Lawmakers propose 'speed limiters' for repeat offenders in New York | Hacker News Reader

Lawmakers propose 'speed limiters' for repeat offenders in New York

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18 pointsgeox75 comments

Seems like a lot of effort to keep asocial drivers on the road. Why not just take their drivers license? Then move on to prison time if they keep driving.

> six speeding tickets and red-light camera violations, or four speed camera or red-light violations, in a year

That does sound like people who are completely oblivious to the law.

Maybe they have courtesy cards from the police.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7gxa4/pba-card-police-court...

Or 11 points, which is basically going 25 mph over twice in 18 months.

25mph over is bonkers. Doing that twice in a one and a half year should definitely have heavy consequences.

You're probably thinking 50 in a 25 zone, which is indeed crazy. But 80 on a 55 stretch in the middle of nowhere is not at all unusual in a lot of places.

>But 80 on a 55 stretch in the middle of nowhere is not at all unusual in a lot of places.

Or anywhere on the NY Thruway.

I agree, except for the prison time part: NYC’s prisons are more or less torture sites[1], and we really don’t need to send more people to be tortured.

Driving a car is a privilege that can and should be rescinded, especially in a city where so many alternatives exist.

[1]: https://apnews.com/article/rikers-island-new-york-city-006c6...

Then what do you do if they keep driving after you take the licence?

Impound their vehicle?

that's a start but you might need to impound their money too if they keep using it to buy replacements

Personally, I think that would be a reasonable response, but there might be problems in practice. The driver may well not be the owner, or will lose their job and that will put their family on welfare... One can reasonably say "you should have thought of that", but in practice, the courts seem reluctant to act in such cases.

Your modification of tokai's suggestion reverts it to what we have now, and that is not working very well.

Not really. Take away their license, impound their vehicle if they continue to drive it, and then sell it to pay their fines if they fail to do so.

Yes, really, with respect to your original post. You have just added vehicle impounding as an alternative measure to fix it.

This is a weirdly adversarial reading: “rescinded” doesn’t have to stop at their driver’s license.

It is a very straightforward reading... Incidentally, I have responded to the impounding option on an adjacent thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36970547

Sounds like a good argument for prison reforms, not making dangerous driving a consequence free crime.

Sure, but then why not first make sure that the prison reform happens before sending people to the torture place?

I think it’s a good argument for both. We’re not going to imprison people indefinitely for dangerous driving, and prisons are not driving schools.

If they can’t be trusted to drive safely, then they shouldn’t be allowed to drive. We have simpler (cheaper, more humane, etc.) ways to do that than putting them in a cage.

This is your daily reminder that the proposed law is a New York State law, not just an NYC law. It would apply much wider than just NYC.

Outside of major cities, driving really is a necessity. Revoking someone’s license is effectively revoking their right to work and all that comes with it (shelter, food, healthcare, etc). Of course, that should make people think twice about the crime, and it probably deters a fair few people from reckless driving, but for the remainder it just makes them unproductive citizens with little to lose.

We should probably either consider driving to be a bit more than a revocable privilege or improve alternative transport options (or consider right to food, shelter, and healthcare human rights).

  ...especially in a city where so many alternatives exist.

For what it's worth, this proposal affects the state, not the city. The state with regions where it's not abnormal to get 6+ feet of snow per year.

I don't disagree with the sentiment, just pointing out that it's a bit more complex than telling people to use alternate transportation.

Thanks for pointing that out. That does indeed make it harder to establish a policy of confiscation for repeated offenses.

I actually researched VTL penalties; speeding under 10 MPH over is a $45 minimum to $150 maximum fine (before the ~$85 surcharge) and/or up to 15 days imprisonment, anything 11+ can be up to 30 days.

It's gonna be unpopular, but maybe they need to see a couple days on a weekend behind bars as a sobering reminder.

>maybe they need to see a couple days on a weekend behind bars as a sobering reminder

Anything I say that resembles stats would be made up, but just from my own anecdotal experience (being arrested and fingerprinted for failing to appear in traffic court, and friends spending the night in the drunk tank), I'd say this is exactly the wake-up call that most offenders would need to stop it.

