3 ms·

The woman in this article is dumb. Things like: > I had to plead guilty and pay the fine to restore my license No she didn't, forcing the court to investigate

by sqeaky 10y ago

The woman in this article is dumb. Things like: > I had to plead guilty and pay the fine to restore my license No she didn't, forcing the court to investigate its own ineptitude rather than accept guilt is exactly what our system is for. Even a public defender would have stood a good chance at spotting this. Or when she was shown the other address, she should have recorded it and sent a letter or visited the other person. They could have cleared this up much earlier then the time 4 elections take.

fencepost 10y ago
You are quite correct, she could have declined and let her license remain suspended for months while it was all ironed out. Better hope she didn't get stopped and charged with driving on a suspended license, because that just starts to get too meta - "We can't go to trial on this yet your honor, because I'm waiting on the previous trial to prove that it wasn't my license that should have been suspended in the first place!" This is like standing in the crosswalk screaming at the cars that you have right-of-way. Truth, Justice, The American Way, Honor, Beauty and everything else may be on your side, but that bumper at 30MPH is still going to hurt like hell.
- somestag 10y ago
  > This is like standing in the crosswalk screaming at the cars that you have right-of-way. This is literally what people do where I live. I once saw a guy stop walking in the middle of the street and flip the bird to a driver who didn't seem to be slowing down. I almost had a heart attack when I thought I was about to see the pedestrian get plastered, but the driver swerved to the other lane and drove past him. Then the pedestrian yelled "fuck you!" after him. I haven't seen anyone get hit yet, but I feel it's bound to happen one of these days. The pedestrians around here are insane. It's amazing what they'll do just because they have the legal right of way.
  - jungletek 10y ago
    >The pedestrians around here are insane. It's amazing what they'll do just because they have the legal right of way. Sometimes standing up for your rights looks like insanity to an observer.
    - somestag 10y ago
      Sure, and sometimes insanity looks like insanity to an observer. In this case, I find it very hard to believe that the issue is rights. The drivers don't intend to hit the pedestrians—they're being reckless, not oppressing the pedestrian minority. And if the pedestrians honestly believed they'd get hit, I doubt they'd stand in the middle of the road flipping people off. Both parties are acting recklessly. I once crossed a crosswalk at a 4-way stop. A car started accelerating from their stop sign. I could have kept walking to "stand up for my rights," but I chose to stop walking just in case the car wasn't going to stop. Turns out the driver was a slightly older guy who didn't see me at all. He blew right passed me (within a foot of where I stopped), saw me out his driver's window, and slammed on the breaks. If I hadn't stopped, I'd have been hit hard. It's true he would have been the one at fault, but that's hardly some victory. He was a bad driver, not someone purposefully ignoring my right of way. Forget pedestrians; this is why driving schools teach so-called defensive driving style. Even if you're legally faultless, it's much better to avoid an accident than to put yourself in danger just because you have the "right" to do it. Do you know how many accidents you could cause every day by ignoring safety when you have right-of-way? Standing up for your rights is hardly an excuse to plow into every car that pulls out in front of you.
- sqeaky 10y ago
  I think your traffic analogy is poor. The results of failure are quite different. In one the pedestrian might die, because physic... in the other a different solution to the transportation problem needs to be found for a temporary period. Driving on a suspended license was not the only choice, rides, public transport, or even simply requesting a close court date. She might even have been able to get some kind of special waiver, until it was sorted out, by taking the time to try to sort it out. Her choice to capitulate in the beginning caused her 20 years of misery and potential affecting her ability to vote. It also made it harder to fix because now there is a "proof" she drives unsafely, who knows what this did to her insurance rates.

by sqeaky 10y ago

fencepost 10y ago

You are quite correct, she could have declined and let her license remain suspended for months while it was all ironed out. Better hope she didn't get stopped and charged with driving on a suspended license, because that just starts to get too meta - "We can't go to trial on this yet your honor, because I'm waiting on the previous trial to prove that it wasn't my license that should have been suspended in the first place!" This is like standing in the crosswalk screaming at the cars that you have right-of-way. Truth, Justice, The American Way, Honor, Beauty and everything else may be on your side, but that bumper at 30MPH is still going to hurt like hell.

somestag 10y ago
> This is like standing in the crosswalk screaming at the cars that you have right-of-way. This is literally what people do where I live. I once saw a guy stop walking in the middle of the street and flip the bird to a driver who didn't seem to be slowing down. I almost had a heart attack when I thought I was about to see the pedestrian get plastered, but the driver swerved to the other lane and drove past him. Then the pedestrian yelled "fuck you!" after him. I haven't seen anyone get hit yet, but I feel it's bound to happen one of these days. The pedestrians around here are insane. It's amazing what they'll do just because they have the legal right of way.
- jungletek 10y ago
  >The pedestrians around here are insane. It's amazing what they'll do just because they have the legal right of way. Sometimes standing up for your rights looks like insanity to an observer.
  - somestag 10y ago
    Sure, and sometimes insanity looks like insanity to an observer. In this case, I find it very hard to believe that the issue is rights. The drivers don't intend to hit the pedestrians—they're being reckless, not oppressing the pedestrian minority. And if the pedestrians honestly believed they'd get hit, I doubt they'd stand in the middle of the road flipping people off. Both parties are acting recklessly. I once crossed a crosswalk at a 4-way stop. A car started accelerating from their stop sign. I could have kept walking to "stand up for my rights," but I chose to stop walking just in case the car wasn't going to stop. Turns out the driver was a slightly older guy who didn't see me at all. He blew right passed me (within a foot of where I stopped), saw me out his driver's window, and slammed on the breaks. If I hadn't stopped, I'd have been hit hard. It's true he would have been the one at fault, but that's hardly some victory. He was a bad driver, not someone purposefully ignoring my right of way. Forget pedestrians; this is why driving schools teach so-called defensive driving style. Even if you're legally faultless, it's much better to avoid an accident than to put yourself in danger just because you have the "right" to do it. Do you know how many accidents you could cause every day by ignoring safety when you have right-of-way? Standing up for your rights is hardly an excuse to plow into every car that pulls out in front of you.
sqeaky 10y ago
I think your traffic analogy is poor. The results of failure are quite different. In one the pedestrian might die, because physic... in the other a different solution to the transportation problem needs to be found for a temporary period. Driving on a suspended license was not the only choice, rides, public transport, or even simply requesting a close court date. She might even have been able to get some kind of special waiver, until it was sorted out, by taking the time to try to sort it out. Her choice to capitulate in the beginning caused her 20 years of misery and potential affecting her ability to vote. It also made it harder to fix because now there is a "proof" she drives unsafely, who knows what this did to her insurance rates.