Affluent drivers should pay higher fines for breaking traffic regulations, claims Civic Platform MP Henryk Siedlaczek.

Siedlaczek wants to introduce so-called 'progressive fines' dependent on one’s salary. The MP has already filed a motion at the Parliament and he is to receive an answer from the Interior Ministry on the issue in mid-December.

The idea not to punish drivers equally but, rather, according to their salaries comes from Scandinavia. In Finland fines also depend on the amount of children in the family. Salary record necessary to assess a fine is taken from a central tax data base. Consequently, in Finland an unemployed driver who exceeds speed limit by 20 kilometres has to pay at least 115 euro. Affluent Finns can expect higher fines. In 2004, one of the richest Finns who twice exceeded speed limit had to pay 170,000 euro.

“If the Ministry accepts the project, policemen in Poland will curse the day when the MP Siedlaczek was born because it will be buried in  bureaucratic work,” thinks Jerzy Dziewulski, MP and former member of an anti-terrorist unit.

However, some policemen praise the idea. “It will be a whip for all these hustlers in BMWs who laugh in our faces when we give them a 100-euro ticket,” says a traffic warden. (mg/mmj)

Source: Polska