Instead of fines being counted towards total revenue of a government…
Why not just mandate that all the revenue be split equally to everyone. Since in theory, if you get a fine, you are reimbursing the damage to the people not government.
This would reduce the incentive to change fine policy to mask any need to increase taxes to cover any shortfall. (e.g. changing the yellow light timing for increase red light fines).
Plus bumping up fines based on a flat fee is essentially a regressive ‘hidden tax’ compared to the more visible and fairer “standard tax”. Not enough to say “don’t get fined”, if there are incentives to keep bumping up fines, and making it harder to avoid accidentally hitting one.
A fine is meant to be an disincentive, not a politically easy revenue source.
edit: thx Loris
Source: http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/All_20fines_20revenue_20given_20to_20everyone#1441740634
There’s a well-known Swedish example of this where speeding fines collected from a traffic camera were put into the prize pot for a lottery which all non-speeding drivers who had gone past the same camera were entered into.
— hippo, Sep 08 2015