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Comment by 1over137 | Hacker News Reader

>If running a red light or stop sign is a $200 ticket in a car, it should be a $200 ticket on a bike.

Why? They are different crimes. Cars are faster and heavier, thus will injure someone much more when misused.

By that logic, should the fines car drivers face scale with the weight of their vehicle? Is blowing through a redlight in a small sports car a lesser crime than doing the same with a large pickup truck?

I'm receptive to this, but I doubt it would ever be implemented.

Yes. Or you could use a system of weight categories, for example one category for cars and one for bikes.

The fines probably do scale up as the class of the vehicle scales up. In large because you can lose your job if you are a bus or truck driver and do this.

Or, you pay more for insurance for a more powerful car, and the main impact of the ticket is not the monetary fine but an increase in premiums.

I think SUVs should br taxed actually, as well as trucks that have no commercial purpose, althouh that is a separate issue.

It’s not like (most) cars will run over the bicycles and just keep driving.

If one is driving, and a bicycle runs the red light and jumps in front of them, they’ll hard brake (at least most of the people). This means they have a very high chance of being rear-ended by the next car, and if the driver is not very experienced, then can lost control and hit other lane / objects and people at the side of the road.

As a similar example, we don’t allow untrained and unprotected people into construction sites with heavy machinery. Saying “hey, let me walk under this pile driver, it is my life on the line!” isn”t going to cut it in the US.

No, they are "the same crime" (failure to stop for a red light), it is one and the same law that applies to both, therefore the "crime" is the same. Therefore the penalty should be the same amount as long as the same statute applies.

Now, if you prefer the penalty to differ due to the potential for injury, you need to get the politicians to change the laws so they are not the same crime, or so that the penalty scales due to some formula in the law related to the potential for injury.

A cyclist absolutely can get badly injured when running red, arguably more likely than a car driver.

A cyclist can cause harm to themself and rarely one other person while running a red light, a car driver can cause mass casualties while running a red light. Difference of scale.

The traffic rules are there to avoid all sorts of incidents, you can't excuse yourself out with "scale". If you kill yourself running red, it is still a fatal road accident at the end of the day.

you can cause a large amount of harm at any time by doing something unexpected on a public road. doesn't matter whether you are a driver, cyclist, or pedestrian.

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