Not if you set the penalty for killing even higher. The problem here is the order of the size of the penalties, not the penalty itself.

> Not if you set the penalty for killing even higher. The problem here is the order of the size of the penalties, not the penalty itself.

Increasing the penalty for the behavior the government created an incentive to engage in is completely backwards. When the source of the trouble is that the driver is stuck between a rock and a hard place, you don't improve the situation by making the hard place harder. It provides the even more perverse incentive to not only kill the victim but also any witnesses, or do other bad things in order to avoid getting caught.

Look at the root cause. You have an unexpected liability that is so large it makes the person desperate.

What you need then is mandatory insurance. Take the ruinous liability away and the motivation for killing the victim disappears.

You also need to get the probability of getting caught higher, in fact that's probably more important than the size of the punishment itself. Many governments cannot realistically commit to increasing the chances. Edit: Besides, isn't the penalty for murder in most places either the death penalty or life in prison, barring degrees of how much of an accident it was?