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> We have significant segments of the population for whom their choice of car is tied into their identity and ego.

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.

Oh for sure. It's nuts that this kind of advertising is allowed— Streetsblog does a semi-regular feature where they recognize America's most toxic car ads, and Dodge in particular is called out as being consistently awful:

> “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...

My solution would be to use dangerous/anti-social driving as an extreme revenue generator for Govts. Why print so much money when there are so many ignorant fools we can tax to death whilst also improving the lives of law abiding people as a happy side-effect.

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.

"whilst also improving the lives of law abiding people"

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 don't even have $1k saved

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.

Well, if that's your opinion, then my opinion is that I'm glad you aren't a leader. The law should provide a punishment that disincentivises bad behavior. But openly advocating for "life changing" penalties for some minor infraction like speeding is inappropriate. Should we then be executing people for misdemeanors so that the weighting is proportionate for other offenses? If you can't pay the fine, then they might put you in jail, starting a loop where you can't find work and dance never pay. If you make minor, often unintentional traffic offenses oppressively punished with "life changing" penalties, then you can actually have the opposite effect. If I know it's an all or nothing penalty then I might as well go all out in my offense. If I don't have money to pay, then what do I actually lose - the punishment changed basically nothing (aside from the removal of hope/potential which leads to additional crime).

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?

I'm looking at driving behaviour in isolation to most other crimes and misdemeanors because there are no mitigating factors for driving in a dangerous and anti-social manner. If a large fine is going to hurt you then you have a simple choice and the correct choice has no negative consequences to you whatsoever, unless reaching the next stop sign a few seconds earlier is that important to you.

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.

"because there are no mitigating factors for driving in a dangerous and anti-social 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 think you're over complicating things. I don't know what the definition of 'going over the limit' is in the US but in the UK it is 10% plus 2mph. This leaves plenty of leeway for your emergency dash to the hospital at 5mph over the limit and the occasional lapse of concentration.

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.

The problem is most driving laws are selectively enforced. I'd say 90%+ of drivers on the road near me are speeding to some degree. Where do we draw the line, right at the speed limit so that someone going 2 mph over gets a 1k fine?

Tailgating being enforced more heavily (it's already probably illegal under reckless driving laws) would be great.

Current law in the UK is 10% plus 2 mph, which I think is fair? Majority of drivers seem to have a default of limit plus 20% which results in a lot of tailgating for those of us who insist of staying legal.

I completely agree, and you can tell where the Ontario government start to take speeding seriously— going 149km/h where it's signed for 100? $400 fine. Going 151km/h on the same road? Now it's $10000 and roadside vehicle seizure. Pretty clear message about which one actually matters to them.

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.

Perhaps they can fund public transit with all the fines and property seizure, like rural bus/van routes.

We can fly ultralights without a license. Granted those "vehicles" technically aren't airplanes and generally only result in loss of life to one's self.

"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.

> providing forced incentives to learn through testing standards

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.

I don't really like the OBD boxes. They have to use GPS to be effective. Even then, it's mostly about speed and misses other things. There could be scenarios where rapid speed changes are prudent. I don't want to be penalized for slamming on the brakes if a deer jumps our in front of me just because the sensor registers a rapid deceleration.

Fair, yeah— it's not really a super thought-through suggestion. More just saying that we have 25 years of technological change in the space since graduated licensing was introduced in the 90s, and that alone is probably reason to revisit the whole thing.

> We can fly ultralights without a license.

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.

"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?