A businessman in Finland was slapped with a $129,400 fine for driving over the speed limit
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- A Finnish multimillionaire has been fined €121,000, or $129,400, for going over the speed limit.
- Anders Wiklöf, Wiklöf Holding AB chairman, was driving at 82 km/h, or 51mph, when he was ticketed.
- Speeding fines in Finland are calculated based on the offender's daily disposable income.
A businessman in Finland has been slapped with a hefty €121,000, or $129,400, fine for speeding in a country where tickets are calculated based on income, a local paper Nya Åland reported.
Anders Wiklöf, the chairman of Wiklöf Holding AB, was driving at 82km/h, or 51mph, when he entered a zone where the speed limit was 50km/h, or 31mph, per Nya Åland.
"I had just started to slow down, but I guess it didn't happen fast enough," Wiklöf told Nya Åland. "I really regret the matter."
In Finland, speeding fines are linked to the offender's salary and the speed at which they were going when they committed the offense.
The country operates on a "day fine" system that is based on the offender's daily disposable income, which is usually calculated by dividing their daily salary in half, per the World Economic Forum (WEF). The more a driver is over the speed limit, the more day fines they'll receive.
In Wiklöf's case, his driving license was also suspended for 10 days, as it was not his first traffic offense, per Nya Åland. He was previously fined €95,000 and €63,680 for speeding in 2013 and 2018 respectively.
Although Wiklöf regrets the incident, he hopes the government can put his money to good use, he told Nya Åland.
"I have heard that they are going to save €1.5 billion on healthcare in Finland, so I hope that the money can fill a gap there," Wiklöf told Nya Åland. "Ideally, I would like them earmarked for that purpose."
This is not the first time that speeding fines from Finland have made headlines for their eye-watering amounts.
In 2002, the former executive vice president of Nokia's mobile phones division Anssi Vanjoki was fined €116,000 for breaking the speed limit while riding his Harley Davidson bike, BBC reported.
The Guinness World Record for the largest speeding fine is held by a Swedish motorist who was caught driving a red Ferrari Testarossa at 137 km/h in an 80 km/h zone in 2010. He was fined £180,000, or $223,700, for his offense.