Road Safety Authority seeks to link fines to incomes for speeding offences

A proposal to change speeding fines so that they take into account a driver's income and also the extent to which the motorist was over the limit will shortly be presented to the Minister for Transport, Shane Ross.

The Road Safety Authority, which is pushing the initiative, has spent the last few months liaising with other jurisdictions regarding the operation of similar systems.

From the authority’s point of view the most interesting example is the ministry of transport in Finland, where speeding fines are linked to the income of the driver and the level by which the driver has broken the speed limit in a 50-50 split.

Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, France and Switzerland all have versions of a “sliding scale” fine for motoring offences.

A spokesman for the RSA said: "Once we have completed this we will then work on the feasibility and mechanics of such initiatives being applied to Ireland. "

He said the RSA would present its proposal during the upcoming mid-term review of the road safety strategy later this year.

In an interview with The Irish Times last December Moyagh Murdock, chief executive of the State agency, said that the fixed €80 fine for speeding should be changed to a graduated system where the severity of the offence was matched with a higher fine with ability to pay also taken into consideration.

“I have been looking at some of the states that have been hitting drivers in their pocket – €80 is nothing to someone who is driving a Range Rover or similar type vehicle,” Ms Murdock said.

The RSA believes one of the problems with the current fixed fine is that drivers marginally over the limit face the same penalties as someone driving well in excess of the speed limit.

The reason the authority is keen to link income to fines is that research commissioned by the RSA shows that more affluent drivers had a higher than average predisposition to violate road safety rules.

Ms Murdock said in December that “drivers of high-spec vehicles display greater evidence of a willingness to speed”.

“I think this is something that many road users can relate to. Some drivers in this [socio-economic] group jump queues and force their way through when overtaking. They need to be prepared to fork out.”

In Finland speeding fines are calculated by estimating the amount of spending money a driver has/earns for one day and dividing this in half, setting a so-called day rate.

Under this system there is effectively no ceiling on the fines, which are taken as proportion of income whether you earn €5,000 or €500,000 per annum. A multimillionaire in Finland was fined €54,000 for breaking an 80km/h limit.

The RSA is also looking at introducing graduated fines for other offences.