If you get a speeding ticket or distracted driving ticket, you should have to pay it in community service hours and no other way.
IMO This would make people take these rules a lot more seriously, even if you are rich or poor.
People who make alot of money couldnt just pay the ticket and move on with their life they would realise that them speeding can effect their time as they now have to take a day off of their busy schedule to fo something they deem stupid that they could have just easily paid.
The same thing goes for the middle/lower class, except you’re not working a whole day to pay off your ticket as well as your bills you have for that month. It would teach all wage classes you can’t just drive crazy as you want because it will take your own free time to fix your mistake.
The way we have it set now only makes people who are broke get screwed and closer to being homeless if they get a ticket compared to someone who can afford it.
I would even say there are more tickets that fall into this category, but for this argument, i will stick with the main ones.
EDIT: I keep seeing people compare this to slavery
The last time I checked, driving was a privilege, not a right, so this would never be slavery for anyone trying to make that point as an argument.
Comments
Please remember what subreddit you are in, this is unpopular opinion. We want civil and unpopular takes and discussion. Any uncivil and ToS violating comments will be removed and subject to a ban. Have a nice day!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
But then how would towns get revenue? Cops gotta meet their monthly quotas. (This is sarcasm, I actually totally agree with you. Rich people get out of their problems too easily by throwing money at it and not learning anything)
Only reason I dont agree is because it is such a logistics nightmare having everyone doing it.
Well, at least make fines higher depending on how expensive car.
I don’t remember which country it is, but there’s one that punishes you for speeding by making you wait for 20 or 30 mins. It turns out wasting people’s time when they are in a hurry is a great deterrent.
Slavery is bad, even if imposed by the state as punishment for a crime
Tickets should be income based.
You make 6 figures your tickets should reflect that.
Idk about community service necessarily but the punishments should be more harsh absolutely.
What about the people that like community service? I put in probably 5 hours per week on average between all the volunteer organizations I am part of. Like sure, there are things I would rather be doing, but helping clean up my community’s streets or other service is something that makes me feel good.
100% of all tickets should be paid in percent of assets and wealth and community service after the first ticket.
This is not even remotely feasible for some people. Some people already work several jobs to pay their bills, have children they need to take care of, etc. It’s not reasonable to ask people to do community service for picking up their phone to change a song or going 73 in a 65.
We can do community service in Albuquerque, New Mexico!
It’d be more beneficial to make the tickets a percentage of income and then make all ticketed income go to community services such as food shelves and low income housing
What’s your stance on slow equals careful and skilled?
Speeding tickets isn’t about safety these days, it an actually never was, it’s about revenue. Roads are supposed to have speed limits that correspond to the speed that 80% of traffic regularly travels on it so we should actually be raising speed limits but that destroys a town/city/state revenue stream. It’s factually less safe to keep speed limits artificially slower than they should be but again, it’s never been about safety.
I wouldn’t do it for a single speeding ticket unless it was egregious. Texting and driving is a choice, but being 5 over can happen and the ticket can have the desired effect on a lot of people’s willingness to pay more attention in the future. If they don’t get the message and keep speeding, then escalate it to community service, but for one it’s painting with too broad a brush.
I get why people want sentences ramped up, but the reality is that most people commit crimes because they don’t think they’ll be caught.
I think this a great idea. I think it should be both xommunity service and some fee of money
I like the idea of this but the problem is it would still fuck poor people over a lot more. Wealthier people can send lawyers to court to fight it, or it’s easier to get PTO or a few hours off to go to quart. It’s also easier for them to get PTO to do the community service. Working class might not be able to afford to take off work and or might have a lot of scheduling conflicts with work that make it harder to get the community service done. They also don’t always have PTO and they also often get threatened with losing their job for calling off even if it’s in advance
Speed limits shouldnt exist.
How about we just base fines off of income levels. A $100 ticket is nothing for someone making $500,000 a year. $100 for someone making $50,000 could mean not paying a bill or sacrificing a much needed purchase.
I really like this idea. Specifically, make them pick up trash along the side of the road.
Could also just leave people alone for victimless crimes too. That would be easier
When talking about the wealthy, I have often heard the phrase “If it’s a fine, it ain’t a crime.” In terms of them having money to just pay fines and have no real consequences. I agree if they had mandatory community service it would make them pay attention. My only hang up is I can see how this could negatively affect the poor as well. Overall I think your opinion is a good one.
Theoretically, this could make sense. In practice, there aren’t a lot of places that want you to volunteer for just a bit. Usually, you sign up for a longer term. Beyond that, if I’m Speeder McGee and I have a buddy who can just fill out a form for me, I would. This would actively incentivize some less honest orgs to sell “completed” community service.
Plus, who at the court is going to handle the administration? You have to assume there are a lot of folks who speed. There’s going to be a huge influx of work, and that work would be just clerical stuff to deal with verifying hours.
Depends. There are speed traps all over the country in the US. Highways or interstates where it will be 60/70 and very subtlety shift to 50 for brief sections. Cops will hide on these stretches. On my way back to school one year driving for 10+ hours one day I was in one going 9/10 over without even realizing it. I doubt it is necessary to police these counties with population of <1000 daily lol.
People should also be prohibited from driving until the services are served
They should take either the states minimum or average wage and divide the ticket cost by that. That’s how many hours they should do of community service.
Let’s say the ticket is $150 and the minimum wage is 15 dollars (hypothetically). Then they would work 10 hours of community service.
just take their licenses away, then bring back the electric streetcars that ran on time
You realize that points are a thing. Even though you pay your fine, you can still rack up enough points to get the license revoked.
And that community service should include cleaning up fatal crash scenes
I’m fond of the day fine system. We’re not charging you a set dollar amount, were charging a specific percentage of your net worth.
The ticket money is community service. It goes to pay for local services the community benefits from, and pays the paychecks of the dudes who supervise drunk drivers and other non-violent criminals while they pick up trash from the side of the road, clean up homeless camps, and do landscaping on public property.
Could community service be considered a tax write off?
Bro lives in fantasy land
I’d take it further, I think we need to revoke licenses way earlier than we do now. There is no reason to let people who recklessly speed multiple times continue to drive. You should get two chances at most. After that, license gone for at least a few years. At this point I feel this is the only way to get the message across that driving is a privilege, not a right.
American here. No. Jail time. It’s time these assholes learn how to drive and that crosswalks exist. I’ve almost been hit so many times walking in the cross walk with the walk signal going im tired. 90+ days in jail should do the trick.
Kinda wish a lot of tickets were like this
I think that should be an option, but ideally fines should be income based.
Community service still overly favors the wealthy. They can afford to cut 30 hours of their schedule in a month while the person working 2 jobs to support a kid can’t. People say money can’t buy time, but we all know that isn’t the whole truth. The only way for these penalties to be more fair is to index them to income.
This is not unpopular. The people who write checks to get out of trouble write much larger checks to enact laws in their favor so they can’t get in trouble as easily. This would be like telling a whiny rich kid “no” for the first time
That actually makes sense.
That’s really kind. I think it should be punished by slashing your tires and making you walk home.