Government municipalities have a strong interest in meeting their budget requirements, of which, one of the ways that budgets are met are through the traffic citations that drivers get each and every day for various infractions, of which some of those infractions so ticketed are fundamentally unjustified; and virtually all of those ticketed driving infractions, consist of a monetary penalty which is not only considerably higher, than it was only a decade ago, but in light of what the infraction entails, such as going over the speed limit, or “running” a stop sign, does not reflect a fair cost of how much that ticket should be, in consideration of the true danger or exigencies of such an infraction.
One of the main issues with traffic tickets is that besides the fact that the fine is not transparent to begin with, is that the fine itself, typically just represents a “base” of what the total fine is going to be. In other words, once ticketed, the driver may be subject to a penalty assessment, a state criminal surcharge, a court assessment, a county fund assessment, an emergency medical fee assessment, and so on and so forth, only thus limited by the imagination of the legislative act so put into law, dictating the terms, conditions, penalties, and monetary amount that a particular traffic offense consists of.
So then, a traffic ticket can depending upon the offense and the conditions thereof, could run up to a total fine of $500 or even significantly more, and of which, if the given driver does not make their court appearance or pay their fine on time, this could lead to some rather dire consequences; of, for instance, having one’s license suspended or revoked, which is yet another fine, and in some jurisdictions, a criminal offense, mandating time in jail, of which, that jail time, and the lack of having a driver’s license, could thus mean the loss of one’s job, one’s home, and pretty much one’s everything, all stemming from “just” a traffic ticket.
So then, the question might be asked, as to why some people just don’t pay their fines and take good responsibility in showing up for court and taking care of it; of which, in consideration that millions of Americans, are barely surviving in the first place, and often do not have the ready money to pay that fine, without causing some other issue or pain in their life, this thereby represents one of the most prominent reasons; in addition, to the fact that some people aren’t all that organized and are subject to being overwhelmed or just plain intimidated.
The truth of the matter is that traffic tickets are regressive in their structure, and represents a construct in which those of color, are far more susceptible to getting ticketed in the first place, and of which, minorities typically have far less of monetary worth, income, and assets than the favored class; so then, it could easily be argued that traffic tickets are yet another way to unfairly oppress those that have so little to begin with, and thereby those traffic tickets act as a means to persecute and to suppress those that are disenfranchised, so as to keep them ever in debt, and ever without the means to extricate themselves from their often bleak existence.