I'm personally not convinced (and along with me, evidently, the vast majority of other drivers) that operating a vehicle to the letter of the law is the most salient way toward reducing traffic deaths. I would much, much rather see a reframing of the way people approach cars, including a reduction in car dependency and a CDL requirement for vehicles over a certain dimensions or weight (I have lifted trucks in mind).
Insofar as these are problems, this is an implementation detail about how to do it properly.
> I'm personally not convinced (and along with me, evidently, the vast majority of other drivers) that operating a vehicle to the letter of the law is the most salient way toward reducing traffic deaths. I would much, much rather see a reframing of the way people approach cars, including a reduction in car dependency and a CDL requirement for vehicles over a certain dimensions or weight (I have lifted trucks in mind).
Sure, those things would also help and I'm in favor of them. But cars speeding and running red lights is extremely dangerous to me as a pedestrian or cyclist. As we found out in 2020, reducing the number of people on the road just makes the people on the road drive even more insanely.
It seems to me that adding cameras, with their legal problems and perverse incentives to shorten yellow light times, leads directly to a worse outcome without treating any problem.
Rather to make an actual scalable difference, it needs to be decided if these roads are going to be the highways they're mostly built as and treated like, or streets designed for people. Some certainly need to be highways, but if that is to be the case the designer needs to finish the job. Throwing a stoplight and a 45mph sign at the problem is a lazy solution that no one takes seriously precisely because it does not fit the application. Red light cameras similarly ignore the problem while adding somewhat to it.
But yes, traffic issues run much deeper than that, but the fact that any attempts at efficient traffic enforcement generate so much outcry is telling.
Sure. It still makes the cameras insane in practice. And the introduction of red light cameras is, in a statistical sense, not just annoying but dangerous.
Fix the courts before making the fines higher.
Getting screwed out of 4-8hr of your time is much less likely to make your standard of living and financial stability slide backwards in a way that takes many months to a year to correct. Of course the majority of support for people who are in favor of anything other than the status quo comes from people who want petty stuff to be maximally life-interrupting so....
All I'm saying is it's not clear-cut that community service is less disruptive to the poor than a fine. Maybe the fine should be a percentage of your income instead of a fixed number, as is done in some places.
I can see your point, so instead of increasing the fine for texting, I would be fine with losing your license permanently if you are using a phone while driving (talking or texting) and are at fault (any percentage) in an accident.
Would disproportionately affect rich people living in suburbs.
I.e. the people who are financially secure enough to have spare fucks to give about matters of principal rather than economic survival.
Legislatures that want to get reelected can't just screw those people. It's a long slow process of divide and conqueror and pulling that off assumed continued political will.
Almost any penalty one can come up with will be harder for the already-disadvantaged, and still shrugged off by someone with sufficient resources.