At long last, Roadguy is back from his California vacation (much gratitude to Chris and Kitty for keeping the blogfires burning).

Before Roadguy left town, he received a forwarded e-mail warning him about “New California Driving Fines for 2007,” including an eye-popping $1,068 penalty for a first-time carpool lane violation. Something of a skeptic, Roadguy did a little Googling and turned up this story in the San Francisco Chronicle — turns out the fine is $381, substantially less than a thousand bucks but still quite a bit heftier than Minnesota’s standard moving-violation fine of $142.

Then, while in Berkeley on Monday, Roadguy spotted this sign:

Another chunk o’ change.

Fines are also on the mind of the New York Times, which on Sunday ran this story mentioning the nation’s first $1,050 speeding ticket. (The article talks about the use of non-tax revenues such as fines to fill budget gaps.)

So today’s question is: If you could set the fines, what would they be? Would bigger fines would lead to better driving behavior, or is the probability of getting caught a bigger factor? Roadguy has missed hearing your opinions, so add ‘em below.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 at 6:05 am and is filed under Transportation conversations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.