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Reporting someone for minor traffic offences if they caused an accident is the right thing to do but reporting people for the sake of reporting people is a litt

Reporting someone for minor traffic offences if they caused an accident is the right thing to do but reporting people for the sake of reporting people is a little unsympathetic. I've lost count of the number of times I've misjudged a situation because kids were screaming in the back of the car, I'm stressed about something at work and had the briefest laps in concentration; or even times when I just have a complete brainfart despite being fully focused on the drive. We also have senses that are entirely fallible -- for example it's very easy to miss-see something because your brain fills in gaps of information with "fake" information based on what you expect to see (there was a great blog post from an ex-fighter pilot on this topic). There needs to be some flexibility in society that allows for human error in instances where there is literally no personal, physical, monetary, etc damage. The kind of police state where all footage is processed for any minor traffic offences is such a dangerous road (if you pardon the pun) to take because it leaves people with no margin for genuine human error. Think of it like senior developers having a bad day and making school boy errors; or mistyping your username (something that should be muscle memory); or that guy who accidentally hits "reply to all" -- we've all made stupid mistakes. If those mistakes haven't caused harm then I don't see why need to be reported.

majormajor 7y ago
The gap between these mistakes causing harm and not causing harm is basically just luck. The less careful we are even when the mistake doesn't cause harm, the more frequently we'll make the mistake. Some feedback that made people be more careful, and pay more attention, would be good. And at a larger level: if we can't be bothered to be that careful (or simply can't at all), and want to be allowed to not be that careful, then maybe we should make more societal changes to stop depending on humans driving 3000+lb machines. All this is great data for less driving but because it's mostly invisible, it can't be used to rebut the "but I want my own car and I want to drive it myself" folks.
- laumars 7y ago
  Obviously I agree that bad drivers deserve little sympathy. But not all human errors are down to bad drivers nor a lack of care. > The less careful we are even when the mistake doesn't cause harm, the more frequently we'll make the mistake. Some feedback that made people be more careful, and pay more attention, would be good. That only works if mistake are concious. My point is mistakes can be unintended like rowdy kids causing a distraction at the wrong time. > The gap between these mistakes causing harm and not causing harm is basically just luck. I agree. But also the gap between a good driver driving well and a good driver making an honest mistake because of a badly timed distraction is also just bad luck. It's happened to me before -- I've ran a red light at temporary traffic lights after my 2nd child was born (so I was tired thus required sharper focus) and my 1st child was so excited about having a baby sister that he kept making a scene. For a fraction of a second I lost focus and that fraction of a second happened to be when I was approaching road works. I was lucky that it was a Sunday evening and driving along a quiet village road so there wasn't any other vehicles. But I still had ran a red light despite my best efforts of driving safely. > And at a larger level: if we can't be bothered to be that careful... It's not about people not making the effort to drive safely; it's about human error. If it were that easy to drive then we'd already have infallible autonomous cars but we don't because driving isn't actually all that easy. This is also why I'm fully in favour of all these new smart safety features that autonomy has introduced; they help reduce the impact of the worst instances of human error. Just to recap: I have little sympathy for bad or negligent drivers. I just want to remind people that it's easy to demonise others but sometimes actions are genuine flukes of bad luck.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    Okay, so you make an error, you get a fine for it. It's not as though I'm arguing anyone who runs a red light should go to jail. Heck, maybe our fines are too high, or should take income into account—I think all of those things would be healthy conversations. But cars are deadly vehicles, and mistakes—regardless of the circumstance—should have consequences before someone gets killed. As frequently as possible.
    - throwaway1912 7y ago
      I’d be all for that if we could sort out gun control first.
    - mikepurvis 7y ago
      Just commenting to reinforce the degree of my agreement here. Basically the attitude from law enforcement and the legal system comes down to: - Oh, no one was hurt? Just a close call? Everyone go home and try to be more careful out there next time. - Oh, you killed someone? I mean, it's a fluke— could have happened to anyone. Honestly, you've suffered enough emotional trauma already, here's a slap on the wrist to make the victim's family feel a bit better. This is not hypothetical; it happens all the time. Here's an example from my city: Cyclist struck and killed, Feb 2017: https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/cyclist-dies-after-being-hit-from-behind-by-car-1.3267698 https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/cyclist-dies-after-being-hit-fr... All charges dropped, March 2018: https://www.therecord.com/news-story/8354441-charges-dropped-in-crash-that-killed-waterloo-cyclist/ https://www.therecord.com/news-story/8354441-charges-dropped... The library charges you a fee for returning a book late— it's a small penalty and a reminder to be more attentive in the future. Fines on the road should be treated the same way, as an additional cost you pay for the privilege of using the road, in proportion to the number of "mistakes" and "brain farts" you have. And who knows, maybe that additional cost might motivate a few more people to choose transit or a cab instead of driving while fatigued, or pull over and wait for the kids to stop fighting in the back seat.
