It's not "unfortunate" it's an example of how a clerical error that would be an inconvenience somewhere where public transport is good or if you have enough money to pay for taxis becomes nearly catastrophic if you are poor.

He made a mistake, paid his fine and that should have been that.

> He made a mistake, paid his fine and that should have been that.

Exactly. It's not like I even made a choice to drive with a suspended license. This was nearly 20 years ago now, and it happened in a tiny no-red-light town with no computer system. The ticket was for 61 in a 55 on a downhill grade. The dead-tree paperwork that confirmed that I had paid got lost, they had the wrong address on file, and I never found out my license was suspended. Cut to 2 years later and a different blink-and-you-miss it town that happens to be on a border bottleneck is running their weekly roadblock while I happen to pass through, and next thing I know it's "Step out of the car and put your hands behind your back."

Sorry, it wasn't clear to me that you were not aware of the suspended license.

I still think that you can't complain about getting the initial fine, regardless of the size of the town where you broke the law. I also don't see how this is really connected with being poor.

If you're arguing that many speed limits are set to low I'm totally with you, but that's a separate question.

I'm not even arguing that they're too low, I'm arguing that they should not be used as a fund-raiser.

The particular section of highway I'm talking about is about a half-mile long, on a downhill grade, and changes down 10mph.

The cops sit in the middle and ticket people as they're decelerating. It's a racket, plain and simple.

Shit, do you really think that people who get speeding tickets deserve jail time? You understand that the punishment should be proportional to the crime, right?

Where did you get that from?

It's a reasonable reading of your comments. Perhaps you communicated poorly? Browsing the thread, I am far from the only person who read you this way.

You should get a fine for speeding, and jailtime might be appropriate for driving without a license. The problem here is that it seems the offender had not been told about the suspension, thats very unfortunate but not a feature of the justice system. And the clerical error could have affected Bill Gates too.