Did the citation say anywhere that he was required to appear in court? Anyone want to bet that if he simply mailed in a check for $1.4M they wouldn't have happily deposited it and never say anything more?
@@-Gorby- Have you been to the UK with emissions charges for zones that are badly marked and they cannot tell you if you have been in the zone and need to pay. You either pay or wait for a fine to arrive. Accident caused a detour from my route just outside the zone, I called them to be told they cannot tell me if I entered the zone.
There was a multi millionaire in Sweden who was ticketed the Swedish equivalent of $244,432 for a speeding violation. The amount of the fine in Sweden is based on the offender's income. There was a penalty issued for a Driving While Intoxicated charge where the man had to pay $376,000 and spend 5 years in prison for a crash where he injured 3 people.
@@orppranator5230 I guess only the monetary value. I don't know about Sweden, but e.g. in Germany a lot of curt fines (not speeding tickets) are based on the daily rate of net income. If you don't pay XYZ amounts of daily rates in fines you will go to jail for XYZ days. Might be the same in Sweden.
@@orppranator5230 Prolly only the fine, the point of such fines is that where $200 might be hard for the average person to pay, someone making $200K a year wouldn't bat an eye at using that to light his cigar, so the fine needs to hit his wallet the same way.
@keylightsystems why do say that? Billionair getting $150 fine is not suffering the same burden as you, so it's not a deterrent. They make it significant and that extra money also lowers the taxes of the less fortunate. It makes total sense.
Someone once calculated that it would take the mass of the sun (100% mass to energy conversion) to power a spaceship to almost the speed of light. Good luck slowing down.
To clarify, there's a standard ticket at a flat rate for small amounts of speeding, and then if you speed a lot, you can get into to the 'daily pay' ticket category.
That seems more fair than a single level fine that applies to everyone regardless of income. In the American military, all punitive assessments are handled that way.
_"Turns out that's not the real ticket amount, we don't do that here in America."_ Me: _"No, those amounts are only reserved for basic health care bills."_
The Canadian Lady's quote aligned perfectly... "If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough." Another encouragement to speed 😜
If I had to take a guess, the company who wrote the program made it so that box could _only_ accept numbers, not realizing it might need to accept letters like TBD as Steve suggested. Then instead of getting it fixed the state may have just chosen a number large enough that no one would ever choose to pay it instead of going to court.
As a former application programmer, it just KILLS me when they won't TELL the programmer what is ACTUALLY required, and clearly. We're smart enough to follow instructions, but NOT smart enough to read minds and clearly see the future.
@@-Gorby- One more for you once you pass the income based fines then you start handing out exemptions for all expensive cars I can not afford, only the rich, same as our federal tax code lets off the unemployed and the high income people with exemptions. None of these exemptions ever could apply to my middle income life.
My former wife's brother was stopped alone at a traffic light on a 40mph arterial. He never revved his engine, never spun his tires, and never exceeded 33mph when he got pulled over and tagged for "exhibition of speed". Whaaaat?
Well a guy at work was driving a 1ton GMC pulling a 32’ flat bed trailer loaded with pipe and got pulled over for exhibition of speed. He argued with the cop about how ridiculous the allegation was and the cop eventually let him go with no ticket just a warning.
@@Tugela60Oh come on now, we have plenty examples of cops lying as easily as they breathe, especially over small stuff. These are people that are so dishonest that we had to strap cameras to the entire damn profession.
@@Heof1letter Do you actually know any cops? Those I know are long suffering, they have to babysit people breaking the law or causing problems every day. They get to see the worst side of human nature on a daily basis. Sure, some cops lie, they are human so there will be some, most do not, for them it is just another day on the job. They are not going to go out of their way to create issues for people minding their own business. They are just not interested in that, it would be a waste of their time. Far more people lie to weasel out of responsibility when they do something wrong, and this is what cops have to constantly deal with.
I should have kept watching before commenting. I've had a couple of tickets in almost 40 years of driving. I'm pretty sure that I've been told by the cop how much the fine was and how to pay, or contest it, every time. The fine table is either on the ticket or it's on a separate card they gave me. Granted, I've never been stopped for 40mph over, but even those fines are set, or they require a court appearance.
Civilizations, if not countries. Yes. But they probably don't look like our anthropomorphic ideas of what "aliens" look like. Of course, we may not have any contact with them for eons.
We need a system that takes into consideration a persons income. The system we have now is purely tilted towards wealthy people and very punishing to the poor. And no, I am not a liberal, I am a conservative libertarian that thinks fines should affect all people equally. A $300 fine for a millionaire is couch money. But to a working class person it could mean not making a car payment or rent.
@@rapid13 It's not a tiered system, it's percentage of income. That's the very definition of fair, and might actually dissuade some rich people from writing a check and continuing to break the law.
@jbtoptc7327 Yeah, don’t worry, the vast majority of us in Georgia are glad you are no longer a citizen/resident of the State of Georgia, too. Georgia is a great state to live in.
There's a small city where I live that had a few signs up saying, "Drive 20 mph over & we'll read you your rights." I guess that's the crossover from a misdemeanor civil infraction to a criminal status. Haven't seen them in quite a while.
I worked for a guy with money and a sports car. He liked to speed and paid the tickets from pocket change. Then one day he got a letter from the RMV, right to drive revoked for one year.
That's because he did it wrong; you're supposed to use your money to get a lawyer to declare "faulty equipment". You still pay a fine but there's no points on your license.
