Driver in Finland slapped with $129,000 speeding fine
Topics: World News, Cars, Crime
Joe Harker
Featured Image Credit: Alamy/Stephen Barnes/Emergency Services/gerard ferry
Topics: World News, Cars, Crime
A Finnish driver learned the hard way that speed limits aren't just suggestions after being slapped with an absolutely enormous fine.
Anders Wiklof was caught going 82kmph (51mph) in a 50kmph (31mph) zone when he was stopped by police and fined €121,000 (over $129,000) on Saturday, 3 June.
According to Nya Aaland, the driver said that he 'really regretted' speeding.
"I had just started slowing down, but I guess that didn’t happen fast enough. It’s how it goes.” Wiklof said.
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He said that he hoped the money would go towards funding healthcare in Finland.
As well as a fine, his drivers license will also be suspended for 10 days.
Wiklof is the richest person in the Aaland Islands, which lie between mainland Finland and Sweden, and has been caught speeding before.
He has been fined €63,680 ($68,000) and €95,000 ($102,000) for driving too fast on past occasions.
The large fine is due in part to the policy in Finland to punish drivers proportionately to their earnings, so richer motorists who are raking it in can end up being fined an eye-watering amount.
The Finnish system calculates how much spending money you'd have in a day and then halves that down to take a 'reasonable' amount.
That amount is then multiplied by how many days a court judges you should go without that money as punishment, and of course, the more severe the offence the longer the punishment and the higher the fine.
120 days is the maximum multiplier for an offence, which would have a fine as punishment and since the fine is half your daily earnings, they can basically take up to 60 total days of earnings from you if you've done something really bad.
In this way, everyone feels the financial impact of being fined but those who don't have much money will be forced to fork over far less that people who can afford it.
Incredibly, the fine of $195,796 is not the world's most expensive speeding fine and it's actually not even close to the highest amount a motorist has been slapped with.
A Swiss motorist was hit with a $290,000 fine in January 2010 after driving a Ferrari Testarossa at 85mph in a 50mph zone.
Since he was both a high earner and a repeat offender, the decision to hand him the massive fine was seen as warranted, with Switzerland also scaling up their fines based on the wealth of the driver and the excess speed they were going at.
Later that same year, a Swedish driver caught doing 290kmh (180mph) in a 120kmph zone in their Mercedes SLS AMG ended up being threatened with a fine of $1 million.