7 ms·

Yeah I feel like the United States could dramatically improve its road safety if it kept maybe 1-3% of its drivers off the road permanently.

cultofmetatron 10mo ago
the problem is that our urban planning is so F@#$ed that taking away someone's ability to drive is tantamount to sentencing someone to poverty. In most of the country, you are completely dependent on a car to hold down a job, get groceries and pretty much anything else. In most other countries, not having a car is a mild to moderate inconvenience you can work around.
- dns_snek 10mo ago
  That's not a good reason. Other forms of criminality and reckless behavior don't get this kind of extreme leniency. People shouldn't have their license taken away over 1 speeding ticket but there need to be escalating punishments that include license suspension, community service, jail time. If someone works their way through all of these and still ends up speeding then they can't be trusted to drive a vehicle on public roads.
  - tenebrisalietum 10mo ago
    Drivers licenses in most if not all of the U.S. are a joke, and people will still drive with suspended licenses, especially if they have to for work. Driving on a suspended license should allow the state to impound your car, though, then it would be respected.
    - epistasis 10mo ago
      Jail time should also be considered too, for repeat offenders. Cars are a weird sort of thing, where they both are the justification for a surveillance state and lots of monitoring, but we also have extremely lenient penalties. It's difficult for me to understand how the US arrived at our current set of laws.
- estimator7292 10mo ago
  Why do we care about this type of sentencing to poverty and not every other way we condemn our citizens to poverty, homelessness, starvation, and death? Maybe that shouldn't be the only alternative in our society
  - cultofmetatron 10mo ago
    The alternative is that we invest in better public transport and walkable infrastructure. then we can both increase penalties for driving badly AND raise the bar for getting a drivers license in the first place.
- SubmarineClub 10mo ago
  Sounds like a good reason not to commit traffic crimes then. Start punishing these people severely so that they might serve as an example to the rest
  - kelseyfrog 10mo ago
    Has that ever worked? AFAIK, all evidence says that people don't consider consequences. If they did, they wouldn't be behaving like that in the first place. Punitive punishment feels much much better for people who have a specific set of values.
    - AmVess 10mo ago
      Yes, it works. The state that I used to reside in has draconian DUI/Traffic laws, and not coincidentally low traffic death rates. Driving with license revoked or suspended was a serious charge and resulted in impound of vehicle and mandatory jail time. Repeat offenders would have their vehicles seized. DUI laws similarly brutal. 2nd time offenders faced potentially life-altering charges and penalties. Get into an accident with injury to another person while DUI? Huge jail time. Felony DUI results in permanent loss of driving privileges. Speeding 20 over the limit? Enjoy your reckless driving charge which is as serious a dui charge. I read that getting a license back after a 2nd dui carries and average cost of $50k. Getting 2 dui's within 10 years automatically bumped 2nd dui to felony....no more driving for you. Lax driving laws and penalties do nothing more than get a lot of people killed.
    - almosthere 10mo ago
      Escalating punishments often tend to take the "1-3%" of the bad people out of society that cause all the crime. Remember from recent history these people that had 34 arrests or 73 arrests and they're out murdering people?
      - kelseyfrog 10mo ago
        I mean the serving as an example to the rest part. Has that ever worked?
- BobaFloutist 10mo ago
  >the problem is that our urban planning is so F@#$ed that taking away someone's ability to drive is tantamount to sentencing someone to poverty. We're talking about NYC, they'll be fine without cars.
- spamizbad 10mo ago
  If my choice is jail or relocate and find a new job and home in a city with passable public transit (even if its just the bus) I know which one I'd pick.
littlestymaar 10mo ago
The problem is how do you enforce that though. The modern world is so cat centric people would rather drive without a license than accept to live without a car. And until you can reliably catch and jail license-less drivers, the bet is worth it for them.
- randerson 10mo ago
  If they were to catch and jail just 1% of license-less drivers, in a visible way, it would be a deterrent to the other 99%. But the rate of being caught & punished is negligible (at least in the states I've lived in) so people know they'll get away with it. I previously lived in a country where the cops set up random roadblocks to check everyone's license & registration and look for signs of intoxication. When there's a real risk of waking up in a jail cell you're less likely to order that third beer. But in the US when renewing my tabs I feel like the joke's on me because half the cars here seem to have expired tabs or illegal plates and nobody ever checks.
  - littlestymaar 10mo ago
    > If they were to catch and jail just 1% of license-less drivers, in a visible way, it would be a deterrent to the other 99%. But the rate of being caught & punished is negligible (at least in the states I've lived in) so people know they'll get away with it. 1% is actually negligible, and would not have a deterrent effect. In fact I wouldn't even be surprised if the effective prosecution rate was somewhat higher than this already. > I previously lived in a country where the cops set up random roadblocks to check everyone's license & registration and look for signs of intoxication. I live in a country (France) where this is still the case, and where driving crimes are the second source of jail time after drug trafficking, yet alcohol is still the #1 cause of death on the road, and an estimate 2% of people drive without a license after having lost it (and are responsible for ~5% of accidents).
    - randerson 10mo ago
      Alcohol will likely always be a factor in the worst accidents. But France is doing something right because your fatal accident rate per capita is one third that of America's [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

cultofmetatron 10mo ago

the problem is that our urban planning is so F@#$ed that taking away someone's ability to drive is tantamount to sentencing someone to poverty. In most of the country, you are completely dependent on a car to hold down a job, get groceries and pretty much anything else. In most other countries, not having a car is a mild to moderate inconvenience you can work around.