Hey Steve, software engineer here. The reason they probably put in that ridiculously large amount is because they probably designed their database where it has to have a numeric value for the "amount" field which means they cannot use a text placeholder. There's also likely some business logic or case where if the value was 0 or negative it would result in people not having to pay so they put in this value that they knew would not get paid. In other words it's a design flaw in the database who knows how many years ago and now it's a PITA to fix.
It's such an arbitrary number though. One trillion, or some programmer value like 2^31 would be more identifiable. Maybe they have different values for different codes.
@@averthewin1689but then someone (the clerk or the person who got the ticket) might confuse it for the correct fine amount instead of a placeholder because that’s an amount they could theoretically charge (and because of old payment processing systems have fun trying to get a refund that doesn’t charge you a processing fee if you do over pay). At least with this everyone except one dumb/tired clerk immediately realized that couldn’t be the right amount. (PS: pretty much all of the weird quirks and differences in courts are due to one of those two reasons 1) bad /old/cheap tech or 2) clerk recognition. For example the jury office for my local court uses a ‘summons number’ and the area federal court uses ‘participation numbers’ so if someone calls one court and means to call the other the clerks instantly know. A thing I learned when I got a jury summons for ‘new years day’ and needed to call to figure out how that would work if the court was closed for a federal holiday, turns out that was a ‘placeholder date’ due to old tech. Fun!)
It's actually a good idea. If the only penalty is a fine, then it's legal for a fee. If the fee is so small that you don't care about paying it, then the fee isn't a deterrent.
They're trying to avoid confusion. 🤔 Yet they are confusing everyone. Inflation does not say we're all living better. Inflation indicates the government is living better
That's not how inflation works, it doesn't help the government and Inflation is a problem but it's not as big of a problem as the companies jacking prices up. Their profit margins are doing incredibly well, so well it looks like they're a big part of our buying power vanishing.
@GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusket LMAO 🤣 Tell me you don't know anything about basic economics, without telling me you know nothing about basic economics. Thee ONLY reason there is inflation is because the government is spending more! Companies profits are held to a percentage i.e. 1-3% for grocery stores, 9% for oil and gas, etc. If they hike prices, it's because their costs go up, be it taxes, more licensure and higher fees, more regulations, requiring more manpower hours, etc. .....companoes are going to keep getting their percentage cut for profits. Whereas it behooves government for inflation to rise because more taxes are collected on the higher prices, even at the same tax rate. Whoever told you any different is a flat out liar. Government is the one and ONLY reason for inflation. The last 5 years has shown that, with bigger beauracracies, with more employees, with more spending, and raising inflation rates(an effect, and compounding cause).
@@BearBig70 Wow, you are so off base. Go look at the business that started the inflation movement while Trump was still in office, the lumber companies. They raised prices for no reason. Go look at their public records of profit in the quarter they raised prices, they shot up. When the government did nothing to stop this, all the other corporations jumped on board and we have inflation. Go look up the profits of the publicly traded corporations, their profits went through the roof. I don't know what communist country you are living in where there is a limit on price increases but it isn't the U.S.
A $1000 dollar fine to a billionaire is nothing. A $1000 fine to the average citizen means they might not be able to eat for 2 months. That's not equal justice because it affects a lower income person more than a higher income person. Now tie the fine to income and the penalty has the same effect on both parties.
I think what we are forgetting with a lot of our fines and punishments is they are progressive. First offense X, with points or possible license suspension etc. You get 4 speeding tickets in short order in most places you might face suspension, no mater what the fines are…. With all this in mind we might want to try to make it easier for the poor to plead poverty. I have noticed it is really hard to convince courts you don’t have anything.
I seem to remember those long-ago days where we were required to study the Constitution and all accompanying documents. Wasn't there a section that capped civil fines.? Can anyone verify that.? It seems contrary to be able to fine excessively in a civil matter, yet have no legal representation made available to challenge such. Does this cap really exist in the Constitution..??
Sometimes I spend a good amount of time listening to you but scanning the shelves behind you with all of the interesting, cool stuff on it...I realize it's probably not really worth it for you, but sometime it would be great to go through some of those things and explain their significance... (Like, how many swords does a lawyer need? lol) Thanks for the upload!
Lets face it, if they tied the speeding tickets to income in the US, a lot of municipalities would be making LESS money. That is why I doubt it will ever make it over here.
Been in our accounting department for a while. The "to be determined" or "not done!" Number we use is 999,999 Why? Cause that's the highest our system will let us. Idea is If someone pushes the bill SOMEONE wil will notice the ridiculous summ.
Because then you would not be able to tell that was a placeholder, it would be the real fine. It has to be a number that is clearly not valid to anyone who looks at it.
Because then someone will send in a check for $1000 and not turn up to court. I suspect that while the maximum *fine* may be $1000, the judge may also be able to revoke licenses, jail, or give you points/demerits. Sounds like a software issue, though: it has to be a number. They need to add an extra type of form letter that just says you must turn up to court.
Kinda instantly thought of the guy from Finland who was fined more than $135000 for speeding, because it was based on income. I think it was revealed to be 3 days income. A normal $1000 fine would have been a drop in the bucket for him.
Programmer here, It's a magic binary number (there's a lot more significant digits, not just 1.4 million). The software almost certainly can't put text there, only a number; the placeholder number is therefore the maximum the software can hold. Their software vendor hopefully is under pressure to update it.
