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Comment by topherPedersen | Hacker News Reader

Thank God. People on the roads are extremely reckless and we don't do anything about it. Our highways are lawless for the most part. People can drive however they feel like it. You literally have to kill someone AND be drunk before you actually get in trouble and are locked up. If you kill someone sober though, it's totally fine under our current system.

In my opinion, if you get caught driving recklessly, the punishment should be that you're banned from operating 4 wheel vehicles, and only allowed to operate light 2 wheel vehicles like scooters where you will only kill yourself and no one else.

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> In my opinion, if you get caught driving recklessly, the punishment should be that you're banned from operating 4 wheel vehicles,

This sounds good if you imagine perfect enforcement, but reckless driving can be a very subjective charge depending on the location.

Driving scooters to work is impossible in many places due to distance or weather. Making everyone’s livelihood hinge upon one officer on a power trip giving them a reckless driving ticket is not a good idea.

>Driving scooters to work is impossible in many places due to distance or weather.

People do this all over the world. Maybe some folks need to take a moment to deal with a little discomfort. Or better yet, build out infrastructure so people have better options.

> Maybe some folks need to take a moment to deal with a little discomfort.

Your scooter wouldn’t even clear the snow here, let alone stay upright on the ice.

I think some folks need to realize the world is a big place that doesn’t always look like their local area.

I rode my bike to work every day for 4 years in the Yukon. -40 and big snow banks were just part of the fun.

It’s always possible.

Meh. If a person can't be responsible while driving, then I don't really care what the consequences are for them; they shouldn't be on the road.

In fact, I hope it does make life difficult for them - maybe they'll think twice and not drive like an idiot and put innocent people's lives at risk.

Don't make the mistake of presuming that levying a legal penalty equates to perfect compliance. When faced with a choice between compliance and survival, people will choose the latter.

https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-uninsure...

If policies continue to push more people to operate vehicles extralegally, problems caused by these drivers may get worse instead of better.

Did you miss the part where this can be highly dependent on the officer's judgement?

If you take away someone's ability to get to their job because a racist/corrupt/grumpy/power-tripping police officer decided to perjure themselves to declare that they drove recklessly, you have given police a tool to destroy the lives of anyone they dislike.

Tickets can be disputed and many people make a livelihood without a vehicle.

I think current penalties for reckless driving are far too lenient. Driving is not a right, but a privilege. If someone chooses to use that privilege irresponsibly, they should lose that privilege.

Personally, I would advocate for a license revocal process that happens much quicker than what we do now and provides a mechanism for regaining access to that privilege through a rigorous process of eduction and community service.

What's remarkable is that we already effectively banned kids from playing outside and drivers still kill many of the few that still try.

As a parent, these comments are always so weird to read. Kids play outside, including unsupervised still. Kids getting hit by drivers is statistically very rare (though no less tragic)

Suggesting that “many” of the kids who “try” to play outside get killed by cars is the kind of conclusion you can only arrive at by living life through hyperbolic headlines or the dramatic evening news.

Having a toddler who’s a runner radicalised me. Every walk outside required a death grip.

> Having a toddler who’s a runner radicalised me. Every walk outside required a death grip.

Ha. I had twins. One was a sprinter/climber and the other was One Slow Plodding Step At A Time. We took most of our walks at 10pm.

I think I have seen in the news at least 3 separate instances where parent drove over and killed their own child in their front yard while just trying to drive out. It is like over my entire lifetime so I may made up and it was 2 or once - but I cannot forget it as I imagine such tragedy even writing about while never been nowhere close to such an event it makes me feel uneasy in my chest and stomach.

https://www.kidsandcars.org/frontovers/facts has more data

It is like the road has some sort of lure for them.

I think you're just out of touch with reality. Maybe the fact you're a parent has tainted your view - some type of bias against admitting things might suck.

When I was a kid, the amount of kids outside was easily orders of magnitude more. Things I did as a kid are pretty much unthinkable now. I mean, as young as 7 I was riding my bike miles away.

It's not that things are worse now, it's that enough kids died that newer parents are much more cautious.

I think things are different now, at least where I live.

