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Comment by r_hoods_ghost | Hacker News Reader

Or you could prosecute dangerous drivers who hit pedestrians for manslaughter / attempted manslaughter and work on the assumption that the person I charge of the most dangerous vehicle has a duty of care towards other road users and if they don't discharge that duty they shouldn't be allowed to drive.

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I think “attempted manslaughter” is just “reckless endangerment” or similar. Manslaughter means without intent; you can’t very well attempt to do something without intent.

/pedant

Prosecuting bad drivers is very important, at the very least in a "Strike One to Educate One Hundred" way.

On the other hand the reason for most car accidents is bad road design, especially designs that encourage high speeds.

Yes! It's also a policy failure to allow vehicles with such high hoods. I'd be okay with requiring a CDL/professional insurance as a compromise

If harsher punishments don’t deter intentional violent crime, why do people expect them to deter accidents?

Not the person you’re responding to, but typically this mindset is about punishment more than deterrence. It won’t reduce the incidence of bad outcomes, but some people feel better knowing that judicial vengeance will be meted out.

Fair enough, but do those people hold the same attitude about punishing violent criminals? Seems like there’s a lot of overlap between the “we shouldn’t punish violent offenders” and the “reckless drivers should be punished” people, but maybe I’m misreading the situation.

Yes, there's still a categorical difference between "there should be some consequences for recklessly killing someone" and "jailing people forever is the only right response to a violent crime".

So you agree that there is some degree of punishment that is acceptable for violent criminals? And I don’t think any serious person thinks jailing forever is the only right response to violent crime; the much more defensible position is “jailing until they are rehabilitated”, but this isn’t about punishment, it’s about protecting society. As it happens, rehabilitating prisoners is extremely hard and expensive, so sometimes we have long sentences and other times we let violent offenders out to further victimize their communities.

At what margin is this true? Is the claim that at all margins, harshness of punishment never has any effect on violent crime? It seems unlikely to me that people would not adjust their behaviour with respect to a type of crime, between it being unenforced vs punished by death.

Typically the claim comes up when discussing crime; one side usually advocates for harsher penalties for violent criminals and the other side argues that harsh penalties are ineffective and cruel—and usually some stuff about how the criminals can’t help it, they’re a product of their environment, etc. Typically, in my country at least, the side arguing for softer penalties tends to overlap a lot with the folks who are most likely to advocate for severe driving penalties. This seems like a contradiction to me, so I’m curious about how people reconcile this.

There are two different axes: the severity of the punishment, and the predictability of receiving that punishment. Severity, applied spuriously, doesn't really provide a meaningful deterrent. A less severe sanction, applied predictably and reliably, does.

If the way you operate a motor vehicle causes a death, you should be charged. If there were a meaningful risk of jail time for bad driving (including driving tired, speeding, driving recklessly, etc), people would either drive less, or would drive more carefully.

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