Being a programmer and knowing how software works I would assume their software can't accept inputs that aren't numbers so TBD or an empty or all 0s number or the like wouldn't be an option, it would have a requirement of a number that was above 0 and instead of placeholder being $1 and people maybe paying and falling through the cracks if they got sent that they set it to $1400000 so no one in their right mind would pay it if they received it.
Since the ticket issuer and the court were in violation of state law limiting the ticket to $1000, I would seek counsel regarding filing a lawsuit for violating the law, requesting $1.4 million times three in punitive damages.
those pennies would weigh about 3,500,000 KG or about 437,500 washing machines, and you would need at least 153 20ft Shipping containers to move them (more likely 154 if you assume they are rolled and boxed)
Income contingent fines sound ideal! A 100$ speeding ticket for me is a whole day's work. BUT it's the equivalent of pocket change to the wealthy who consider it a "go fast tax."
Actually I believe income based fines are appropriate. When you have millions in the bank, what do you care if you speed and put everyone around you at risk,,, oh no... a couple hundred dollar fine... Oh noo..... Let the rich enjoy losing an actual percentage of their income for speeding,,,, Just like the rest of us.
"Your Honor, the amount of the fine printed on this ticket is greater than the maximum allowed amount of $1000. We argue that this ticket is therefore invalid, and move to dismiss". Or something that sounds like that in real lawyer language.
This illustrates why laws have to made by lawyers, and why they need to be specific. If you are allowed to add ANYTHING to the fine, than there is effectively no limit.
It wasn't that you were "encouraging" crime. It's that you reduced so many "tickets" and more so the fact that you reduced so many fines it was most likely no longer profitable for them to use the same bs ticketing during events ruse
Software engineer here - good chance they can't actually put TBD or other non-numeric data in the field because the system likely wants a properly formatted quantity. Often large numbers (usually a max or min of whatever data-type could be reserved as special) is used in an integer or floating-point field if "NULL" is not acceptable in their software or database. The 1.4M is a bit odd though, it doesn't align to any number that I can think of for a data-type limit and human-readable max/min I'd expect something like "999,999,999.99" or "-1" or something that can be more easily identified. Really fun thing people have got in unintentional trouble with is custom license plate "NULL"
My first thought was along the same lines as Steve's--that it must have been an income-based fine somewhere in Europe. A fine of a few hundred dollars isn't much of a deterrent to a multimillionaire.
Large fines are an 8A violation, while income based fines are a 14A violation of equal protections. Can't treat one person differently than another because one earns more or less.
i thought it might have been a story from Finland first, i know Finland have that system where above a specific income the tickets goes on the drivers income. think one people that got hit by one was the ceo or something like that of Nokia and got one realy expensive speeding ticket. the story im thinking about is maybe 10-20 years old now.
The stupidity of gov (and the people that do this stupidity) is never ending and mind boggling. It also amazes and pisses me off all the things our taxes pay for but we have to pay a second time when we use it FU.
Tickets/fines tied to income/wealth is a great idea. Why should a wealthy person basically be able to ignore most of the traffic/parking laws, because the fines are so small they are not even noticeable to them. Why should someone making minimum wage face fines more than their monthly income for a minor mistake, or several years income for something like this? Fines should hurt, but should not destroy lives. Why should they ruin one person and not even be noticed by another? I get that the law is designed so the wealthy are very difficult to punish, but why is that a good thing? If Musk or Musks driver does something like this under his instructions, a 10 billion dollar (or more) fine seems appropriate. If the guy serving your lunch does the same thing, a few thousand seems appropriate. Both hurt, both will serve as a good reason not to do it again.
Fines are BS period. You want to curb speeding? Require the offender to do community service. Nobody wants to give up their time, and the time is more or less valuable, depending on your income level. This will never happen, because the state wants money, they actually don't give a crap about safety or anything else. It's all about the benjamins.
He did one where a rich guy in northern Europe was speeding and got a similar fine. But he had to pay it because there they fine you according to your income.
If you have the money to float, pay the fine, then turn around and sue the city for an exporbinant fine under state law, get the money back with interest and attorney fees.
Honestly, income-based fines are something else that foreign governments do right, and we do wrong. At some point, you get to be so rich in this country that fines and penalties are just the cost of doing business, or pay-to-play. Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk could speed and get tickets every day of their lives, and simply pay all the tickets without any noticeable impact to their lives. (The eventual confiscation of the license would be the first thing that actually struck them as a real penalty). Meanwhile, some single mother in Detroit getting a $15 parking ticket is enough to bankrupt her, completely.
Thank God I live in TN where the Constitution says that no fine may exceed $50 without a jury trial and that no fine may be disproportional to the infraction.
Huh so if I had gone to court instead of paying the $135 fine I'd have had the right to a jury? That's pretty sweet. I did do the speeding though so I just paid, better then getting slapped for trying to not take responsibility with a $500 fine.
@@GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusket The case is State v. Dusina, decided by the TN Supreme Court about a speeding ticket in fact. Applies to any fine, however. But remember your time is worth something and so is the hassle of going to court, so 135 isn't all that bad. I advise people that when they get a ticket for a fine in excess of $50, call the DA's office and tell the Assistant with the case you want your jury trial but you'd be willing to pay $50 and waive it. Works a lot.
Disproportion to the infraction would be up to the ability to pay. A billionaire wouldn't care about $50 so there is no deterrent. If we had a country where pay was proportionate then fines could be, as well. But there are many people, obviously not you, who could easily afford a one million dollar speeding ticket and wouldn't miss it. Disproportion that!
