In 'your favs disappointing you' news...

[aquaecolore.livejournal.com]

Marco Reus fined 540,000 euros for driving without a license for 3 years





source : bild article sadly behind paywall but posted in a tumblr post


e: apparently he also received five speeding tickets during that time, but no-one ever noticed he didn't have a license o_O

e2: someone from reddit translated a quote from the man himself:

He took driving lessons when he was 18 but never took a driving test. He just decided to drive without a licence. "Sadly I decided to take this route. I can't even comprehend the reasons myself. Now I know: I was too naive and it was stupid. I have learnt my lesson. It will never happen again."

e3: can't believe it took me so long to remember his nickname is Rolls Reus.



yeah. i am disappoint :/

Comments

[eva]

We have points too. Higher speeding tickets amass such points, just like other offenses, and if you have enough (like Jogi Löw did), the license is gone. But that is not related to insurance. Only accidents etc. that mean you have to get money from the insurance will raise the rate. If you have an accident and choose to settle it yourself, the insurance will not be changed as well.

For prison time, you will generally need to kill someone too. The law will give the range of punishment for a certain offense as, say, "a fine up to 90 daily rates", and it will be used according to the circumstances, but in Germany being imprisoned takes some doing. They've been closing prisons for years, as incarceration rates are sinking. Technically, he could have been imprisoned, but that wasn't going to happen, as he doesn't seem to have caused any harm to anyone and no one would really benefit from locking him up.

Well, there are occasionally cases where they catch someone who has been without a license for years, but they tend to make the news, so I doubt it's that many people. And I think if you come up against someone without insurance, your own insurance takes over and tries to get the money back somehow.

[ms-geekette.livejournal.com]

Here the insurance companies take speeding as an indicator that you're eventually going to get into an accident and that you are an unsafe driver. That you are a risk (for an insurance payout). So raising rates before something more serious happens is used as a deterrent to speed...or to at least speed and get caught. And, well, insurances companies here like to raise rates if they can get away with it, so speeding tickets are something they like to keep a close eye on.

But driver's licenses don't nearly cost as much to get here, so it's not limited to fairly well-off people. I still can't believe that Marco was able to do all these car-related things without ever getting a license at all, though. Wouldn't happen here at all!

[eva]

I guess handling insurance and speeding like that makes sense, but I suspect that privacy laws, for a start, would prevent insurers here from getting a hold of this kind of information about legal proceedings.

[ms-geekette.livejournal.com]

I think driving offenses are pretty much it as far as what insurers have access to as far as legal proceedings go. I'm not sure about financial ones (like filing for bankruptcy), but that's sort of irrelevant - except for the ability to pay your bill.