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Comment by mmmpop | Hacker News Reader

Aside from the seatbelt infraction, which of these violations have anything to do with an increase in highway fatalities? Are you suggesting something along the lines of the broken windows theory of deviance?

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Road deaths aren't limited to just highway fatalities.

Or are you suggesting that collisions at higher speeds, or from running red lights won't increase the chances of injuries for both pedestrians or occupants in cars?

I still am not reading the NYT piece but the original Denver7 piece which lists these infractions: - Driving with a broken taillight - Not wearing a seatbelt - Driving with minor damage to a bumper - Driving with a registration that has been expired for less than two months - Relocating a license plate to another visible part of the vehicle - Obstruction of view (such as an air freshener placed on the rearview mirror)

The OP added the other article after posting and realizing the weakness of the argument with just the first source, so I'm not addressing it.

Obstruction of the view should be the #1 thing that gets you pulled over. It kills pedestrians! You can't have crap hanging on your mirror and you can't mount your stupid iphone right in the middle of the windshield, either.

> The OP added the other article after posting and realizing the weakness of the argument with just the first source, so I'm not addressing it.

OP here. The argument was about minor traffic violations. Nowhere did I say the Denver post covered everything. Did I? I gave that as example. My assumption was folks would read and understand that in good faith. Boy, was I mistaken.

Do you think it is remotely plausible that:

P(causing death | minor violation ) > P(causing death | ~ minor violation)

Also:

P(reckless driving | without cops) > P(reckless driving | cops)

Here let me one step further and present data:

> California to Stop Towing, Impounding Vehicles of Unlicensed Drivers

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/california-impounding-...

"According to a study conducted by the California Department of Motor Vehicles, unlicensed drivers are almost three times more likely to cause a fatal crash than licensed drivers."

https://www.berginjurylawyers.com/blog/auto-accident/unlicen...

Is NYTimes so journalistically lazy/corrupt that they couldn't connect two obvious pieces of facts?

Yes.

I think the opinion NYT is programming into their readers is that normal people owning the means of private transportation is bad. The particular facts or coherence of the argument is immaterial.

Just believe the opposite of whatever Pravda says and you’ll be a’ight.

I don't know and I'm not participating in this conversation further because of your stealth edit for the NYT piece. Also you're making what I perceive to be a bad-faith argument which was reinforced by your altering your original post in a significant way without saying as much.

> I don't know and I'm not participating in this conversation further because of your stealth edit for the NYT piece

> by your altering your original post in a significant way without saying as much.

Lol, providing more examples is altering "in a significant way"?

I disagree but, hey, you found an out.

In my town, the previous mayor had all the red light cameras removed, as it was considered a regressive tax. But now, the number of people that blaze through just-changed red lights is out of control. So the fix? The delay between red to green was increased. Some intersections now have a 5 to 10 second overlap of reds to allow for all the maniacs to speed through the just-changed light.

The yellow lights might be too short. Cameras are notorious for that because the incentives are wrong; both the vendor and the city want revenue from issuing fines.

Cameras are notorious for being accused of being used for revenue but that’s mostly drivers not wanting to accept responsibility for their actions. The few cases where this has actually been backed by data (e.g. San Diego in the 90s had intersections below the legal minimum) are dwarfed by the number of times where it’s just people’s subjective assessments not matching objective data.

The fix which increases safety is to replace traffic lights with traffic circles. Speeds are lower and more consistent.

They could have introduced a three strike system to catch repeat offenders or you know, the points system in Germany.

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