@@DarkPesco No, that's not the standard. Learn some law, don't just go around making assumptions. Disproportionate means relative to the nature of the infraction, not the offender.
Did the citation say anywhere that he was required to appear in court? Anyone want to bet that if he simply mailed in a check for $1.4M they wouldn't have happily deposited it and never say anything more?
I doubt you even need a speeding ticket for that to happen, just mail them any check for any amount and they'll take it without question.
As dysfunctional as the govt is, they'd deposit the cheque, then issue an arrest warrant for failure to appear, wjth a fine of 500$,
@@El_Peto That sounds about right. Err, wrong.
They would have said something because they would have been subject to a huge lawsuit for excessive fines which is a constitutional violate
@@-Gorby- Have you been to the UK with emissions charges for zones that are badly marked and they cannot tell you if you have been in the zone and need to pay. You either pay or wait for a fine to arrive. Accident caused a detour from my route just outside the zone, I called them to be told they cannot tell me if I entered the zone.
This mistake definitely can be corrected. The only problem is that it will cost $1.5 million in legal fees.
😂😂such a deal
The man can indeed pay the fine. Just write a check for $0.01 as a place holder until the correct fine amount is determined.
Just write a check for 140$ and say that was what you were told you owed when asked
A sliding scale just slid off the table.
There is no sliding scale
@@fuzzyelm1 There is no war in Ba Sing Se
There was a multi millionaire in Sweden who was ticketed the Swedish equivalent of $244,432 for a speeding violation. The amount of the fine in Sweden is based on the offender's income. There was a penalty issued for a Driving While Intoxicated charge where the man had to pay $376,000 and spend 5 years in prison for a crash where he injured 3 people.
Was the time spent increased because he was rich or only the fine amounts?
@@orppranator5230 I guess only the monetary value. I don't know about Sweden, but e.g. in Germany a lot of curt fines (not speeding tickets) are based on the daily rate of net income. If you don't pay XYZ amounts of daily rates in fines you will go to jail for XYZ days. Might be the same in Sweden.
Sweden is fucked.
@@orppranator5230 Prolly only the fine, the point of such fines is that where $200 might be hard for the average person to pay, someone making $200K a year wouldn't bat an eye at using that to light his cigar, so the fine needs to hit his wallet the same way.
@keylightsystems why do say that? Billionair getting $150 fine is not suffering the same burden as you, so it's not a deterrent. They make it significant and that extra money also lowers the taxes of the less fortunate. It makes total sense.
I didn’t know the speed of light was attainable.😱
Dang! That's a 🪙 gold🪙 standard comment 👍😆😆
Someone once calculated that it would take the mass of the sun (100% mass to energy conversion) to power a spaceship to almost the speed of light. Good luck slowing down.
With a properly tuned flux capacitor, not a problem.
@@Milovan-c9xI second this.😆
@@nolongeramused8135
I wonder if headlights would be useful at that speed.
If I had to pay 1.4 million I’d tell them to shove it, lose my license, and hire a full time chauffeur with the money. 😂
My Maserati does 185, I lost my license now i dont drive.
I got limo, i ride in the back. I lock the doors in case im attacked
@@charliedulin They say i'm crazy, but i have a good time. Life's been good to me so far!
Nah.. I would donate some fiat 💵💵 to the blue gangsters and get a license to speed.. 😄😄😄
That won't work. They would never let you slide. Loopholes only work one way.
Finland's tickets are calculated at 1/2 daily pay, and for very rich people, can turn into Tens of thousands or even over a 100,000 Euro penalty.
To clarify, there's a standard ticket at a flat rate for small amounts of speeding, and then if you speed a lot, you can get into to the 'daily pay' ticket category.
That seems more fair than a single level fine that applies to everyone regardless of income. In the American military, all punitive assessments are handled that way.
In Finland, the fine is a week without sauna usage
What if you are rich and don't have an income?
Didn’t Nokia’s CEO get a million dollar ticket about 20 years ago in Finland?
_"Turns out that's not the real ticket amount, we don't do that here in America."_
Me: _"No, those amounts are only reserved for basic health care bills."_
Obamacare fixed that, right?
@@glee21012 well, to be fair, my premiums doubled, deductable quadrupled, and my coverage reduced so there is that.
For the same reason.
@@DJdoppIer TH-cam deleted my comment. Shame in them
@@glee21012obamacare was never meant to fix anything.
Send them a check with the word "placeholder" in place of the amount!
Send them a Zimbabwe 100 Trillion Dollar note and ask them for the change to be paid into your bank account.
The Canadian Lady's quote aligned perfectly... "If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough." Another encouragement to speed 😜
This is my philosophy in Autocross
aka Canadian Robot Lady
Warp drive was invented by the man paying the ticket . Star Trek can use this mans Warp Drive .
Wouldn't the rest of the World get the ticket then? He was holding perfectly still
@@benmoore1097 Lol
I know "super speeder" tickets can be pricey, but DANG!
My brother in law ounce got a ticket for over 900, because he was doing 90 or more in a construction zone in Georgia.
Georgia needs the money to help with all the court cost associated with Fani Willis
@@keithmyers1454 This was several years ago.
1974 An Navy acquaintance got a ticket in San Diego County that said 'Must Appear'. He had four outstanding tickets.
If I had to take a guess, the company who wrote the program made it so that box could _only_ accept numbers, not realizing it might need to accept letters like TBD as Steve suggested. Then instead of getting it fixed the state may have just chosen a number large enough that no one would ever choose to pay it instead of going to court.
