Hacker News Reader

Comment by lwhalen | Hacker News Reader

Oh they want to install a geo-locating tracking device in my car 'for the children'. Haha, how about not only 'no', but 'hell no'. I'd rather die free than live 'safe'.

View on HN

You realize the government already does not recognize your freedom to drive at 100mph right? They will ticket you or throw in prison if they catch you. A speed limiter doesn't further restrict your freedoms, it just increases enforcement of existing restrictions on your freedoms.

If I'm faced with:

1. obey the law and crash

2. break the law and not crash

I choose option 2.

For example, if a kid darts into the road, and I can miss him by swerving into the oncoming lane (if it is clear).

> ISAs can be set to kick in a few miles above the posted speed limit, giving drivers the ability to go faster when, for instance, passing a vehicle in the slow lane.

What do you think is the ratio of lives saved by people going >> the speed limit (e.g. 20mph over) vs people killed by speeding drivers?

Also according to your logic we should never have concrete road medians because they prevent people from entering the opposing lane. And yet we do. Why do you think that is the case?

Let’s do semi trucks first for the “only allow a few mph above the speed limit” think. Driving down I-5 is infinitely more annoying with semis taking the left of two lanes to pass other semis because they want to to 65mph instead of their legally-mandated 55mph. Semis way a whole lot more than cars and have a lot more potential to cause a lot more damage, plus they’re professionals, so I’d love to see some accountability in this space while reducing the stop-and-go on I-5 that this stupid behavior causes.

> Why do you think that is the case?

I'm not stupid, esoterica. If you want to have a conversation, politeness is better.

Detailed traffic laws can never cover all circumstances (this is why we have judges and juries, not computer programs, to administer justice). I will break traffic laws if necessary to prevent a crash, and I'll accept the ticket if a cop would be so unreasonable as to write the ticket for it.

I bet you will, too.

In the 1960s, there was a public service ad about this - don't be dead right. I suppose I'm the only person who remembers that one.

I've had a couple conversations with bicycle activists. They told me that they'll stick to their road rights even if it results in a crash and they get seriously injured. They smiled that in such a case they'd get a big lawsuit award. I asked them how much is becoming a quadraplegic worth to them.

I don't understand such people.

These people don't understand that The Law is a huge blunt weapon that does not and will not make distinctions between what an individual finds acceptable (or safe) and what they don't. It's a guideline, not a guardrail. 2023 humans can't fathom driving safely at 100mph, but they fail to recognize that shortly after the invention of the automobile, they couldn't fathom driving faster than 30mph. Cars get faster and faster every year, and they also get safer and safer. The law, by definition, TRAILS that.

It’s less safe than ever to be a pedestrian hit by a speeding car due to the proliferation of pointlessly large trucks and SUVs.

Quit playing in the road, then.

Imagine living somewhere so car dependent even the idea of crossing the street is foreign to you. Like living in a post apocalyptic wasteland where you can’t leave your bunker without a radiation suit.

The world changes, my friend, and the cemetary is full of people who had the right-of-way. You either act like physics applies to you, or you run a significantly higher chance of getting meat-crayoned across the asphalt. I know which one I'd choose - look both ways, every time, and stop. playing. in. the. road. Roads are for cars. Parks, sidewalks, and green open spaces of all kinds are for humans.

Why are you accusing me of ignoring physics? I’m literally advocating for slower cars because I understand the physics of being struck by a speeding car. America has a higher pedestrian kill rate than any other first world country despite having the same laws of physics as everywhere else. The problem is transportation policy that does not care about per safety. Pedestrian deaths are not inevitable.

You didn’t address my point. Do you think we should rip out all the concrete road medians so that you have the ability to cross into oncoming traffic in an emergency? Should we also eliminate all grade separated sidewalks and let pedestrians walk next to cars separated by a painted line so you have the ability to drive on the sidewalk in an emergency?

> You didn’t address my point.

Yeah, I did. I don't believe for a minute that you'd choose hitting the kid rather than break the law and swerve into an empty oncoming lane. I also expect a judge would find hitting the kid to avoid breaking the law with disfavor. The law is not a programming language.

So you think we should remove all concrete medians to allow cars to cross into opposing lane everywhere?

How much above the speed limit will ISAs let you go? How will ISA enabled cars deal with non-ISA enabled cars? E.g., it isn't uncommon to see 80 in a 60 on one of the highways near me (which is WAY higher than people used drive pre-pandemic). ISA-enabled cars then present an additional danger to the flow of traffic, acknowledging that driving 80 in a 60 is also dangerous and legally, reckless driving.

Things external to the car, like road medians, are there for "everyone". Doesn't matter if you have a Delorian, where the speedometers are universally always "0" regardless of speed or a fancy Ford Malibu from 2024.

Ageee when Google, who has been in the maps and software game much longer and with many billions more invested than any car company, can’t even tell that I’m on US101 on the HOV ramp and not on a surface street under the highway for that ramp where that Tesla driver using Autopilot fatally crashed into the barrier in Mountain View ( https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY18FH011.aspx ). When I drive there, Google Maps via CarPlay consistently tells me to make a U-turn, not knowing where I am, as if it doesn’t have access to accelerometers or speed data or vehicle heading information such that it could reasonably conclude instead that the GPS is a bit inaccurate and/or there are multiple ramps in an area and without reliable elevation data, the vehicle could be in a couple of different spots, so go with the most likely guess of “the vehicle did NOT jump over the barrier while traveling 65mph+ and end up on a surface street (supported by accelerometer and compass data) and is just on another ramp”. It blows my mind that they’ve had this bug for at least a decade. I actually keep a list of Google Maps bugs that they could fix and have been thinking of applying there specifically to go fix them, since somehow everyone else at Google seems unwilling or unable to address these for reasons that I can only assume are ~corporate complacency.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com