    - kortilla 7y ago
      As long as you are okay with fining cyclists for riding on sidewalks, failing to come to a complete stop at stop signs, failing to signal turn direction, failing to yield, etc as well. Same with pedestrians for jaywalking. You can’t be intolerant of vehicle mistakes and allow for others if you actually care about safety.
- rconti 7y ago
  Actually, the vast majority of traffic collisions require 2 parties to not be paying attention, but only one of whom has to actually make a mistake; I wouldn't consider the 2nd person failing to avoid the accident as a matter of luck.
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    This is part of why the "share the road" and "all have a role to play" narratives are so offensive to people who cycle and walk. The people choosing these active transportation options are already overwhelmingly the ones picking up the slack and preventing driver inattention and carelessness from becoming serious crashes. We don't get a choice in this— we do it because the alternative is being killed in the street, and then when people actually are hit, we get to hear smarmy commentary about how it wouldn't have happened if they'd just looked both ways, or been wearing brighter clothing, or chosen a different time of day to go out for a walk: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/03/12/we-need-to-change-the-way-we-talk-about-pedestrian-deaths/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/03/12/we-need-to-change-the... But it's hard to even build a case out of this that will be accepted by people who don't have that first hand experience of being the vulnerable road user. Most places in North America, small driver errors are only barely punished if at all, and there's pretty much universally zero effort to track close calls involving people walking and cycling.
    - soperj 7y ago
      I honestly don't know how you're so level headed about all of this. Thanks for being the better person.
    - laumars 7y ago
      > We don't get a choice in this— we do it because the alternative is being killed in the street Is this commonplace in the US? In the UK most streets are safe to walk down (even some country roads which don't have pavements/sidewalks). In the UK there isn't such thing as jaywalking (etc) so it is the drivers responsibility to give way to pedestrians even when those pedestrians aren't following the highway code themselves.
- kortilla 7y ago
  > The gap between these mistakes causing harm and not causing harm is basically just luck. No. There are certain things in your example like rolling stops and lane changes in intersections that are completely safe when there are no other vehicles or pedestrians near the intersection. The existence of the yield sign and its use prove the former.
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    Executing a safe lane change requires doing a shoulder check, matching speed with another lane, etc— the reason it's prohibited in and near intersections is because those are exactly where you need to be paying the most attention to crosswalks, opposing traffic, conflict points, etc. It may well be that it's fine if you're very, very confident there "are no other vehicles or pedestrians" nearby. But what is that literally every driver says who strikes a person walking? That they "came out of nowhere". It turns out enough drivers are bad at judging these things that it makes sense to just blanket ban them.
    - kortilla 7y ago
      I’m not sure you’ve ever driven in rural areas or even the outer suburbs of US cities. Things are so spread out that you can easily have visibility of the entire 100 yard radius around a given intersection from more than 1000ft away.
roywiggins 7y ago
From the point of view of the bicyclist, it can be a close shave with actually dying, even if they're physically unharmed.
- deleted 7y ago
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- laumars 7y ago
  I've been a cyclist for around 30 years and have been a victim of plenty of accidents in that time. So I don't make my comments without regard for cyclists. However my cycling experience is limited to UK roads. It might be the case that roads in the US are, in general, more dangerous for cyclists -- I'm not suggesting that is true but I'd be interested to know if that was the case.
  - brandmeyer 7y ago
    FWIW, there is a very wide variation in both the bicycle-worthiness of roads, and the bicycle-friendliness of drivers in the US. It really isn't possible to generalize any individual's experience to the whole country.
kaikai 7y ago
Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter whether it was a moment of distraction or purposeful bad driving. The reason it didn’t cause harm is just luck. I ride a bicycle and a motorcycle, and have had more close calls due to distracted drivers than I can count. I DO NOT CARE if it’s because you’re stressed out, you have screaming kids in the backseat, or it was just a “complete brain fart.” If you hit me with your giant metal vehicle, you will probably kill me. Just because you don’t kill someone every time you drift through a lane on a corner or don’t stop at a light doesn’t mean that you never will.