As a former application programmer, it just KILLS me when they won't TELL the programmer what is ACTUALLY required, and clearly. We're smart enough to follow instructions, but NOT smart enough to read minds and clearly see the future.
@@rogergeyer9851 Use a string instead of a number, "This is not a dollar amount, do you wish to continue?" and done.
Ben is under the Turbine car.
No I'm not
I love how even as a attorney, you find these stories preposterous.
In Kentucky it's called "Improper Take-off" I found out at the ripe old age of 18!
Such a bull$hit charge IMO.
I’m poor and earn below the poverty level. When they mandate speeding fines based on income, I’m going to laugh.
There is a minimum set
@@fwmh Of course there is... But no maximum apparently. Such a scam.
@GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusket income based fine sounds good to me, you need a way to incentive rich people to behave
@@GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusketThey are based on a set percentage. You would pay the same percentage of your income as a millionaire.
@@jonathanjones3126who do you THINK own the RACKET?? You?? 😂😂😂
If I were a betting man, I would say that California will be the first state to implement income-based traffic fines 😂
Hopefully every state and province follows suit
@@swy334 It's unconstitutional. Violates the equal Rights clause of the 14A.
@@Uberragen21 How so? If it's the same rate/percentage for everyone then that is equal.
@@-Gorby- Funny how that doesn't apply to income taxes.
@@-Gorby- One more for you once you pass the income based fines then you start handing out exemptions for all expensive cars I can not afford, only the rich, same as our federal tax code lets off the unemployed and the high income people with exemptions. None of these exemptions ever could apply to my middle income life.
Let’s just make it a bajillion and that’s that.
Use a real number - a google.
@@Relkondnot higher enough.
Googolplex!
@@Relkond The irony of your post... The number is googol, not google.
@@-Devy- next time I'll google it. :P
My former wife's brother was stopped alone at a traffic light on a 40mph arterial. He never revved his engine, never spun his tires, and never exceeded 33mph when he got pulled over and tagged for "exhibition of speed". Whaaaat?
Everyone should have a GPS logging dashcam, show date, time, speed, and can be aligned to a map for real time trip movements.
Well, that is the story he told you, not what actually happened. People come up with all sorts of excuses to avoid responsibility.
Well a guy at work was driving a 1ton GMC pulling a 32’ flat bed trailer loaded with pipe and got pulled over for exhibition of speed. He argued with the cop about how ridiculous the allegation was and the cop eventually let him go with no ticket just a warning.
@@Tugela60Oh come on now, we have plenty examples of cops lying as easily as they breathe, especially over small stuff. These are people that are so dishonest that we had to strap cameras to the entire damn profession.
@@Heof1letter Do you actually know any cops? Those I know are long suffering, they have to babysit people breaking the law or causing problems every day. They get to see the worst side of human nature on a daily basis.
Sure, some cops lie, they are human so there will be some, most do not, for them it is just another day on the job. They are not going to go out of their way to create issues for people minding their own business. They are just not interested in that, it would be a waste of their time. Far more people lie to weasel out of responsibility when they do something wrong, and this is what cops have to constantly deal with.
i wonder what would happen if the sticker shock gave him a heart attack and he died. would the county be liable.
If seeing the fine amount caused the guy to have a heart attack, would that be a wrongful death case?
I should have kept watching before commenting.
I've had a couple of tickets in almost 40 years of driving. I'm pretty sure that I've been told by the cop how much the fine was and how to pay, or contest it, every time. The fine table is either on the ticket or it's on a separate card they gave me. Granted, I've never been stopped for 40mph over, but even those fines are set, or they require a court appearance.
Are there countries...not on earth?
Civilizations, if not countries. Yes. But they probably don't look like our anthropomorphic ideas of what "aliens" look like. Of course, we may not have any contact with them for eons.
I've heard rumours anyway.. 🙃
New Sydney in the DS9 episode "Prodical Daughter"
Sign me up. It's getting crazy here.
I guess Finland is one of those "far away countries". So if Elon Musk had a speeding ticket...
The first thing that popped into my head seeing the video title was some guy in Europe got the fine where there speed is based on income.
We need a system that takes into consideration a persons income. The system we have now is purely tilted towards wealthy people and very punishing to the poor. And no, I am not a liberal, I am a conservative libertarian that thinks fines should affect all people equally. A $300 fine for a millionaire is couch money. But to a working class person it could mean not making a car payment or rent.
well said
Tiered fines aren’t very libertarian.
No
@@rapid13 The real tiered fine is a flat fine because it's impact has two tiers: rich and poor.
@@rapid13 It's not a tiered system, it's percentage of income. That's the very definition of fair, and might actually dissuade some rich people from writing a check and continuing to break the law.
1.4M is a great motivator to appear
As a previous resident of GEORGIA this does not surprise me. Georgia is f upped. My skin crawls anytime I travel through there...
Hey now, if it wasn't for Georgia professional wrestling and monster truck rallies would suffer greatly.
@@jbtoptc7327 nah.. There are plenty of gangsters everywhere.. 💯💯😄😄😄
@jbtoptc7327 Yeah, don’t worry, the vast majority of us in Georgia are glad you are no longer a citizen/resident of the State of Georgia, too. Georgia is a great state to live in.