The remainder are likely serious addicts or psychopaths who need medical intervention.

Yes and while you're at it why not make all prison sentences for life?! That would definitely keep even more asocial people off a lot of roads...

But seriously, what happened to that quaint old concept that "the punishment should fit the crime"? In a country where public transport sucks, losing your driver's license is a rather small step up from house arrest.

And 11 points in NY, which is how most people would run afoul of this wonderful new law, is not at all hard to get. Heck, I once got 6 points in upstate NY because the cop was waiting at the bottom of a steep hill in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately he didn't find anything improper about me using my phone for GPS, or I would have hit 11 points instantly.

Dangerous driving is a violent crime, with potentially deadly outcome. The punishment should be harsh for repeat offenders. Its not a crime your socioeconomic circumstances made you do, its very easy to just drive within the speed limit. Tough punishment for crimes usually done by the middle-class do often seem harsh for people, even though its not really harsh compared to many other actual victimless crimes.

>The punishment should be harsh for repeat offenders. Its not a crime your socioeconomic circumstances made you do, its very easy to just drive within the speed limit. Tough punishment for crimes usually done by the middle-class do often seem harsh for people, even though its not really harsh compared to many other actual victimless crimes.

I think it's a strange argument to say we'll make things fair to poor people in jail for drug offenses by sending less poor people to prison for speeding tickets.

Thats all you.

Because unfortunately in the US, the ability to drive is required to get to work. Transit options are non-existent in most of the rural areas.

I can accept that this is the state, not the city, but come on - this proposal is specifically for New York, home to one of the very few functional transit networks in America. Let's not pretend that New York (even the areas outside NYC) is on par with rural Wyoming.

Outside of NYC and the immediate metro area, public transport is either non-existent or poor at best.

Rural NY isn't significantly different than any other state. You're still isolated anywhere outside the metro areas.

Taking the driver’s license should happen already through the points system (3+ points upon conviction for red light or speeding; 11 points in 18 months to license suspension)[0], but perhaps it’s not enough?

I looked up the license plate of a car that hit me and saw 18 speeding violations, 4 school bus violations, 1 red light violations over the past six years. In the year before it hit me, there were 8 speeding violations. [1]

[0] https://dmv.ny.gov/tickets/about-nys-driver-point-system

[1] https://www.howsmydrivingny.nyc/

b/c that's exactly what happens: they keep on driving and going to prison. Drunks are stubborn.

Not a huge fan of this.

The really dangerous drivers in New York aren't dangerous because they're speeding.

They're really dangerous because they weave in and out of tightly packed traffic trying to find a minuscule gap to wedge themselves into to try and go around everybody.

If anything, being unable to go fast is going to psychologically compel impatient people to take even more risks to make up for time they'll be perceiving themselves as losing due to being limited in speed. Additionally, limiting their car's speed is going to make this process even more dangerous for bystanders because they're not going to have the power available to actually perform these maneuvers.

If you want to focus on public safety, figure out a way to get slow-pokes out of the passing lane who camp there next to a truck for an hour and clump up traffic, and get cops to focus on drivers who wildly weave from lane to lane with no signals.

These are indeed significant problems, but on urban streets, speed, in itself, is a significant risk multiplier.

This is NYC; ideally all of the drivers would be “slow-pokes” on city streets. I don’t think we even have passing lanes in the city, besides highways.

This whole thread is peak "NYC forgets that NY State exists"

In my defense, it’s very easy to.

Then again: the law in question has bounds that are reasonable across the entire state. You shouldn’t speed; if you think the limit is too low, petition to get it raised. I wouldn’t object particularly if this bill was stapled to a limit increase on I-87.

The law does have reasonable bounds, though I'm a bit skeptical that it can be implemented properly. I'm just making jokes because being forgotten by your bigger siblings hurts sometimes.

This is not technically possible… vehicles differ enough that it would require a one off engineered solution for each individual vehicle. Especially older mechanically injected diesels or carburetor gasoline engines which have no electronic engine controls- a a speed limiting device would need to mechanically intercept the throttle linkage, which is designed and attached differently on every vehicle.

