7 ms·

while this is not a bad idea, why not prevent them from driving at all and massive punishments

by knowitnone 1y ago

viraptor 1y ago
How many places in Virginia are car-centric enough that you realistically need one for basic daily activities and work?
- easton 1y ago
  Pretty much everywhere except for the area inside the 495 beltway (right next to DC), where public transit is good. But even then, housing prices near metro stations are higher. You probably want a car in most places, just like almost everywhere in the US.
2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
Because if you don't have a car in most of the US then you're fucked.
- bradleybuda 1y ago
  Which gives you a really strong incentive to not put other people’s lives at risk by driving recklessly.
  - esseph 1y ago
    Ah yes, the person that makes the mistake of conflating random laws and arbitrary numbers for political reasons with some sort of lack of risk awareness / mitigation. The 85% rule is and has always been bullshit.
    - sokoloff 1y ago
      Yet we’d be better off if we at least adhered to the 85th percentile speed limit process rather than having the 85th percentile speed be 75mph and the posted limit be 55mph.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
    By speeding, and nothing else? This shit is so silly man.
    - Xylakant 1y ago
      Speeding is widely accepted, because it seems such a low level offense. 50km/h instead of 30, it’s only 20 more. But the physics are against you - the energy of the vehicle grows quadratic with the speed. At 30, you need about 18 meters to come to a stop. So you can prevent an accident if a person appears about 20 meters from your hood. At 50, you’ll run them over with a remaining speed of more than 30km/h. Speeding kills.
      - ty6853 1y ago
        Time also kills. And not speeding costs lots of time, especially in aggregate.
      - aftbit 1y ago
        If a person appears 20 meters from my hood while I'm on the interstate, they're toast, whether I'm going 100 km/h or 150. Surely the unpredictable can happen at any moment with other cars, but I find follow distance more important than speed. If you're bumper to bumper at 100 km/h, you're going to have a worse time than if you give 10 cars space at 150 km/h.
      - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
        Road conditions change. Sometimes it’s the middle of the night and nobody is on the county road, so you can run your brights. Sometimes a particular section of road has high visibility that makes a higher speed safer, while other sections are best taken under the limit. Some vehicles have better headlights than others, different stopping distances. Your logic only says “lower is safer,” it provides no means by which to draw the line on what level of risk is acceptable and, make no mistake, any amount of driving always implies risk. We balance the risk against its reward, that’s the function of traffic law. For speed limits, the conditions are so variable that we compromise and set a number that’s reasonable-ish, most likely calibrated to the least safe conditions the road regularly experiences, and leave it at that. It’s still entirely possible, however, that a particular driver can have a much greater understanding of the risks implicit in going 10 over given their conditions, and thus increase the risk only a slight bit to save a large amount of time. This isn’t intrinsically some horrific moral crime; if you think it is then it sounds like law for the law’s sake type shit.
  - usefulcat 1y ago
    Because you can always count on people to have sufficient self awareness to rationally evaluate the pros and cons of their decisions before the fact, especially those who have demonstrated a repeated willingness to drive recklessly.
    - zo1 1y ago
      How is this different from actual criminals that we lock up behind bars? Sometimes till the remainder of their lives. These aren't children, and the quicker we start treating them as adults, the quicker they'll learn to obey the laws before the real and life-changing consequences kick in.
      - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
        Speed limits in the US have a particular problem. The speed limits are set too close to the speed people are expected to drive. If the typical traffic speed on some highway is 65 MPH and someone is driving 76 MPH, that... isn't much different. It's not some night and day distinction where you can objectively say that 65 is perfectly safe and 76 is recklessly dangerous. The variation in stopping distance between those speeds is less than it is between one car and another from the same speed. The normal way you resolve this sort of thing in the law is by setting a legal limit which is objectively reckless, e.g. by setting the speed limit to 125 MPH. Then you aren't actually expected to drive 124 MPH, you're still expected to drive around 65 MPH, but we can reasonably say that if you're caught doing 130 there you're deserving of some penalties. However, that doesn't generate fine revenue because then hardly anyone actually drives that fast. What generates fine revenue is setting the speed limit there to 55 MPH even while the median traffic speed is still 65 MPH, and then doing only enough enforcement to make sure people don't follow the law. You maximize revenue when everyone is "speeding" all the time and all you have to do is post a patrol car there once in a while and rake in the dough. But that also makes it unjust to impose harsh penalties for it because then receiving a citation is a matter of bad luck rather than doing something outside the bounds of reasonable and expected behavior.
        ryandrake 1y ago
  - AyyEye 1y ago
