A Swiss motorist was fined over $100,000 for driving too close to the car in front of him on the motorway. That’s about double the worth of the car he was driving.

Switzerland is notorious for its strict driving laws and staggering fines. The European country is one of the few where fines are calculated according to the taxable income of the offender, to ensure that they are felt by the poor and rich alike. For example, a fixed $300 fine may bother someone earning minimum wage, but for a millionaire, it’s like a drop in the ocean. In Switzerland, the wealthier you are, the more you pay, even for minor offenses, which leads to unlikely scenarios where people are fined huge sums of money, sometimes more than what their cars are worth. Case in point, a Swiss lawyer who was fined over $110,000 for driving too close to the car in front of him on a motorway.

Photo: Robert Calvert/Unsplash

In 2023, a 58-year-old lawyer from Aargau, a Swiss canton bordering Germany, was caught by police tailgating on a motorway connecting the cities of Zurich and Lausanne. A Court ordered the reckless driver to pay a conditional fine of 50 daily rates, with the daily rate calculated at $2,328, based on his annual taxable income of 1.6 million Swiss francs ($1.8 million). That amounted to a staggering fine of $109,500 which the lawyer has been contesting ever since.

According to evidence presented in court, the Swiss lawyer drove too close to the car in front of him, maintaining a distance of just 26-40 feet, at speeds of up to 74 miles per hour, for a distance of at least a mile and a half. The lawyer had been trying to explain that Swiss law doesn’t have clear rules on what distance constitutes tailgating, therefore his fine is not valid, but last month the Swiss Supreme Court upheld the original decision and the $109,500 fine. Interestingly, that is twice the value of the BMW 540d sedan he was driving at the time of his offense.

Photo: Erik Mclean/Unsplash

Photos provided by police show the lawyer’s car “stuck” to the car in front of it, which the court considered enough evidence to uphold the fine. To add insult to injury, the plaintiff must now also pay 13,000 francs ($14,500) in court fees.

Luckily for our poor millionaire, his exceptional case has a silver lining – his fine is suspended for two years, which means he will only have to fork the $109,500 to the Swiss national budget if he commits another offense over the next two years.