Moreover, GPS technology and mapping metadata aren’t accurate enough to reliably tell which road a car is on, or what the speed limit actually is. I use google maps to show the speed limit while I’m driving and it’s frequently wrong. Imagine if they are on a freeway but it pegs them as being on a parallel frontage road with a speed limit 45mph lower? That would be a major hazard.

But, There Oughta Be A Law!!1

Then these vehicles will be banned as not compatible to the new law.

You can’t ban older grandfathered in vehicles in the USA. It’s even still legal to drive ancient vehicles without turn signals or tail lights as long as the vehicle was sold new like that. Even in California, the best they’ve been able to do is a voluntary buyback program to get old high emissions vehicles off the roads.

Let's laser focus on one single thing, and let's solve it by enshrining into the law that the aftermarket auto device industry gets a cut for every incident. Perhaps NY can land a sponsorship from Ford, and mandate which make and model of vehicle the "offender" must purchase, you know, for compatibility.

I’m on board. And while we are on the subject how about restricting the horn from working inside city limits. I have had the idea for a while that your car horn could be programmed to just get quieter and quieter the more you use it, perhaps gradually shifting pitch to sound a bit silly as well.

One manufacturer released a report of horn usage time in various countries. If its already integrated into the electronics, it should play back the same sound into cabin if its overused, also stopping music and AC. Yes I hate carmakers heaping features, but horn use of fellow Indians are infuriating.

I often wish vehicles were equipped with a regular horn and a "polite" horn. As in "don't mean to be a bother, but the light is green now. Whenever you're done checking your phone is fine."

I would like a polite horn so I can use it ironically.

I love these e-Scooters with their twee little mechanical bicycle bell that sometimes works. I induced some heavy duty road rage in a motorcyclist by ringing his bell.

For six tickets in a year?! Just take away their license.

And their car/whatever car they were driving.

A lot of these types of people are fine driving without licenses, but if they’re without a car and no one will loan them one, that might work.

If they have that much disregard for the law, do you think losing their license will keep them off the road? Doubtful.

Then put them in jail for driving without a license.

Is it that simple, though? Taking someone who's already crime-prone then sending them off to graduate school for criminals rarely leaves society with a better person when they get out.

I'm not saying, at all, that we should let them run amok. But at the same time, the US has a ridiculous incarceration rate as it is, and it's not like we've created a utopia by doing that.

That weirdly enough doesn't work in the USA.

As someone from Belgium or Germany how they feel about driving without a valid license and they'll look at you like you asked them to calculate i^2=-1.

Same thing with no insurance.

Yet here in the USA (in most states) we can buy a car off the lot with paper/no plates and have a grace period to register it. You have a grace period on your insurance on which they need to cover the new vehicle at the old terms.

That already gives some leeway. And stretching leeway is much easier than actually getting leeway to begin with.

> ensuring they could not exceed the speed limit by more than five miles per hour

I'm just afraid that this measure can have some impact when the person really needs to overspeed. Like some medical condition in the middle of the night. Not everybody lives near some hospital, nor ambulances can cover the whole city.

A feature like this would be extremely dangerous in "striped yellow" lanes (where you can pass into on-coming traffic). When you're passing like that, the speed limit goes out the window and your main goal is to get back into your lane before any on-coming cars come. Limiting speed would cause head on collisions because drivers wouldn't be able to pass.

There is already a point system to take away their license. Why not enforce the existing regulation? Also, the US system of traffic fines is a joke. A $250 fine for someone making minimum wage is going to hurt a huge amount, but that same fine is going to be meaningless to someone making $100,000/yr. Fines should be based on a percentage of gross yearly income.

Solution looking for a problem…. Or maybe solution looking for a kickback from a lawmaker.

That seems dangerous in an emergency situation and technically complicated to implement. They should fine people proportionately to their wealth instead like in Germany.

Wrong country. The fines are abdolute, not relative. There are fines that are relative to your daily income, but not traffic code violations.

I agree that it’s technically complicated, but I don’t understand what you mean by dangerous in an emergency situation: nobody besides emergency services should really be speeding on NYC streets to begin with, and this seems strictly more accommodating than just taking these drivers’ licenses away (which is well precedented).

not everyone who is rushed to the emergency room arrives in an ambulance.