The south is a third world country inside a first world country
@@mhouse1712especially Dawsonville! We love fast cars 😊
I would say that amount, if it were the actual fine would violate the 8th amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
There's a small city where I live that had a few signs up saying, "Drive 20 mph over & we'll read you your rights." I guess that's the crossover from a misdemeanor civil infraction to a criminal status. Haven't seen them in quite a while.
The person threatening someone else doesn't get to determine what is a threat. The person being threatened does get to decide what is a threat.
No. Objective fact determines if something is a threat.
I worked for a guy with money and a sports car. He liked to speed and paid the tickets from pocket change. Then one day he got a letter from the RMV, right to drive revoked for one year.
That's because he did it wrong; you're supposed to use your money to get a lawyer to declare "faulty equipment". You still pay a fine but there's no points on your license.
Yup.. He should have donated to the gangsters then get a license to speed.. 😂😂😂
It's not a right though, it's a privilege according to the US Government anyway.
Maybe he should follow the rules of the road...obviously speeding isn't working for him.
😮😂
Slide Rule Accuracy. It‘s easy to slip a few decimal points if you’re not careful :-)
Hey Steve, software engineer here. The reason they probably put in that ridiculously large amount is because they probably designed their database where it has to have a numeric value for the "amount" field which means they cannot use a text placeholder. There's also likely some business logic or case where if the value was 0 or negative it would result in people not having to pay so they put in this value that they knew would not get paid. In other words it's a design flaw in the database who knows how many years ago and now it's a PITA to fix.
Had the same thought and left a comment saying the same thing before scrolling down and seeing you beat me to it oop.
I mean they can put the legal maximum fine for it not some rediculous number
It's such an arbitrary number though. One trillion, or some programmer value like 2^31 would be more identifiable. Maybe they have different values for different codes.
@@averthewin1689but then someone (the clerk or the person who got the ticket) might confuse it for the correct fine amount instead of a placeholder because that’s an amount they could theoretically charge (and because of old payment processing systems have fun trying to get a refund that doesn’t charge you a processing fee if you do over pay). At least with this everyone except one dumb/tired clerk immediately realized that couldn’t be the right amount.
(PS: pretty much all of the weird quirks and differences in courts are due to one of those two reasons 1) bad /old/cheap tech or 2) clerk recognition. For example the jury office for my local court uses a ‘summons number’ and the area federal court uses ‘participation numbers’ so if someone calls one court and means to call the other the clerks instantly know. A thing I learned when I got a jury summons for ‘new years day’ and needed to call to figure out how that would work if the court was closed for a federal holiday, turns out that was a ‘placeholder date’ due to old tech. Fun!)
That's what null is for.
I didn't know they did tickets based on income in some other countries. I learned something new today! Thanks!
Finland
@@chipdenman863yes
Finland doesn’t hate their own people and siphon them for profit, explains much.
It's actually a good idea. If the only penalty is a fine, then it's legal for a fee. If the fee is so small that you don't care about paying it, then the fee isn't a deterrent.
Is it a crime when a cop speeds down the streets in excess of the civil limit without lights and sirens? This happens every hour of every day.
A ticket that size should come in one of those ridiculously sized checks like publishers cleaning house.
Side note: Traffic tickets are not civil infractions in every state.
In Texas for example, traffic tickets are criminal cases, even speeding, etc.
They're trying to avoid confusion. 🤔
Yet they are confusing everyone.
Inflation does not say we're all living better. Inflation indicates the government is living better
That's not how inflation works, it doesn't help the government and Inflation is a problem but it's not as big of a problem as the companies jacking prices up. Their profit margins are doing incredibly well, so well it looks like they're a big part of our buying power vanishing.
@GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusket LMAO 🤣 Tell me you don't know anything about basic economics, without telling me you know nothing about basic economics.
Thee ONLY reason there is inflation is because the government is spending more! Companies profits are held to a percentage i.e. 1-3% for grocery stores, 9% for oil and gas, etc. If they hike prices, it's because their costs go up, be it taxes, more licensure and higher fees, more regulations, requiring more manpower hours, etc. .....companoes are going to keep getting their percentage cut for profits. Whereas it behooves government for inflation to rise because more taxes are collected on the higher prices, even at the same tax rate.
Whoever told you any different is a flat out liar. Government is the one and ONLY reason for inflation. The last 5 years has shown that, with bigger beauracracies, with more employees, with more spending, and raising inflation rates(an effect, and compounding cause).
@@BearBig70 Wow, you are so off base. Go look at the business that started the inflation movement while Trump was still in office, the lumber companies. They raised prices for no reason. Go look at their public records of profit in the quarter they raised prices, they shot up. When the government did nothing to stop this, all the other corporations jumped on board and we have inflation. Go look up the profits of the publicly traded corporations, their profits went through the roof. I don't know what communist country you are living in where there is a limit on price increases but it isn't the U.S.
No, inflation indicates that you are being paid too much.
how could they set your fine based on your income? What happened to equal justice under the law?
Then it finally would be equal treatment under the law.
A $1000 dollar fine to a billionaire is nothing. A $1000 fine to the average citizen means they might not be able to eat for 2 months. That's not equal justice because it affects a lower income person more than a higher income person. Now tie the fine to income and the penalty has the same effect on both parties.
I think what we are forgetting with a lot of our fines and punishments is they are progressive. First offense X, with points or possible license suspension etc. You get 4 speeding tickets in short order in most places you might face suspension, no mater what the fines are….