    This makes the assumptions that: A: The ticket was valid in the first place B: The Speeding was reckless I have a friend who got an entirely fabricated ticket claiming he was doing 80+ going uphill on an on-ramp in an early 90s toyota corolla with four people and four desktops + a couple of CRTs. We weren't going faster than ~35. Ticket said it was radar verified but he was sitting on his hood eating a sandwich. Other times going the speed limit when traffic is going significantly faster is reckless (I'm looking at you, Atlanta). Cops in places like that love to ticket out of town/state plates.
    - fallingknife 1y ago
      I'm from Atlanta. On 285 the speed limit is 55. Traffic moves at 80.
      - AyyEye 1y ago
        Only 80? Last time I went there it was going even faster but it's been years.
      - cowfarts 1y ago
        [dead]
      - AshleyGrant 1y ago
        Having driven extensively in nearly every city in this country, the drivers in Atlanta are absolutely the most dangerous. It is the only city I refuse to drive in, and I try to limit my physical presence in the Atlanta Metro (aside from transiting the airport) to reduce the risk of being in an accident. I have seen a mid-90s Nissan pickup truck literally on two wheels it was weaving through traffic so recklessly on I-85. LA, New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Seattle, Bay Area, Houston, Dallas, etc. They all have their bad drivers, but none of them seem to have this deeply ingrained culture of reckless driving quite like Atlanta.
        JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > Having driven extensively in nearly every city in this country, the drivers in Atlanta are absolutely the most dangerous Worse than Phoenix and D.C.?
- barbazoo 1y ago
  Then move somewhere they don’t need a car is what I would tell them. I’d rather live in the sky but I can’t fly so I have to live on the ground. They can’t drive so they have to live somewhere where they don’t need a car.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- occz 1y ago
  This should be telling all of you in the U.S something important. I wish you all listened to it.
  - BuyMyBitcoins 1y ago
    >“This should be telling all of you in the U.S something important. I wish you all listened to it.” There is no need for this condescending attitude. The average citizen has virtually no say on these things and our infrastructure was decided decades before most of us were born. Major cities are investing in transit improvements but the nature of these projects means they will take over a decade to reach fruition. We aren’t doing nothing.
  - rpmisms 1y ago
    "don't live in a rural area, don't own property, trust government" No.
astura 1y ago
TFA says 75% of people with suspended licenses drive anyways.
- Teever 1y ago
  Sounds like 75% of people with a suspended license need to spend some time out in jail where they can ponder their life choices.
  - nahkoots 1y ago
    Someone who's jailed for driving on a suspended license because it's the only way they can get to their job probably isn't going to discontinue that behavior upon their release. I don't want my tax dollars being spent on a punishment that's just going to exacerbate the problem, especially when the crime isn't particularly odious in the first place (whatever they did to get their license suspended probably was, but once you have a suspended license it's almost impossible to just stop driving).
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > when the crime isn't particularly odious in the first place “A significant association was found between all reasons for DWVL and the risk of causing a road crash. This association was particularly high for drivers with a suspended license and drivers who had never obtained a license. In these subgroups of drivers, the proportion of the relationship explained by high-risk driving behaviors is high” [1]. If the license was suspended for financial reasons, sure. If it was suspended for driving infractions, incapacitating them by putting them in jail while deterring others from driving seems socially efficient. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001457520316924 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...
      - potato3732842 1y ago
        >“A significant association was found between all reasons for DWVL and the risk of causing a road crash. This association was particularly high for drivers with a suspended license and drivers who had never obtained a license. In these subgroups of drivers, the proportion of the relationship explained by high-risk driving behaviors is high” [1]. "Among church attendees, those attending church services in a prison were more likely to be convicted of a crime in the future than the average" I too can mislead with sampling bias. Nobody with a double digit number of brain cells is going to be impressed that a group that includes a lot of people who lost their licenses is going to be more crashy than the average. The average has a lot more people in it to water down the statistical effect of those people. But that doesn't mean that a lot of people in your "bad" group are actually bad on an individual level rather than a statistical one. Pretty much every license suspension is for financial reasons at the end of the day because people who can afford lawyers and fines and whatnot are much more able to avoid the suspensions.
cormorant 1y ago
I mean, they already sentence people to jail for speeding, as in this amusing case of an automotive journalist. https://www.jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my-three-days-in-1613604053/ https://www.jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-fro...

while this is not a bad idea, why not prevent them from driving at all and massive punishments

viraptor 1y ago

How many places in Virginia are car-centric enough that you realistically need one for basic daily activities and work?

easton 1y ago
Pretty much everywhere except for the area inside the 495 beltway (right next to DC), where public transit is good. But even then, housing prices near metro stations are higher. You probably want a car in most places, just like almost everywhere in the US.

