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Comment by mauvehaus | Hacker News Reader

I hear you and agree with your intended outcome, but we should be legislating outcomes, not the path to reaching them.

In this example, reasonable legislation would limit the noise and pollution from blowers, without specifically banning any particular technology.

The US had sealed beam headlamps for years after better lighting technologies were invented because US law required them instead of mandating some technology-agnostic standard [0].

Or more recently, we've banned the use of phones while driving. I ask: is it legal to play harmonica while driving? If we agree that it shouldn't be, the law should be written to ban both using a phone or playing harmonica while driving without specifically mentioning either, except perhaps as examples.

[0] https://www.carid.com/articles/brief-history-of-sealed-beam-...

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Unlike the sealed beam headlamps however, this law isn't requiring any particular technology. It's just outlawing a known harmful one.

In some ways this is nicer because a company doesn't need to do specific emission and noise testing certifications to comply with a single municipalities regulations. So people in Oakland can have potentially more choices while achieving a reduction of combustion emissions.

But it's still subject the same issues for the same reason. I can build a gas powered generator which feeds electricity to my electric blower and poof it's legal now. But in terms of noise/emissions/etc the problem is the same.

So the lesson is that Government really shouldn't get in the game of trying to regulate specific technologies rather than whatever harmful side effects are created by the technology. Regulate noise and emissions, and let the engineers find the best ways of meeting those targets.

No one's going to do that other than maybe an insane hobbyist. It would combine the worst aspects of gas and electric blowers. A law doesn't have to stop every possible bad outcome to be worth having.

Right, like auto makers would never put a phone style interface right into their cars, so that people could avoid "distracted driving" by hooking their phone up to their car and using the car's touch screen legally instead of the phone's. Only insane hobbyists would do that, as it combines the worse aspects of the requiring human touch and distraction to operate with the slow technology release cycle of auto manufacturers.

And once people actually start trying to do, then it would be a great time to address it in a law.

There are practically infinite bad things that someone could possibly do. You can't outlaw them all.

This makes enforcement simple.

Setting emission thresholds means needing to get out there and perform spot checks in the field. It's specialised, expensive and in practise means many people just flouting the law and getting away with it. Pointless law.

Simply banning ICE strimmers and blowers means any enforcement officer can easily cite rule breakers, confiscate equipment, etc.

And per sibling, not the same as mandating one technology, at all.

> the law should be written to ban both using a phone or playing harmonica while driving without specifically mentioning either, except perhaps as examples.

Slippery slope arguments shouldn’t apply to specific provisions in the law that target likely scenarios.

Let’s say you said that the driver shouldn’t drive distracted. You have now outlawed listening to radio, music, or others talking in a way not conducive to giving full attention to the car, perhaps even while the car is being driven automatically, if there is any chance of the driver needing to drive manually such that they must be ready to drive.

That said, I agree that the method of generating the outcome need not always be defined. For example, in some legislation, companies/vendors are named specifically, which may lead to de facto support by the government of some private institutions, which seems anticompetitive.

We do indeed see infotainment systems in cars that are the direct analogues of cell phones and cause distracted driving. They even connect to the phones and give similar touch screen apps.

These systems are legal but using the phone is not, so this really is a great example of trying to regulate technology rather than outcomes. All that happens is vendors put ports in their cars and route the phone interface to the driver in a fixed screen rather than in the phone's screen. Regulation bypassed.

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