With all this in mind we might want to try to make it easier for the poor to plead poverty. I have noticed it is really hard to convince courts you don’t have anything.
That’s the OPPOSITE of EQUAL!!!!!
In AZ, 20 over gets you an automatic court date!
I seem to remember those long-ago days where we were required to study the Constitution and all accompanying documents. Wasn't there a section that capped civil fines.? Can anyone verify that.? It seems contrary to be able to fine excessively in a civil matter, yet have no legal representation made available to challenge such. Does this cap really exist in the Constitution..??
Must been flying the USS Enterprise 😂😂😂😂
Sometimes I spend a good amount of time listening to you but scanning the shelves behind you with all of the interesting, cool stuff on it...I realize it's probably not really worth it for you, but sometime it would be great to go through some of those things and explain their significance... (Like, how many swords does a lawyer need? lol) Thanks for the upload!
Lets face it, if they tied the speeding tickets to income in the US, a lot of municipalities would be making LESS money. That is why I doubt it will ever make it over here.
90 in a 55 could have cost this man a lot more had there been an accident involving a fatality due to his speeding.
Steve...Didn't you do a very similar story (placeholder on a ticket) about a year ago?
Rather than a ticket shouldn't they just send him a court summons instead?
Been in our accounting department for a while. The "to be determined" or "not done!" Number we use is 999,999
Why? Cause that's the highest our system will let us. Idea is If someone pushes the bill SOMEONE wil will notice the ridiculous summ.
If $1000 is the maximum fine by law, why don't they use $1000 as a placeholder instead of $1.4 Million? Oh yeah, it's the gov't. 🙄🙄
Because that would be logical.
Because then you would not be able to tell that was a placeholder, it would be the real fine. It has to be a number that is clearly not valid to anyone who looks at it.
Because then someone will send in a check for $1000 and not turn up to court.
I suspect that while the maximum *fine* may be $1000, the judge may also be able to revoke licenses, jail, or give you points/demerits.
Sounds like a software issue, though: it has to be a number. They need to add an extra type of form letter that just says you must turn up to court.
Sweden. Don't drive fast if you are rich.
Kinda instantly thought of the guy from Finland who was fined more than $135000 for speeding, because it was based on income. I think it was revealed to be 3 days income. A normal $1000 fine would have been a drop in the bucket for him.
Programmer here, It's a magic binary number (there's a lot more significant digits, not just 1.4 million). The software almost certainly can't put text there, only a number; the placeholder number is therefore the maximum the software can hold. Their software vendor hopefully is under pressure to update it.
Court fees and ticket costs are a violation of the 8th amendment
Being a programmer and knowing how software works I would assume their software can't accept inputs that aren't numbers so TBD or an empty or all 0s number or the like wouldn't be an option, it would have a requirement of a number that was above 0 and instead of placeholder being $1 and people maybe paying and falling through the cracks if they got sent that they set it to $1400000 so no one in their right mind would pay it if they received it.
You were doing the better call Saul 1/2 off any non-violent felony 😅
Didn't you cover this last year?
Always wild that people just line up on Woodward Ave to watch people drive by. Have witnessed this even when the dream cruise wasn't happening.
Since the ticket issuer and the court were in violation of state law limiting the ticket to $1000, I would seek counsel regarding filing a lawsuit for violating the law, requesting $1.4 million times three in punitive damages.
*pays in pennies 😅
those pennies would weigh about 3,500,000 KG or about 437,500 washing machines, and you would need at least 153 20ft Shipping containers to move them (more likely 154 if you assume they are rolled and boxed)
He should fight this on the unconstitutional nature of the fine. Get the case thrown out due to the unconstitutionality of it.
Income contingent fines sound ideal! A 100$ speeding ticket for me is a whole day's work. BUT it's the equivalent of pocket change to the wealthy who consider it a "go fast tax."
Actually I believe income based fines are appropriate. When you have millions in the bank, what do you care if you speed and put everyone around you at risk,,, oh no... a couple hundred dollar fine... Oh noo.....
Let the rich enjoy losing an actual percentage of their income for speeding,,,, Just like the rest of us.
"Your Honor, the amount of the fine printed on this ticket is greater than the maximum allowed amount of $1000. We argue that this ticket is therefore invalid, and move to dismiss". Or something that sounds like that in real lawyer language.
This illustrates why laws have to made by lawyers, and why they need to be specific. If you are allowed to add ANYTHING to the fine, than there is effectively no limit.
The amount of 1.4 million was the correct amount. It turns out that the man was actually traveling at the speed of light according to the radar gun.
In that case the fine should be infinite dollars.
Why not. Fines are already arbitrary and different all over the place.
It wasn't that you were "encouraging" crime. It's that you reduced so many "tickets" and more so the fact that you reduced so many fines it was most likely no longer profitable for them to use the same bs ticketing during events ruse
Software engineer here - good chance they can't actually put TBD or other non-numeric data in the field because the system likely wants a properly formatted quantity. Often large numbers (usually a max or min of whatever data-type could be reserved as special) is used in an integer or floating-point field if "NULL" is not acceptable in their software or database. The 1.4M is a bit odd though, it doesn't align to any number that I can think of for a data-type limit and human-readable max/min I'd expect something like "999,999,999.99" or "-1" or something that can be more easily identified.
Really fun thing people have got in unintentional trouble with is custom license plate "NULL"
I thought maybe Zimbabwe where 100 Trillion Dollars would be less than $1 USD
Oh wow. That is ridiculous. The whole idea of a fine that large is ridiculous
Violates the 8th Amendment. Proportionality is required by the Constitution.