Speeding in a normal car means you may get pulled over and that will increase the time getting there.

If it is really an emergency you should have already called 911. Maybe the dispatcher says drive as fast as you can cause we cannot get an ambulance to you - but in that case you stay on the phone. The dispatcher talking to you is also on radio with police and the flashing lights are your escort as the dispatcher will tell you.

But the above is something that I doubt will actually happen - ambulances are generally close.

Roads are engineered for a particular speed and flow of traffic. If you exceed the design limits of the road, you may feel very unsafe and be quite inclined to slow down again. This applies even to large, wide, noticeable emergency vehicles. Residential streets often participate in noticeable "traffic calming" measures, like roundabouts, speed humps, wasp waist narrowing, landscaping and trees, signage, etc.

Most of the time when I see emergency vehicles plowing down the street, they are pretty much going at the limit, but they look faster, because all the traffic signals favor them, and all the other motorists have pulled out of the way. But a fire truck has still gotta slow down or stop at a busy intersection or just a turn. Pedestrians are a thing. And scooters, and cyclists wearing headphones...

That depends on the emergency and the road. In Manhattan you cannot go as fast as the rural highways - but the only places you would go are also pretty close. In rural areas when seconds count the correct hospital may be hours away (rural hospitals cannot solve all problems), and those emergency personal will drive much faster than the road design (which is also designed much faster than Manhattan) if that is what it takes to get there.

The US has no concept of “speeding in an emergency” for ordinary drivers. It’s illegal regardless: we allow emergency services to speed because they’re (nominally) qualified to.

And note: we’re talking about a city with extraordinary EMS and urgent care density. I don’t buy the argument that we need to allow repeat offenders on the road regardless, but especially not in NYC.

I think this applies in most of the civilized world. Even Ambulance and Firefighters have to prove they were in a mission that required the speed. It is not a card to do whatever you want with the vehicle

If you need to go faster than the legal speed limit you need proper sirens and flashing lights, along with more training than most drivers have. Call 911 and they will get someone to you.

Germany the fines do not depend on income. Are fixed. AFAIK this is in Switzerland, for local citizens.

Finland does that, example:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/06/finnish-busine...

As an urban driver, cyclist and pedestrian, issues around this have been on my mind for a while. This is the best I've come up with (and mind you, some of my suggestions are brutal):

- Absolute speed isn't as important as relative speed; if the "speed limit" on a highway is 60 but everyone habitually goes 80, the one person insisting on obeying the speed limit is creating a dangerous situation

- Nothing but physical limitations will deter the types of offenders mentioned in the article. They'll repeatedly drive drunk, they'll drive with their licence and insurance revoked, they'll drive drunk again after serving a prison term.

- Focusing on speeding is ineffectual; there are many more ways in which drivers are dangerous - the main being distraction and aggression. Speeding is just a symptom.

- In the past few years, drivers seem to have become increasingly callous, selfish and borderline sociopathic. It's not a good trend for persons piloting lethal weapons. Drivers feel far, far too safe and act like they're above consequences.

So, solutions?

- Physical infrastructure -- nothing controls the flow of vehicles better than physical conditions

  - Remove 80% of stop signs, replace with yield signs. People act more carefully when there's uncertainty
  
  - Build more roundabouts, replacing intersections where traffic volume allows. Roundabouts reduce the number and severity of collisions and resulting injuries.

  - At problematic light-controlled intersections, install physical barriers. Bollards that go up when the lights turn red, or equivalent sturdy, ruthless barriers that will turn a speeding red-light runner into soup and destroy their vehicle. There's no arguing with physics.

  - Use primarily one-way streets in residential settings.

  - Narrowing of lanes near intersections in residential neighbourhoods: a road can have two lanes of parking and two lanes of travel, but at an intersection it narrows to a choke point, forcing traffic to slow. The choke point is formed out of pedestrian islands, which create extra room for pedestrians and make them more visible

  - Raised crosswalks: akin to a speed bump but longer and flat-topped, raise the road surface instead of lowering the sidewalk where pedestrians cross the roadway. Vulnerable road users are the priority, express that in concrete terms

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