Home to the Alps, Swiss chees, and luxury timepieces, Switzerland is also infamous for its strict road laws and stricter enforcement. It stands to reason that a lawyer would be the last person to break the law but that’s exactly what’s happened here. A rather unlucky lawyer was fined over $115,000 for tailgating another motorist on the A1 motorway to Zurich. Adding insult to injury, he was driving a $60,000 BMW 540d sedan. Swiss laws take into account the wealth of the lawbreaker when doling out fines, which means this particular lawyer has done well for himself.
The 58-year-old man committed the alleged offense in 2023, received the unbelievable fine, and has been fighting it since. It’s alleged that he was driving behind another car for about a mile and a half, maintaining between 26-40 feet between the vehicles at speeds up to 74mph. For context, certain states in the US specify the minimum safe following distance a driver should follow: 20 feet for every 10mph that the vehicle is traveling unless actively passing a vehicle. In this case, if the driver was at 70mph, he should’ve had a 140-foot distance to the next car. In Switzerland, it appears that there are no clear rules on what distance constitutes tailgating, but it is necessary for a law enforcement officer to have witnessed the act and stopped the driver to issue a ticket.
Despite the debatable ticketing method, the lawyer was ordered by a court to pay a conditional fine of 50 daily rates, with the fine for each day amounting to $2,328. The number of daily rates an offender is asked to pay is dependent on the severity of the offense. But the clincher is that the value of the daily rate fine depends on the wealth of the offender — the court can decide a fine between $35 to $3,500 per day! In this case, the court pegged the lawyer’s net worth at about $2 million, which is what earned him close to the maximum fine limit. The man would also have to pay a concurrent fine of $18,000, which serves as an expensive rap-on-the-knuckles if the actual fine is only partially paid. Talk about lady luck taking a day off.
Consider this: driving 5-10mph over the limit is the “normal” leeway one can expect in the US, but you’ll get a ticket if the police clock you even 2mph over in Switzerland. That should be reason enough to pay firm attention when driving there, or it can turn into a very expensive view of the Alps.
Note – While fines for tailgating differ state-wise, Texas imposes the highest penalty at $500. Repeat offenses result in even harsher penalties.