Take a look at this photo from 1995: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F5...

Note how visible all of those primary school children would be to anyone using one of those cars in the car park. Now imagine the same scene today with the car park full of modern cars (and 'trucks') where the bottom of any of the vehicle's windows would be well above many of those children's heads.

I think it is implied that they are not allowed to by their parents and thus not killed?

There is no way 1.5 to 4yo can play unsupervised, as in grabbing distance from adults, in areas close to traffic? Maybe 4yo can do with yelling distance from adults.

Like, if people wouldn't care so much as they do, I would guess there would be a lot of fatalities.

>... we already effectively banned kids from playing outside...

Do what now?

Once upon a time crossing the street meant walking across a 20 foot road with the occasional small car going 20-25 mph. Now it's a 4-8 lane stroad full of 6,000 pound trucks that can't see anyone shorter than 5 feet past the hood going 50 mph.

How far will you let your kid walk from home alone?

Anyway my point is just that pedestrian deaths have gone up even as the number of miles walked and biked (_especially_ by kids - the modeshare for biking to school has absolutely plummetted) goes down.

>How far will you let your kid walk from home alone?

Pretty damn far, actually, as the parent of two.

From what age? I think people are talking past each other here.

There is a point in time between infant and adulthood were you have to start letting them play unsupervised.

> Now it's a 4-8 lane stroad

People weren’t letting their kids play near 8 lane freeways back in the day, either.

You missed the point, which is that many roads that used to be easily crossable roads are now 4-8 lane stroads.

Yes, people didn't let their kids play near freeways in the past. But now a much larger number of streets are freeway-style roads.

Is this a California or Texas thing or something?

The hyperbole in this thread is wild to see.

Texas checking in here - yes, it's Texas, and no, it's not hyperbole.

Don't know what rinky dink town you're from, but here most roads are 6-8 lanes across. Yes, that includes in our small cities. They're essentially highways but with signal lights. Go to Arlington, Grand Prairie, Richardson, Fort Worth, Roanoke, Southlake, you name it, and it's just roads after roads like this. Trying to cross them is extremely dangerous.

Stroads is a correct description.

I'm from rural Texas and it is indeed rinky dink town, not to far from the places you mention. But I moved to New England years ago and don't miss Texas at all. Keller, Southlake, even, sadly, Denton were overdeveloped hell holes then, but I never lived anywhere where kids were playing right beside an eight lane road. At worse maybe they had to cross a 4 lane road with a median if they were going somewhere outside their neighborhood, and you had lights and crosswalks for this, but mostly people lived in neighborhoods where there were... normal... roads.

They're over-developed and simultaneously run down. If you've ever driven down southlake boulevard you know it gets PACKED during rush hour.

> I never lived anywhere where kids were playing right beside an eight lane road

You leave my neighborhood and immediately it's a 50 MPH 6 lane stroad. Granted, I'm counting 3 one way, 3 the other, occasional turning lanes makes it 7 or 8.

It's true your neighborhood is fine. But there's literally nothing in your neighborhood but homes. If you need anything, no matter how trivial, you have to cross stroads. This is very much in contrast to urban mixed-use pedestrian friendly areas.

Another Texas resident, confirming yes this is largely the experience for a lot of Texas. But its not just Texas; I've seen the same in Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, and other places. Practically every neighborhood development since the 1980s is probably like this.

You'll have smaller streets inside of neighborhoods which are islands of nothing but houses, then massive busy streets in between. Sidewalks directly abutting these very busy streets, if even there. Usually no bike lanes.

Maybe? I grew up in California. The streets where my dad lives are ludicrously wide

Every single residential street in America is full of cars parked or moving at 25+ mph. It's a miserable experience for anyone outside of a car and dangerous for smaller children who don't pay attention and can run into traffic.

>Every single residential street in America...

Even the largely carless (read: not many cars parked on the street) ones like my neighborhood that had a whole bunch of kids happily playing outside and in the street this weekend without issue? Every single one?

The street directly in front of my house is largely like that. I don't even feel very safe doing the edging standing in the street, people turn down the street off the 40MPH (probably going 45-50MPH) main road next to it and blindly start heading down the residential street at 25-30mph.

