violation of the code. I don't disagree that the fees are outrageous. I just don't think they should be scaled based on income.

> I don't see how it is more fair to fine a poor person less for committing the exact same violation of the code.

You're familiar with the expression "let the punishment fit the crime"? For a poor person, the fine should reflect an awareness of how much he has, just as it does for the rich person.

> I just don't think they should be scaled based on income.

In a world where everything else is? What incentive would a judge have to levy a single fine that would annoy a rich person but bankrupt a poor one?

Taken to its logical conclusion, the same crime committed by a 15-year-old should be prosecuted the same way as though the offender were 40. But the world isn't arranged that way, for excellent reasons.

Once a girlfriend got ticketed for not wearing her seat belt, the fine was $250. She absolutely couldn't afford it, it would undermine everything she was trying to accomplish. She was in anguish. It never occurred to her that the judge didn't understand her position. I told her to write the judge, acknowledge that she was in the wrong, then explain that the fine was way too high, given her circumstances. The judge immediately lowered the fine to $25.

> You're familiar with the expression "let the punishment fit the crime"?

I am. For the "crime" of parking your car in a spot that it gets towed, the "punishment" is (according to the article) $472. Was the "crime" less for a poor person? no. Same crime. Same punishment.

Taken to its (inverse) logical conclusion, a person that steals $100 from a poor person should do a lot more time than a person that steals $100 from a rich person. But the world isn't arranged that way either, for excellent reasons.

You're overlooking something. Many court judgments specify a fine or jail time. If a person can't afford the fine, he goes to jail. This discriminates against poor people, and it's unconstitutional as well -- it's unequal application of the law.

We can both find examples that support our outlooks, but the fact is that, absent unintended injustices, punishments are tuned to fit the crimes and the criminals as well.

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