- laumars 7y ago
  I've been a cyclist for 30 years and have had my fair share of accidents too. So I've seen both sides of the argument. However as a motorist I have never ever hit another driver, cyclist nor pedestrian; anything in fact. In fact the vast majority of motorists haven't despite the fact that literally every driver will have made a minor traffic offence on a semi-regular basis (even if that's just forgetting to indicate when changing lane on a motorway). I also don't agree it's exclusively a matter of luck whether human error results in an accident. It's usually experience and good reactions whether you're able to recover from human error fast and safely enough to prevent an accident. Much like how cyclists have to learn to read the road and pedestrians have to learn how to safely cross busy roads, motorists should learn how to handle shitty situations. Please remember that sometimes those situations happen for reasons outside of the motorists control such as jaywalkers, animals in the road, other motorists making mistakes or even cyclists not following the rules of the road. This absolutely means motorists have a significant responsibility to drive safely but also means that it's not just a matter of luck whether someone forgetting to indicate results in fatality; that's simply not the reality of things. I agree there is a possibility but it's not even common likelihood (for the reasons I described above). I also agree (as I've also said above) that drivers do have a significantly greater responsibility to drive safely and I'm absolutely in favour of penalising people who have caused accidents....however penalising everyone for every minor mishap doesn't help improve road safety. It effectively just becomes another road tax. If you want to penalise bad drivers then go after bad drivers; but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.
- perl4ever 7y ago
iudqnolq 7y ago
If it's really a special case that sounds like something to tell the traffic judge to me.
godelski 7y ago
I don't think it's hard to see the flexibility. But I think it depends what kind of person you are. Do you think laws are social constructs or rules that must be followed? I for one am in the former camp. Laws were constructed to keep us safe as a society. I do like living in a safe society, but let's be real that laws and up being catch all's and can be abused. As an example: Jay walking across an empty street. It's great in many places and times, but others it's a hindrance and just so we frequently break it. But when I was in high school I remember at the end of the month cops would cite kids crossing a not so busy street with a fair walk to the crosswalk. Who cares? Such a thing isn't important and doesn't make us safer. We don't even correct our behavior when caught doing those things because we don't even recognize them as wrong. So yeah, I agree. We need to be flexible as a society. No one likes sticklers or narcs.
soperj 7y ago
>reporting people for the sake of reporting people is a little unsympathetic. He's reporting people that almost hit him. They're driving a 2 ton piece of metal. You can instantly change someones life with their recklessness. They absolutely deserve a ticket at the very least. There's a girl down the street from me that got plowed by a car in a crosswalk as she was going to school. She's 11. She's basically a vegetable at this point. I honestly don't know why her parents didn't take her off life support when they had the chance. She got hit by a 20 year old who was texting and driving. She sent ten texts in the minutes before hitting the girl. If she'd been reported by someone earlier for texting and driving and had her license suspended, she wouldn't have destroyed a family that day.
concordDance 7y ago
> I've lost count of the number of times I've misjudged a situation because kids were screaming in the back of the car, If you can't concentrate due to screaming kids at the back of a car then you need to pull over until they stop. You have no right to endanger other people's lives just to get somewhere a bit faster.
- laumars 7y ago
  As a hard rule no sane parent would drive if I don't feel safe to (and that includes their ability to concentrate) because they'd be risking their children's lives too. So we're not talking about people who are "endangering other people's lives just to get somewhere a bit faster". The point about kids is just an illustration of a distraction you might not be able to control and which might be timed badly. It could also be a dog in the car which barks at the wrong moment or countless other things. It's also a little optimistic to assume that it's as easy as "pulling over until they stop" in the cases where kids are generally being loud. There are as many examples of why that might not be practical as there are occasions when it's good advice. From experience I can tell you that no parent wants to drive while kids are screaming in the back and will readily pull over if that's likely to help. Sometimes though, it's not safe to do so or pulling over wouldn't make any difference to their behaviour (eg when they're hungry and there is no food in the car). But no decent person would ever want to put their family nor other pedestrians at risk so I can assure you it's really not the case of drivers endangering other people's lives out of a selfish desire just to get somewhere a bit faster.

