I think that this driving ignorance is the root problem, the cause of causes. Need to make driving tests much harder.
Unfortunately, we also have decades of built environment that strongly assumes most adults can and will drive. We have significant segments of the population for whom their choice of car is tied into their identity and ego. We have an assumption that many jobs can only be driven to, or even require driving on the job.
We don't have even the political willpower to take away licenses from obviously unfit seniors, much less able-bodied working adults.
People get away with a slap on the wrist for vehicular manslaughter because what's the alternative? Ruining a second life by causing the perpetrator to lose their job? When they already feel terrible about what happened and isn't that punishment enough?
I don't really see a way out of this other than what is already happening in a lot of places, which is trying to break overall car dependence so that taking away a license (or making the tests hard enough that way fewer people can get one in the first place) is no longer a death sentence.
"We don't have even the political willpower to take away licenses from obviously unfit seniors"
I believe many states do require a retest after a certain age.
"or making the tests hard enough that way fewer people can get one in the first place"
Fewer, sure. Way fewer, maybe not. I think most people are capable of safely operating a car. I think there would be a large percentage that would just need to put more effort into learning. The way it is now is that people remain ignorant on the subject because they aren't required to study and learn, because licenses are practically given away. Plus, why waste time learning the law if nobody else follows it either?
Tougher licensing isn't (or shouldn't be) primarily about depriving people of licenses, but rather providing forced incentives to learn through testing standards. The standards shouldn't be so high as to prevent most people from driving. If they are then we could change some of the rules or designs to simplify the process, although likely at the expense of rate of flow.
Fair, yes. I think I meant that with an implicit "... unless the license-seeker is willing to expend considerably more effort."
Of course we could also be talking about some technological components, such as an insurance-style OBD box you plug in for the duration of your learning period, that submits you to a more extensive evaluation if you're detected to be driving aggressively or whatever.
Not over a city, also, how many pedestrians to ultralights kill anually? Generally people are not greatly bothered by someone engaging in solo risky behavior in the middle of nowhere.
> I think most people are capable of safely operating a car.
Great, now if we could just figure out who those people are and get the rest of them off the road, that would be amazing, but as it currently stands, car drivers are regularly killing people.
What's your point; or is this just a rant ignoring my comments on increasing testing?
And that identity is in many cases pathological. It’s amazing how irresponsible our culture is about this. Practically every car commercial depicts a driver doing something in an urban area that is not only plainly illegal, but extremely negligent and dangerous. This is how they market and sell the cars. And then the young men who buy them are told never to exceed the speed limit. Give me a break.
We are selling machines designed to break the law using marketing that emphasizes their law-breaking properties to people who with total certainty will use them to break the law.
It’s honestly wild.
> “Automotive ads are generally really bad, but Dodge is, above and beyond, worse than any other car company,” said Harris. “There’s not even a hint that a speed limit even exists, much less that a driver might abide by one. They’re inciting road violence in every single one of their commercials.”
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/10/26/americas-most-toxic-c...
Get caught speeding and get an automatic 1K fine. Do it again and it's 5K. Tailgating would be 10K and an instant 12 months ban. Same for using a phone/texting.
What reasonable excuse do people have for committing these crimes in the first place? They deserve no sympathy or leniency.
But ultimately it's the same issue here with everything else; except in extreme cases, it's not realistic to take away people's licenses when driving is a critical part of getting themselves to work.
I think only people who think they know the law and believe the system is fair/without error, would take such a hard line.
"Get caught speeding and get an automatic 1K fine. Do it again and it's 5K. Tailgating would be 10K"
These values seem wildly out of touch with, not only severity of criminal fines, but also with the ability of people to pay them. Most people in the US don't even have $1k saved.
Now we could make it a means based fine, like 1% of AGI. It would still be a stiff penalty for people making $50k or $200k. As it stands now, $150 ticket is nothing for some high earners, but may be sufficient punishment for a first time offense for some low earners (eg <$25k).
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/58-americans-less-1-000-09000...
Most people in the US would, therefore, be extremely incentivised to stay within the law then? If you want financial penalties to be affordable then you get where we are now with offenders accepting the odd fine as part of the game.
I agree with the means test based fine concept but I would make the consequences equally life changing.
Do you drive? If you don't, then perhaps there is bias in your opinion. If you do, do you really think you've never violated any law or regulation? Have you read all of the statutes and regulations?
Yes I do drive and I don't claim to be always perfect but I do not willingly drive in a dangerous and reckless manner.
That depends on how you define dangerous and anti social. What if I exceed the speed limit when driving to a hospital in an emergency? Is 5 mph over the speed limit "dangerous" enough to fit the definition? What mitigating factors do you think exist for other crimes that don't exist for these.