2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago

Because if you don't have a car in most of the US then you're fucked.

bradleybuda 1y ago
Which gives you a really strong incentive to not put other people’s lives at risk by driving recklessly.
- esseph 1y ago
  Ah yes, the person that makes the mistake of conflating random laws and arbitrary numbers for political reasons with some sort of lack of risk awareness / mitigation. The 85% rule is and has always been bullshit.
  - sokoloff 1y ago
    Yet we’d be better off if we at least adhered to the 85th percentile speed limit process rather than having the 85th percentile speed be 75mph and the posted limit be 55mph.
- BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
  By speeding, and nothing else? This shit is so silly man.
  - Xylakant 1y ago
    Speeding is widely accepted, because it seems such a low level offense. 50km/h instead of 30, it’s only 20 more. But the physics are against you - the energy of the vehicle grows quadratic with the speed. At 30, you need about 18 meters to come to a stop. So you can prevent an accident if a person appears about 20 meters from your hood. At 50, you’ll run them over with a remaining speed of more than 30km/h. Speeding kills.
    - ty6853 1y ago
      Time also kills. And not speeding costs lots of time, especially in aggregate.
    - aftbit 1y ago
      If a person appears 20 meters from my hood while I'm on the interstate, they're toast, whether I'm going 100 km/h or 150. Surely the unpredictable can happen at any moment with other cars, but I find follow distance more important than speed. If you're bumper to bumper at 100 km/h, you're going to have a worse time than if you give 10 cars space at 150 km/h.
    - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
      Road conditions change. Sometimes it’s the middle of the night and nobody is on the county road, so you can run your brights. Sometimes a particular section of road has high visibility that makes a higher speed safer, while other sections are best taken under the limit. Some vehicles have better headlights than others, different stopping distances. Your logic only says “lower is safer,” it provides no means by which to draw the line on what level of risk is acceptable and, make no mistake, any amount of driving always implies risk. We balance the risk against its reward, that’s the function of traffic law. For speed limits, the conditions are so variable that we compromise and set a number that’s reasonable-ish, most likely calibrated to the least safe conditions the road regularly experiences, and leave it at that. It’s still entirely possible, however, that a particular driver can have a much greater understanding of the risks implicit in going 10 over given their conditions, and thus increase the risk only a slight bit to save a large amount of time. This isn’t intrinsically some horrific moral crime; if you think it is then it sounds like law for the law’s sake type shit.
- usefulcat 1y ago
  Because you can always count on people to have sufficient self awareness to rationally evaluate the pros and cons of their decisions before the fact, especially those who have demonstrated a repeated willingness to drive recklessly.
  - zo1 1y ago
    How is this different from actual criminals that we lock up behind bars? Sometimes till the remainder of their lives. These aren't children, and the quicker we start treating them as adults, the quicker they'll learn to obey the laws before the real and life-changing consequences kick in.
    - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      Speed limits in the US have a particular problem. The speed limits are set too close to the speed people are expected to drive. If the typical traffic speed on some highway is 65 MPH and someone is driving 76 MPH, that... isn't much different. It's not some night and day distinction where you can objectively say that 65 is perfectly safe and 76 is recklessly dangerous. The variation in stopping distance between those speeds is less than it is between one car and another from the same speed. The normal way you resolve this sort of thing in the law is by setting a legal limit which is objectively reckless, e.g. by setting the speed limit to 125 MPH. Then you aren't actually expected to drive 124 MPH, you're still expected to drive around 65 MPH, but we can reasonably say that if you're caught doing 130 there you're deserving of some penalties. However, that doesn't generate fine revenue because then hardly anyone actually drives that fast. What generates fine revenue is setting the speed limit there to 55 MPH even while the median traffic speed is still 65 MPH, and then doing only enough enforcement to make sure people don't follow the law. You maximize revenue when everyone is "speeding" all the time and all you have to do is post a patrol car there once in a while and rake in the dough. But that also makes it unjust to impose harsh penalties for it because then receiving a citation is a matter of bad luck rather than doing something outside the bounds of reasonable and expected behavior.
      - ryandrake 1y ago
- AyyEye 1y ago
  This makes the assumptions that: A: The ticket was valid in the first place B: The Speeding was reckless I have a friend who got an entirely fabricated ticket claiming he was doing 80+ going uphill on an on-ramp in an early 90s toyota corolla with four people and four desktops + a couple of CRTs. We weren't going faster than ~35. Ticket said it was radar verified but he was sitting on his hood eating a sandwich. Other times going the speed limit when traffic is going significantly faster is reckless (I'm looking at you, Atlanta). Cops in places like that love to ticket out of town/state plates.
  - fallingknife 1y ago
    I'm from Atlanta. On 285 the speed limit is 55. Traffic moves at 80.
    - AyyEye 1y ago
      Only 80? Last time I went there it was going even faster but it's been years.
    - cowfarts 1y ago
      [dead]
    - AshleyGrant 1y ago
      Having driven extensively in nearly every city in this country, the drivers in Atlanta are absolutely the most dangerous. It is the only city I refuse to drive in, and I try to limit my physical presence in the Atlanta Metro (aside from transiting the airport) to reduce the risk of being in an accident. I have seen a mid-90s Nissan pickup truck literally on two wheels it was weaving through traffic so recklessly on I-85. LA, New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Seattle, Bay Area, Houston, Dallas, etc. They all have their bad drivers, but none of them seem to have this deeply ingrained culture of reckless driving quite like Atlanta.
      - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > Having driven extensively in nearly every city in this country, the drivers in Atlanta are absolutely the most dangerous Worse than Phoenix and D.C.?
barbazoo 1y ago
Then move somewhere they don’t need a car is what I would tell them. I’d rather live in the sky but I can’t fly so I have to live on the ground. They can’t drive so they have to live somewhere where they don’t need a car.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
occz 1y ago
This should be telling all of you in the U.S something important. I wish you all listened to it.
- BuyMyBitcoins 1y ago
  >“This should be telling all of you in the U.S something important. I wish you all listened to it.” There is no need for this condescending attitude. The average citizen has virtually no say on these things and our infrastructure was decided decades before most of us were born. Major cities are investing in transit improvements but the nature of these projects means they will take over a decade to reach fruition. We aren’t doing nothing.
- rpmisms 1y ago
  "don't live in a rural area, don't own property, trust government" No.