majormajor 7y ago

The gap between these mistakes causing harm and not causing harm is basically just luck. The less careful we are even when the mistake doesn't cause harm, the more frequently we'll make the mistake. Some feedback that made people be more careful, and pay more attention, would be good. And at a larger level: if we can't be bothered to be that careful (or simply can't at all), and want to be allowed to not be that careful, then maybe we should make more societal changes to stop depending on humans driving 3000+lb machines. All this is great data for less driving but because it's mostly invisible, it can't be used to rebut the "but I want my own car and I want to drive it myself" folks.

laumars 7y ago
Obviously I agree that bad drivers deserve little sympathy. But not all human errors are down to bad drivers nor a lack of care. > The less careful we are even when the mistake doesn't cause harm, the more frequently we'll make the mistake. Some feedback that made people be more careful, and pay more attention, would be good. That only works if mistake are concious. My point is mistakes can be unintended like rowdy kids causing a distraction at the wrong time. > The gap between these mistakes causing harm and not causing harm is basically just luck. I agree. But also the gap between a good driver driving well and a good driver making an honest mistake because of a badly timed distraction is also just bad luck. It's happened to me before -- I've ran a red light at temporary traffic lights after my 2nd child was born (so I was tired thus required sharper focus) and my 1st child was so excited about having a baby sister that he kept making a scene. For a fraction of a second I lost focus and that fraction of a second happened to be when I was approaching road works. I was lucky that it was a Sunday evening and driving along a quiet village road so there wasn't any other vehicles. But I still had ran a red light despite my best efforts of driving safely. > And at a larger level: if we can't be bothered to be that careful... It's not about people not making the effort to drive safely; it's about human error. If it were that easy to drive then we'd already have infallible autonomous cars but we don't because driving isn't actually all that easy. This is also why I'm fully in favour of all these new smart safety features that autonomy has introduced; they help reduce the impact of the worst instances of human error. Just to recap: I have little sympathy for bad or negligent drivers. I just want to remind people that it's easy to demonise others but sometimes actions are genuine flukes of bad luck.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Okay, so you make an error, you get a fine for it. It's not as though I'm arguing anyone who runs a red light should go to jail. Heck, maybe our fines are too high, or should take income into account—I think all of those things would be healthy conversations. But cars are deadly vehicles, and mistakes—regardless of the circumstance—should have consequences before someone gets killed. As frequently as possible.
  - throwaway1912 7y ago
    I’d be all for that if we could sort out gun control first.
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    Just commenting to reinforce the degree of my agreement here. Basically the attitude from law enforcement and the legal system comes down to: - Oh, no one was hurt? Just a close call? Everyone go home and try to be more careful out there next time. - Oh, you killed someone? I mean, it's a fluke— could have happened to anyone. Honestly, you've suffered enough emotional trauma already, here's a slap on the wrist to make the victim's family feel a bit better. This is not hypothetical; it happens all the time. Here's an example from my city: Cyclist struck and killed, Feb 2017: https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/cyclist-dies-after-being-hit-from-behind-by-car-1.3267698 https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/cyclist-dies-after-being-hit-fr... All charges dropped, March 2018: https://www.therecord.com/news-story/8354441-charges-dropped-in-crash-that-killed-waterloo-cyclist/ https://www.therecord.com/news-story/8354441-charges-dropped... The library charges you a fee for returning a book late— it's a small penalty and a reminder to be more attentive in the future. Fines on the road should be treated the same way, as an additional cost you pay for the privilege of using the road, in proportion to the number of "mistakes" and "brain farts" you have. And who knows, maybe that additional cost might motivate a few more people to choose transit or a cab instead of driving while fatigued, or pull over and wait for the kids to stop fighting in the back seat.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    As long as you are okay with fining cyclists for riding on sidewalks, failing to come to a complete stop at stop signs, failing to signal turn direction, failing to yield, etc as well. Same with pedestrians for jaywalking. You can’t be intolerant of vehicle mistakes and allow for others if you actually care about safety.