The cul-de-sac behind my house through the alley is a good bit calmer. That's where my kids go to play.

If you want your kids to grow old and you live somewhere where cars are priority you don't have much choice but your backyard, a park or wilderness. And a backyard might not be super fun/big and parks and wilderness aren't accessible without an adult.

I remember vividly when I was a kid and we were biking on the street and someone drove too fast, dad went out in the road and yelled him down, which was reasonable.

Or move to the Netherlands. But even here it's getting worse fast.

Or Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Japan (I think?) and parts of many other countries as well.

If you chose to live in a car friendly suburb in Sweden that's on you rather than "society" I'd say.

As I said elsewhere, my neighborhood had a whole copse of kiddos, including my own, playing out and about throughout the streets this weekend.

/shrug

Edit: I don't care about upvote tallies or karma count, but it does seem pretty silly to downvote a comment for pointing out that areas like this, and play in those areas, still exist.

>Our highways are lawless for the most part. People can drive however they feel like it. You literally have to kill someone AND be drunk before you actually get in trouble and are locked up.

You don't know what you are saying. Virginia already has the strongest speeding laws in the entire United States. Doing 20 over is a criminal act, and entire law practices exist due to Virginia' speed laws.

https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title46.2/chapter8/secti...

> Virginia already has the strongest speeding laws in the entire United States. Doing 20 over is a criminal act, and entire law practices exist due to Virginia' speed laws.

Absolutely. Grew up in VA a few generations ago and it was just as strict then. Compared to everywhere else I've lived - Virginia is Police Everywhere, All The Time.

This sounds like high anxiety nonsense to mommy the rest of us.

Our highways are not lawless. They are among the most regulated areas of daily human life in the US after accounting for both criminal and civil penalties. Whether people abide by those regulations is a different matter, but to say its lawless is a wild fantasy of people who probably shouldn't be on the roads in the first place.

We speak of the Wild West as “lawless”. I assure you there were very much laws against murder and theft then. They just had sporadic enforcement. Much as roads and highways are in many parts of the country. In California I see racing, 100mph driving, weaving like mad. In the ride home from the airport I watched teenagers race and crash. Drunk driving all over wine country. Never once saw anyone like this pulled over.

The wild west is as equally misunderstood. There were far far fewer guns carried by people then compared to now and laws were well enforced even in sporadically populated areas. The exceptions were boom towns, like gold rushes, where the populations grew faster than norms could be established.

I guess if you don't see it then it must never happen to anybody ever. That isn't valid data.

Traffic law enforcement is a highly localized issue in the US. While there are places that will pull people over for going 5mph over and traffic is calm and orderly, there are also places where traffic laws are rarely enforced. In major cities it is not hard to find roads where severe traffic violations are routine (speeding 20mph+ over, driving on the shoulder, running red lights, etc).

I think allowing 2 wheel is not a good idea in those cases. In fact you should be even better to be allowed for 2 by I digress. You can still kill pedestrians and passers by.

The other issue is that in a lot of countries speed limits are arbitrary: either too low or too high for the area. Speed limits are not dynamic and usually are actually set so that a percentage of traffic violates them. Or are set once and never adjusted.

States in the US are culprits of all above issues. Plus the lack of alternative transportation. So this whole topic is a Pandora's box that doesn't take easy solutions.

Where do you live where vehicular manslaughter is not being prosecuted?

It often isn't charged when a driver is sober.

eg: https://abcnews.go.com/US/hit-run-drivers-kill-people-jail-t...

Thats really only true for people with money. The problem isn't that current laws are insufficient, it is that the US justice system is largely based on profit motives, and people with money can make prosecutions against them unprofitable to push. You can bet your butt that if you went in to those same cases without the money to draw everything out for years that they would hammer you with fines and fees and programs and jail time.

Speed isn't the issue. Lack of education to get license in USA is, and of course DUI.

Education is required in NY:

https://dmv.ny.gov/driver-license/complete-pre-licensing-req...

Other states could adopt the same requirements.

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