"but I do not willingly drive in a dangerous and reckless manner."
Now we're getting to the meat of the discussion. So you're only talking about willful violations. That could be hard to prove. You claim that you're not perfect, but that you also don't drive dangerously? So we need to know what defines "dangerously". There's a good chance your unwilling behavior does constitute dangerous behavior.
On top of all this, reckless driving and reckless endangerment are offenses that carry stiff penalties in most places. In many places, these are misdemeanors and result in possible jail time, license revocation/suspension, re-education, and fines. If we already have these then why apply them to minor or even deminimus offenses?
I concede that you do already have severe penalties for reckless driving but they are not rigorously enforced except for extreme outlying cases and/or where a serious collision has resulted. And, I think, this is where the true solution may be found since more rigid enforcement of existing laws may actually be enough to deter all but the most determined of miscreants.
Tailgating being enforced more heavily (it's already probably illegal under reckless driving laws) would be great.
We are also no. 2 most deadly country to drive in in EU.
Harder exams don’t improve road safety. Brutal penalties also don’t improve safety.
Looking at my country road safety is propably 1/3 infrastructure (awful road surface, bike lanes sandwiched between regular speed car lanes, 3-lane wide roads that require you to go from one edge lane to other on short distance to get to target) and 2/3 shitty driving culture.
Because its very hard and rare to be caught by police for dangerous driving (and there are plenty of yotube videos of police just ignoring dangerous driving or doing it themselves), people here are conditioned to drive in alternative and dangerous way. A saying goes that real drivers ed. starts when you are alone in your own car. And if you are fresh after exam and trying to drive legit, you will also be conditioned to drive shitty because alternative to not exceeding the speed limit yourself is having somebody else speeding drive into back of your car.
Running red light (called „late orange”) is also very common, and despite there being cameras on most of crossroads, those are used only to measure traffic and not for ticketing.
People force their way in traffic because yielding way to car that wants to change lane is very rare and considered dumb.
When people are stopped by police, they dismiss it as bad luck.
People only follow the limits when there is automated system in area for ticketing. Because they know there is no way to cheat the system.
Top app on Google Play is Janosik (named after polish Robin Hood countrpart) - navigation app that has warnings about speed cameras, police patrol routes and speed controls.
If we want to make driving tests much harder then we need to not make driving required for day to day life.
I'd argue that there are true "accidents", they're just not all collisions.
In our laws we have even have different levels of fault, accident -> negligence -> recklessness -> premeditation, and criminal vs civil.
You're right thou all of humans don't adequately understand + calculate risk.
I believe GP's point was not about "specific enforcement of traffic laws by police" but "law enforcement agencies who are specifically charged with traffic".
"law enforcement agencies who are specifically charged with traffic"
Are there really any that are? I didn't think that was common, even in cities. In fact, many cities are issuing guidance to not enforce basic traffic violations to prevent pretextual stops.
As soon as you drive into the state there's signs telling you they will get you.
We can call them collisions and then wait for an investigation (ha ha ha) to categorize it. Of course they only perform investigations for fatal accidents most of the time. You can't even get police to write an accident report in some major cities, like Philly.
It's even worse if you include things like being courteous to others or anticipating and mitigating potential risks on the road as part of "following the rules".
So while driver's education probably should look a lot more like civilian pilot licensing with required x hours of instruction time, that by itself isn't going to have noticeable effects for years as the median age driver cohort benefitting from that becomes larger.
It'll take years to tease out what is going on here, but if nothing else the take-away is to be careful out there, and it's not just anecdata that it's more dangerous.
To get my driver's license in Alabama I was required to do this at the time. But it was self-attested, there was no independent verification of driving experience.
There's already a lot of benefits "in the pipeline" that take decades to fully manifest. For example, Ontario introduced the current graduated licensing scheme in 1994 [0], but that means there are still millions of increasingly older drivers on the road who were never required to pass the G2 and G tests that anyone under 40 has.
Overall, it's just absurd that driver's licenses don't require a retest every 5-10 years, but that kind of change would obviously a much harder sell to the public than giving them a pass to blame the reckless youth with one hand, and a pull-up-the-ladder type fix to the problem with the other.
[0] https://www.guelphmercury.com/news-story/4762414-ontario-s-2...
I'm not being flippant either, they really do think this.
There would certainly still be ignorant people on the road if driving was entirely voluntary, but maybe there would be less impatient drivers and it would be more tenable to universally require driver's ed/have intense standards.
Maybe scaring people would help them out of this mindset but I really doubt it.