astura 1y ago

TFA says 75% of people with suspended licenses drive anyways.

Teever 1y ago
Sounds like 75% of people with a suspended license need to spend some time out in jail where they can ponder their life choices.
- nahkoots 1y ago
  Someone who's jailed for driving on a suspended license because it's the only way they can get to their job probably isn't going to discontinue that behavior upon their release. I don't want my tax dollars being spent on a punishment that's just going to exacerbate the problem, especially when the crime isn't particularly odious in the first place (whatever they did to get their license suspended probably was, but once you have a suspended license it's almost impossible to just stop driving).
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > when the crime isn't particularly odious in the first place “A significant association was found between all reasons for DWVL and the risk of causing a road crash. This association was particularly high for drivers with a suspended license and drivers who had never obtained a license. In these subgroups of drivers, the proportion of the relationship explained by high-risk driving behaviors is high” [1]. If the license was suspended for financial reasons, sure. If it was suspended for driving infractions, incapacitating them by putting them in jail while deterring others from driving seems socially efficient. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001457520316924 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...
    - potato3732842 1y ago
      >“A significant association was found between all reasons for DWVL and the risk of causing a road crash. This association was particularly high for drivers with a suspended license and drivers who had never obtained a license. In these subgroups of drivers, the proportion of the relationship explained by high-risk driving behaviors is high” [1]. "Among church attendees, those attending church services in a prison were more likely to be convicted of a crime in the future than the average" I too can mislead with sampling bias. Nobody with a double digit number of brain cells is going to be impressed that a group that includes a lot of people who lost their licenses is going to be more crashy than the average. The average has a lot more people in it to water down the statistical effect of those people. But that doesn't mean that a lot of people in your "bad" group are actually bad on an individual level rather than a statistical one. Pretty much every license suspension is for financial reasons at the end of the day because people who can afford lawyers and fines and whatnot are much more able to avoid the suspensions.

cormorant 1y ago

I mean, they already sentence people to jail for speeding, as in this amusing case of an automotive journalist. https://www.jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my-three-days-in-1613604053/ https://www.jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-fro...