rconti 7y ago
Actually, the vast majority of traffic collisions require 2 parties to not be paying attention, but only one of whom has to actually make a mistake; I wouldn't consider the 2nd person failing to avoid the accident as a matter of luck.
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  This is part of why the "share the road" and "all have a role to play" narratives are so offensive to people who cycle and walk. The people choosing these active transportation options are already overwhelmingly the ones picking up the slack and preventing driver inattention and carelessness from becoming serious crashes. We don't get a choice in this— we do it because the alternative is being killed in the street, and then when people actually are hit, we get to hear smarmy commentary about how it wouldn't have happened if they'd just looked both ways, or been wearing brighter clothing, or chosen a different time of day to go out for a walk: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/03/12/we-need-to-change-the-way-we-talk-about-pedestrian-deaths/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/03/12/we-need-to-change-the... But it's hard to even build a case out of this that will be accepted by people who don't have that first hand experience of being the vulnerable road user. Most places in North America, small driver errors are only barely punished if at all, and there's pretty much universally zero effort to track close calls involving people walking and cycling.
  - soperj 7y ago
    I honestly don't know how you're so level headed about all of this. Thanks for being the better person.
  - laumars 7y ago
    > We don't get a choice in this— we do it because the alternative is being killed in the street Is this commonplace in the US? In the UK most streets are safe to walk down (even some country roads which don't have pavements/sidewalks). In the UK there isn't such thing as jaywalking (etc) so it is the drivers responsibility to give way to pedestrians even when those pedestrians aren't following the highway code themselves.
kortilla 7y ago
> The gap between these mistakes causing harm and not causing harm is basically just luck. No. There are certain things in your example like rolling stops and lane changes in intersections that are completely safe when there are no other vehicles or pedestrians near the intersection. The existence of the yield sign and its use prove the former.
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  Executing a safe lane change requires doing a shoulder check, matching speed with another lane, etc— the reason it's prohibited in and near intersections is because those are exactly where you need to be paying the most attention to crosswalks, opposing traffic, conflict points, etc. It may well be that it's fine if you're very, very confident there "are no other vehicles or pedestrians" nearby. But what is that literally every driver says who strikes a person walking? That they "came out of nowhere". It turns out enough drivers are bad at judging these things that it makes sense to just blanket ban them.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    I’m not sure you’ve ever driven in rural areas or even the outer suburbs of US cities. Things are so spread out that you can easily have visibility of the entire 100 yard radius around a given intersection from more than 1000ft away.

roywiggins 7y ago

From the point of view of the bicyclist, it can be a close shave with actually dying, even if they're physically unharmed.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
laumars 7y ago
I've been a cyclist for around 30 years and have been a victim of plenty of accidents in that time. So I don't make my comments without regard for cyclists. However my cycling experience is limited to UK roads. It might be the case that roads in the US are, in general, more dangerous for cyclists -- I'm not suggesting that is true but I'd be interested to know if that was the case.
- brandmeyer 7y ago
  FWIW, there is a very wide variation in both the bicycle-worthiness of roads, and the bicycle-friendliness of drivers in the US. It really isn't possible to generalize any individual's experience to the whole country.

kaikai 7y ago

Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter whether it was a moment of distraction or purposeful bad driving. The reason it didn’t cause harm is just luck. I ride a bicycle and a motorcycle, and have had more close calls due to distracted drivers than I can count. I DO NOT CARE if it’s because you’re stressed out, you have screaming kids in the backseat, or it was just a “complete brain fart.” If you hit me with your giant metal vehicle, you will probably kill me. Just because you don’t kill someone every time you drift through a lane on a corner or don’t stop at a light doesn’t mean that you never will.

