[jen20]

Except, it does. People worried about getting a fine will not chance a light on yellow. This is patently obvious for anyone that has ever driven in London (where I learned to drive).

Anyone that doesn't care about the fine (perhaps in a stolen car) may still do it, but they'd do it regardless.

[skippyboxedhero]

Ah yes, the risk of small fines that is why people won't do dangerous things. Have we tried a £50 fine for murder?

Economist brain.

The problem is very simple: driving tests aren't hard enough, too many people have driving licences, and we don't retest people. In addition, enforcement of people driving without a licence is completely pathetic (as anyone who has driven in the UK can attest to, the stuff I have seen over the past few years is insane...obviously there is an underlying cause but if you see a clapped out hatchback, Just Eats bag in the front seat, P plates on the car, you know to steer well clear...as if the multiple dents on the car already didn't give it away).

[jen20]

Automatic enforcement of dumb low level stuff is supposed to free up police time for the more serious things. Whether that happens or not is a political decision. I remember the time before red light cameras in London, and the time afterwards, and the situation was much improved after they showed up.

I agree the driving test is too easy (though several orders of magnitude more difficult than in the US states I've had to do one in), and there is too little enforcement of otherwise dangerous behaviour.

[skippyboxedhero]

I don't think I mentioned anything wrong with automatic enforcement. I think the claim was that when confronted with a financial incentive, people who drive recklessly will stop driving recklessly. Would this be the case if we paid people £50/month to drive better?

It makes no sense at all. The problem in policy is generally that you have people talking past each other: speed limits are effective for people who are generally going to comply with them anyway, they are not intended to stop serious accidents. The majority of accidents are not caused by "accidents" (as most people on here would think them), they are caused by people who drive recklessly a huge proportion of the time and eventually have an accident.

Again, the solution to this is simple: do not give these people driving licences. In the UK, you can kill someone with your car driving recklessly and be out of jail in 18 months. And I don't think people realise this is true, or that this won't have been the first "near miss" for these people...it will have been months and years of doing stuff that will kill someone, and eventually killing them. How are they supposed to kill people with cars if they can't own a car?

[mercanlIl]

Some of these infractions also carry the risk of losing your license. So it is more than just the fine.