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Comment by jstanley | Hacker News Reader

You make the classic mistake of equating "exceeding arbitrary speed limits" with "killing people's children".

People should be punished for doing harm, not for exceeding arbitrary limits.

If you run someone over, damage someone's property, etc. as a result of your speeding, then the speeding can be taken into consideration. Otherwise it's just needless punishment of people who've done no harm.

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Cars going too fast in town, even if they aren't killing children, intimidate pedestrians and cyclists. Speeding cars muscle people not in cars out of the street. You can't also predict bad luck. There's always a change that a drunk stumbles in the street or a dog sprints across. Slower drivers may be able to stop in time, faster drivers won't. Plus, it's bad form, driving too fast for conditions is uncivilized and sets a bad example.

Cars could go faster on highways as long as they're respectful of other drivers who might not go as fast, why not. But driving too fast in town is criminal, just as bad as waving your rifle around when going hunting.

And to be clear, drivers are bad judges of what constitutes a safe speed. fwiw, it's often much lower than the speed limit.

I wonder, could you extend that argument to taking explosives onto a plane? If you don't set them off, then no harm has been done but if you do and everyone dies except yourself by some miracle, then you should be punished...

Yes, you can extend the argument to everything. Though clearly it gets more controversial the further you extend it.

I don't personally think I should be punished for trying to move my explosives via an aeroplane just because you are afraid that some people might want to blow up the aeroplane.

> I don't personally think I should be punished for trying to move my explosives via an aeroplane

Are we talking about a passenger airplane, or a specifically chartered flight to move said explosives where everyone onboard has consented to the risk?

Because if it's the former, then your views are insane.

So you should be able to order a 6 year old to stand in front of a speeding train and jump aside before it hits them. If they jump aside in time, no harm done and you should not be prosecuted.

When debating real-worth ethics, "What if I take your argument to an absurdly[1] extreme conclusion?" is really a null argument. This argument can always be made regardless of the real claim being made, and is therefore argumentatively irrelevant.

I just want to re-point out that in a mere 4 messages we started from "speeding should only be penalized if it actually harms someone" and got to "why can't you order a 6 year-old to stand in front of a train and jump out of the way".

[1]: This word is not extraneous. There is a form of extreme-based argument that is not useless, but one must be able to tie the argument to a reasonable claim that the extreme may actually occur. This is not one of those cases. There is no chance of people ordering children to stand in front of trains.

Your entire hypothesis rests on the fact that you believe that no law should be allowed that prevents an event from occurring. Thus a Boeing jet where faked screws are used should never lead to a prosecution if those fake screws hold fast. Thus if two independent operators sell and use these fake screws, only the ones who cause a crash should be prosecuted, even though the other group independently put the entire plane full of people at risk.

I hope that's a more "reasonable" example.

You should pay more attention to the names on posts. It wasn't "my" hypothesis.

And while that actually is a more reasonable example, I would suggest that something like "Doesn't your entire hypothesis rest on..." rather than assuming it does and then drawing a conclusion from that, then drawing a conclusion from that, then taking that conclusion to an absurd extreme, then mocking someone for that extreme would be more productive.

You do realize that harm caused and potential for harm are both considered heavily in criminal law, right? Bringing up a bunch of absurd examples doesn't change the fact that criminal law isn't 100% binary.

That last example wasn't hypothetical. And yep, that's my point, though a traffic violation is civil and not criminal law.

You can't order anyone to do anything.

I can only assume you don't have children.

With the 6 year old you are creating a situation where there is an (x != 0)% probability they screw up and accidentally die. When taking explosives on a plane there is an (effectively) 0% probability you screw up and accidentally blow up the plane. Very difference circumstance.

But by speeding you're creating a much bigger than 0% probability you screw up and do something bad.

Also, by speeding, you are adding to the kinetic energy available to cause mayhem and destruction if you do screw up. And remember, kinetic energy is proportional to the square of speed, so going twice as fast means your car has 4 times more energy.