My first thought was along the same lines as Steve's--that it must have been an income-based fine somewhere in Europe. A fine of a few hundred dollars isn't much of a deterrent to a multimillionaire.
Large fines are an 8A violation, while income based fines are a 14A violation of equal protections. Can't treat one person differently than another because one earns more or less.
It's actually coercion, pretty slimy process for a failing legal system. We the people fought a revolution for a lot less crappy behavior.
i thought it might have been a story from Finland first, i know Finland have that system where above a specific income the tickets goes on the drivers income. think one people that got hit by one was the ceo or something like that of Nokia and got one realy expensive speeding ticket. the story im thinking about is maybe 10-20 years old now.
Is this a re-upload? I could have sworn you talked about this exact thing just a little while back.
Isn't this an old video? This story was already covered. 11/17/2023
Imagine living in an area where you have to pay the ticket before you are allowed to legally dispute it.
The stupidity of gov (and the people that do this stupidity) is never ending and mind boggling. It also amazes and pisses me off all the things our taxes pay for but we have to pay a second time when we use it FU.
Its likely the placeholder was meant to be $1400. That would make a lot more sense.
Isn't it a $700 fine in Georgia for that?
$500 + $200 Super Speeder fine added on?
The part of the story that's missing is how long has their system had this limitation, and how long have they managed 35 over situations like this.
state mandated costs - like pay for a dozen new police cruisers on top of the 1000 bucks
Isn't this sort of thing a violation of the excessive fine clause of the 8th Amendment?
Tickets/fines tied to income/wealth is a great idea. Why should a wealthy person basically be able to ignore most of the traffic/parking laws, because the fines are so small they are not even noticeable to them. Why should someone making minimum wage face fines more than their monthly income for a minor mistake, or several years income for something like this? Fines should hurt, but should not destroy lives. Why should they ruin one person and not even be noticed by another? I get that the law is designed so the wealthy are very difficult to punish, but why is that a good thing? If Musk or Musks driver does something like this under his instructions, a 10 billion dollar (or more) fine seems appropriate. If the guy serving your lunch does the same thing, a few thousand seems appropriate. Both hurt, both will serve as a good reason not to do it again.
Fines are BS period. You want to curb speeding? Require the offender to do community service. Nobody wants to give up their time, and the time is more or less valuable, depending on your income level.
This will never happen, because the state wants money, they actually don't give a crap about safety or anything else. It's all about the benjamins.
Pretty sure you had covered this once before... quite possible it has occurred more than once or a different state.
Didn't you do this one last year? Unless this is another one, this happened almost a year ago?
Did you do an story exactly like this before?
He did one where a rich guy in northern Europe was speeding and got a similar fine. But he had to pay it because there they fine you according to your income.
@@darrinrebagliati5365 Ohhh now I remember. Thanks.
You are correct, search this channel name with man's speeding ticket said his fine was 1.4M! Same story 11 months later!
He should have made a payment of $1,001 and sued the city for breaking the law.
If you have the money to float, pay the fine, then turn around and sue the city for an exporbinant fine under state law, get the money back with interest and attorney fees.
Looks like Ben is taking a nap under the tire of the second car from the left.
Honestly, income-based fines are something else that foreign governments do right, and we do wrong. At some point, you get to be so rich in this country that fines and penalties are just the cost of doing business, or pay-to-play. Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk could speed and get tickets every day of their lives, and simply pay all the tickets without any noticeable impact to their lives. (The eventual confiscation of the license would be the first thing that actually struck them as a real penalty). Meanwhile, some single mother in Detroit getting a $15 parking ticket is enough to bankrupt her, completely.
Like the fines big pharma pays for lying 🤥
A portion of their profits, they view it as the cost of doing business 😔
Saul Goodman: 50% off!
It’s all good, man
My comment has no value to the reader.
Ben Hundo's under the brown Chrysler Turbine coupe
The prosecutors office recognized Steve's notoriety
I have to ask what would have happened if he had simply paid it.
I'm thinking 1.4 million is appropriate for 35 over and reckless driving. Too many people drive like maniacs.
Yes!
“Death by firing squad”? 😂
Thank God I live in TN where the Constitution says that no fine may exceed $50 without a jury trial and that no fine may be disproportional to the infraction.
Huh so if I had gone to court instead of paying the $135 fine I'd have had the right to a jury? That's pretty sweet. I did do the speeding though so I just paid, better then getting slapped for trying to not take responsibility with a $500 fine.
@@GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusket The case is State v. Dusina, decided by the TN Supreme Court about a speeding ticket in fact. Applies to any fine, however. But remember your time is worth something and so is the hassle of going to court, so 135 isn't all that bad. I advise people that when they get a ticket for a fine in excess of $50, call the DA's office and tell the Assistant with the case you want your jury trial but you'd be willing to pay $50 and waive it. Works a lot.
Disproportion to the infraction would be up to the ability to pay. A billionaire wouldn't care about $50 so there is no deterrent. If we had a country where pay was proportionate then fines could be, as well. But there are many people, obviously not you, who could easily afford a one million dollar speeding ticket and wouldn't miss it. Disproportion that!
@@DarkPescoi bet you VOTED for your masters a lot.. 😄😄😄
@@DarkPesco No, that's not the standard. Learn some law, don't just go around making assumptions. Disproportionate means relative to the nature of the infraction, not the offender.