dns_snek 10mo ago
That's not a good reason. Other forms of criminality and reckless behavior don't get this kind of extreme leniency. People shouldn't have their license taken away over 1 speeding ticket but there need to be escalating punishments that include license suspension, community service, jail time. If someone works their way through all of these and still ends up speeding then they can't be trusted to drive a vehicle on public roads.
- tenebrisalietum 10mo ago
  Drivers licenses in most if not all of the U.S. are a joke, and people will still drive with suspended licenses, especially if they have to for work. Driving on a suspended license should allow the state to impound your car, though, then it would be respected.
  - epistasis 10mo ago
    Jail time should also be considered too, for repeat offenders. Cars are a weird sort of thing, where they both are the justification for a surveillance state and lots of monitoring, but we also have extremely lenient penalties. It's difficult for me to understand how the US arrived at our current set of laws.
estimator7292 10mo ago
Why do we care about this type of sentencing to poverty and not every other way we condemn our citizens to poverty, homelessness, starvation, and death? Maybe that shouldn't be the only alternative in our society
- cultofmetatron 10mo ago
  The alternative is that we invest in better public transport and walkable infrastructure. then we can both increase penalties for driving badly AND raise the bar for getting a drivers license in the first place.
SubmarineClub 10mo ago
Sounds like a good reason not to commit traffic crimes then. Start punishing these people severely so that they might serve as an example to the rest
- kelseyfrog 10mo ago
  Has that ever worked? AFAIK, all evidence says that people don't consider consequences. If they did, they wouldn't be behaving like that in the first place. Punitive punishment feels much much better for people who have a specific set of values.
  - AmVess 10mo ago
    Yes, it works. The state that I used to reside in has draconian DUI/Traffic laws, and not coincidentally low traffic death rates. Driving with license revoked or suspended was a serious charge and resulted in impound of vehicle and mandatory jail time. Repeat offenders would have their vehicles seized. DUI laws similarly brutal. 2nd time offenders faced potentially life-altering charges and penalties. Get into an accident with injury to another person while DUI? Huge jail time. Felony DUI results in permanent loss of driving privileges. Speeding 20 over the limit? Enjoy your reckless driving charge which is as serious a dui charge. I read that getting a license back after a 2nd dui carries and average cost of $50k. Getting 2 dui's within 10 years automatically bumped 2nd dui to felony....no more driving for you. Lax driving laws and penalties do nothing more than get a lot of people killed.
  - almosthere 10mo ago
    Escalating punishments often tend to take the "1-3%" of the bad people out of society that cause all the crime. Remember from recent history these people that had 34 arrests or 73 arrests and they're out murdering people?
    - kelseyfrog 10mo ago
      I mean the serving as an example to the rest part. Has that ever worked?
BobaFloutist 10mo ago
>the problem is that our urban planning is so F@#$ed that taking away someone's ability to drive is tantamount to sentencing someone to poverty. We're talking about NYC, they'll be fine without cars.
spamizbad 10mo ago
If my choice is jail or relocate and find a new job and home in a city with passable public transit (even if its just the bus) I know which one I'd pick.

littlestymaar 10mo ago

The problem is how do you enforce that though. The modern world is so cat centric people would rather drive without a license than accept to live without a car. And until you can reliably catch and jail license-less drivers, the bet is worth it for them.

randerson 10mo ago
If they were to catch and jail just 1% of license-less drivers, in a visible way, it would be a deterrent to the other 99%. But the rate of being caught & punished is negligible (at least in the states I've lived in) so people know they'll get away with it. I previously lived in a country where the cops set up random roadblocks to check everyone's license & registration and look for signs of intoxication. When there's a real risk of waking up in a jail cell you're less likely to order that third beer. But in the US when renewing my tabs I feel like the joke's on me because half the cars here seem to have expired tabs or illegal plates and nobody ever checks.
- littlestymaar 10mo ago
  > If they were to catch and jail just 1% of license-less drivers, in a visible way, it would be a deterrent to the other 99%. But the rate of being caught & punished is negligible (at least in the states I've lived in) so people know they'll get away with it. 1% is actually negligible, and would not have a deterrent effect. In fact I wouldn't even be surprised if the effective prosecution rate was somewhat higher than this already. > I previously lived in a country where the cops set up random roadblocks to check everyone's license & registration and look for signs of intoxication. I live in a country (France) where this is still the case, and where driving crimes are the second source of jail time after drug trafficking, yet alcohol is still the #1 cause of death on the road, and an estimate 2% of people drive without a license after having lost it (and are responsible for ~5% of accidents).
  - randerson 10mo ago
    Alcohol will likely always be a factor in the worst accidents. But France is doing something right because your fatal accident rate per capita is one third that of America's [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...