laumars 7y ago
I've been a cyclist for 30 years and have had my fair share of accidents too. So I've seen both sides of the argument. However as a motorist I have never ever hit another driver, cyclist nor pedestrian; anything in fact. In fact the vast majority of motorists haven't despite the fact that literally every driver will have made a minor traffic offence on a semi-regular basis (even if that's just forgetting to indicate when changing lane on a motorway). I also don't agree it's exclusively a matter of luck whether human error results in an accident. It's usually experience and good reactions whether you're able to recover from human error fast and safely enough to prevent an accident. Much like how cyclists have to learn to read the road and pedestrians have to learn how to safely cross busy roads, motorists should learn how to handle shitty situations. Please remember that sometimes those situations happen for reasons outside of the motorists control such as jaywalkers, animals in the road, other motorists making mistakes or even cyclists not following the rules of the road. This absolutely means motorists have a significant responsibility to drive safely but also means that it's not just a matter of luck whether someone forgetting to indicate results in fatality; that's simply not the reality of things. I agree there is a possibility but it's not even common likelihood (for the reasons I described above). I also agree (as I've also said above) that drivers do have a significantly greater responsibility to drive safely and I'm absolutely in favour of penalising people who have caused accidents....however penalising everyone for every minor mishap doesn't help improve road safety. It effectively just becomes another road tax. If you want to penalise bad drivers then go after bad drivers; but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.
perl4ever 7y ago

iudqnolq 7y ago

If it's really a special case that sounds like something to tell the traffic judge to me.

godelski 7y ago

I don't think it's hard to see the flexibility. But I think it depends what kind of person you are. Do you think laws are social constructs or rules that must be followed? I for one am in the former camp. Laws were constructed to keep us safe as a society. I do like living in a safe society, but let's be real that laws and up being catch all's and can be abused. As an example: Jay walking across an empty street. It's great in many places and times, but others it's a hindrance and just so we frequently break it. But when I was in high school I remember at the end of the month cops would cite kids crossing a not so busy street with a fair walk to the crosswalk. Who cares? Such a thing isn't important and doesn't make us safer. We don't even correct our behavior when caught doing those things because we don't even recognize them as wrong. So yeah, I agree. We need to be flexible as a society. No one likes sticklers or narcs.

soperj 7y ago

>reporting people for the sake of reporting people is a little unsympathetic. He's reporting people that almost hit him. They're driving a 2 ton piece of metal. You can instantly change someones life with their recklessness. They absolutely deserve a ticket at the very least. There's a girl down the street from me that got plowed by a car in a crosswalk as she was going to school. She's 11. She's basically a vegetable at this point. I honestly don't know why her parents didn't take her off life support when they had the chance. She got hit by a 20 year old who was texting and driving. She sent ten texts in the minutes before hitting the girl. If she'd been reported by someone earlier for texting and driving and had her license suspended, she wouldn't have destroyed a family that day.

concordDance 7y ago

> I've lost count of the number of times I've misjudged a situation because kids were screaming in the back of the car, If you can't concentrate due to screaming kids at the back of a car then you need to pull over until they stop. You have no right to endanger other people's lives just to get somewhere a bit faster.

laumars 7y ago
As a hard rule no sane parent would drive if I don't feel safe to (and that includes their ability to concentrate) because they'd be risking their children's lives too. So we're not talking about people who are "endangering other people's lives just to get somewhere a bit faster". The point about kids is just an illustration of a distraction you might not be able to control and which might be timed badly. It could also be a dog in the car which barks at the wrong moment or countless other things. It's also a little optimistic to assume that it's as easy as "pulling over until they stop" in the cases where kids are generally being loud. There are as many examples of why that might not be practical as there are occasions when it's good advice. From experience I can tell you that no parent wants to drive while kids are screaming in the back and will readily pull over if that's likely to help. Sometimes though, it's not safe to do so or pulling over wouldn't make any difference to their behaviour (eg when they're hungry and there is no food in the car). But no decent person would ever want to put their family nor other pedestrians at risk so I can assure you it's really not the case of drivers endangering other people's lives out of a selfish desire just to get somewhere a bit faster.