In Australia we have a 3km/hr threshold on speeding fines.
In a 100km/hr area, doing 104km will net you a 160$ fine.
Conversion for the Americans, doing 64.62m/hr in a 62m/hr zone will cost you 132$ US
That's only 4% faster than the posted limit.
We also have a demerit point system, you can lose 1/3/6 or all 12 points depending how much more than the limit you were doing.
On public holidays, Christmas and certain 'seasons' of the year where they want to make for 'nice holidays' - the demerit points and the fines are doubled.
Penalties listed here
http://www.arrivealive.vic.gov... [vic.gov.au]
I don't have a major issue with speeding fines in general, I have a major issue with 'permanent' speeding cameras which send you a letter for speeding, a week after you were speeding. If it's such a genuine offense, dangerous to others and yourself -then surely an officer should pull you over and explain the situation, perhaps your speedo is out? Perhaps you're in a bad mood and a warning (and fine?) will bring you back to reality.
A letter in the mail does no such thing, it's a pure tax days after the offense occurred.
In fact, our threshold of getting a fine was around 10km/hr around 8 to 10 years ago but when people got so sick of paying fines thanks to permanent cameras, they stopped speeding so much. So they reduced the threshold to this low 3km/hr due to the government 'losing revenue'
An interesting story is a tunnel which was built around a decade ago which went underneath a river, the tunnel has multiple speed cameras in it which no one knew about, this new tunnel was extremely convenient and was heavily used in it's opening month. Thousands upon thousands of people used it daily not knowing about the cameras inside the tunnel.
The speeding fine system was so overloaded from all the tickets to be sent to people that the delay was up to 30 days before receiving the fine (and demerit points) in the mail.
There are many stories of people opening their mail a month after the tunnel opened to get a letter with a fine.
Then the next day, the opened their mail to get a letter with a fine.
Then the next day (you see where this is going) people lost their licenses and had thousands of dollars in fines, clearly their incredibly dangerous behaviour which should be stopped immediately was ok to be allowed to continue for a month...
We also have a default speed limit for suburban areas, which was 60km/hr if no speed was posted, this too was dropped to 50km/hr in the state, making drivers trip duration longer, yet the vast majority of fatalities are not at this speed. I personally recall when this was introduced, (near the same time as the 3km/hr threshold) that I found myself looking at my speedometer almost religiously, so worried about getting a fine it was becoming a distraction to driving.
I've also been told of a perm speed camera installation in New South Wales (NSW) in an area where NO ACCIDENTS HAVE OCCURRED - a camera was put at the bottom of a large 'dip' on a large highway (no oncoming traffic) Many trucks and vehicles opted to 'speed up' for inertia to get up the other side of this large hilly area, it's significantly easier on the motor, fuel economy etc. Yet a camera was installed here to catch people speeding up.
Finally you can also see statistics on how significantly better the road toll is here.
http://www.infrastructure.gov.... [infrastructure.gov.au]
We've got more people on the road than ever, yet an incredibly low road toll, none the less for the sake of "safety" fines consistently are going up.
Consider yourselves lucky over there just how few speeding fines are actually issued and also how relatively easy it is to get out of them, over here it's near on impossible to get out of one.
copy and paste from a 2011 post of mine,..... but speed cameras are fucking theft, PULL THEM OVER AND TELL THEM if they are such a danger to others, otherwise it IS revenue raising as they clearly don't care about safety of the moment.