If the speed limits were set to the safest speed to drive at you would be right. They aren't though. They are, as the original post says, set arbitrarily.

Often they are set lower than the safest speed to be driving on that road (generally the speed that the rest of the traffic is traveling at). So by not speeding you increase the probability that you screw up and do something bad.

In California at least - the speed limit cannot be different (more than some statistical measure) of the real world speed people actually drive on the road. Theres a process for requesting a survey of actual vehicle speed for a street. If the measures speeds differ in a statistically significant way from the posted speed limit, the posted speed limit has to be changed.

Bullshit. One who drives recklessly puts people's lives in danger, including himself. Hiw is that permissible?

Again: "exceeding arbitrary limits" does not equate with "driving recklessly".

A safe speed to drive at depends on all sorts of factors that are not included in the posted speed limit, including the amount of traffic around, the amount of pedestrians around, the weather, how much sleep you've had, what car you're driving.

The only fair way to enforce it is to check whether anyone was actually harmed by your actions. If nobody is harmed, no harm was done.

I entirely agree that safe-driving speed depends on numerous factors. Some specific to the driver and vehicle. Some general. But the problem is that speed differentials are far more hazardous than speed per se.

In some places, there's a requirement for slow drivers to pull over, allowing other traffic to pass. In Mexico, slow drivers tend to use the shoulder. But even on multi-lane roads, speed differentials are hazardous.

Why should I wait until your fist makes contact with my face to consider your action a harmful crime? That's absurd.

How do you conclude that speed limits are arbitrary? Speed limits depend on the circumstances, and in combination with all the other traffic measures orchestrate the use of roads for drivers and pedestrians. If there's a certain speed limit on a road, people expect the other users of the road to obey them limits, and behave accordingly. It's like in an orchestra, everyone depends on everyone else, if one player is out of sync, the whole piece sounds off.

If speed limits aren't set based on a real world survey of organic driving speeds on a given road segment then they are 100% arbitrary. In the vast majority of the U.S. it's just a number that a bureaucrat picks for any number of reasons that aren't related to actual safety.

Anyone complaining about speeding on this thread needs to spend some time reading up on the available research. For example, on the highway the drivers with the lowest accident rate tend to go 10mph over the limit. There are many more findings along these lines that should piss off any safe driver that likes to go at an appropriate speed for their own vehicle/reflexes/conditions.

I cannot disagree with this line of reasoning at all - the whole idea behind reckless is a disregard for danger or consequence, not the actual consequence itself.

I was younger and first got a license, for sure my friends and I would drive faster than we could reasonably react to a sudden change or would purposefully spin out or fish tail when there was snow; no one was ever hurt but I considered it reckless then and still do. Just because we were lucky and didnt hurt someone or cause damage it doesnt mean it wasnt a reckless maneauver. A single change, a patch of ice we didnt see, slipped the clutch, misjudged the stopping distance, and it easily could have been an accident.

Recklessness can't be judged just by "did anyone get hurt?"; that defies the definition of the concept. I'm not able to argue the data on speed limits, but we're certainly told they're not arbitrary. Likewise, it at least sets an expectation as to what vehicles on the road will be doing. I have seen and have been a person who felt 60 mph in a residential was a fine idea, but just because we didn't hurt someone those times doesn't mean it was a good idea. It's better to have some consistency than people just driving what feels right, and removing the limits removes the ability for us to correct judgement of those who are clearly erring in their judgement. (If there's no law, there's no consequence unless they cause harm, which is someone else paying for their lesson; hardly a fair proposition)

If we think limits are too low, the answer is "prove it with evidence and change the limits." Make a case, back it with data, and get it out there. It's not just do whatever you want.

Well there are two options wrt controlling speed, one are the limits so that everyone kniws what to do and expect, and the second is bumps, e.g. London where driving on tarmac is as comfortable as driving down on steps. It's not reasonable to trust people driving tonnes of steel with liters of flammables inside impeccably at high speeds, especially in residential areas where roads are more like a tightly knit cobweb than a straight line from a to b.

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