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Comment by cultofmetatron | Hacker News Reader

the problem is that our urban planning is so F@#$ed that taking away someone's ability to drive is tantamount to sentencing someone to poverty. In most of the country, you are completely dependent on a car to hold down a job, get groceries and pretty much anything else. In most other countries, not having a car is a mild to moderate inconvenience you can work around.

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That's not a good reason. Other forms of criminality and reckless behavior don't get this kind of extreme leniency.

People shouldn't have their license taken away over 1 speeding ticket but there need to be escalating punishments that include license suspension, community service, jail time. If someone works their way through all of these and still ends up speeding then they can't be trusted to drive a vehicle on public roads.

Drivers licenses in most if not all of the U.S. are a joke, and people will still drive with suspended licenses, especially if they have to for work. Driving on a suspended license should allow the state to impound your car, though, then it would be respected.

Jail time should also be considered too, for repeat offenders.

Cars are a weird sort of thing, where they both are the justification for a surveillance state and lots of monitoring, but we also have extremely lenient penalties. It's difficult for me to understand how the US arrived at our current set of laws.

Why do we care about this type of sentencing to poverty and not every other way we condemn our citizens to poverty, homelessness, starvation, and death?

Maybe that shouldn't be the only alternative in our society

The alternative is that we invest in better public transport and walkable infrastructure. then we can both increase penalties for driving badly AND raise the bar for getting a drivers license in the first place.

>the problem is that our urban planning is so F@#$ed that taking away someone's ability to drive is tantamount to sentencing someone to poverty.

We're talking about NYC, they'll be fine without cars.

Sounds like a good reason not to commit traffic crimes then.

Start punishing these people severely so that they might serve as an example to the rest

Has that ever worked?

AFAIK, all evidence says that people don't consider consequences. If they did, they wouldn't be behaving like that in the first place. Punitive punishment feels much much better for people who have a specific set of values.

Yes, it works. The state that I used to reside in has draconian DUI/Traffic laws, and not coincidentally low traffic death rates.

Driving with license revoked or suspended was a serious charge and resulted in impound of vehicle and mandatory jail time. Repeat offenders would have their vehicles seized.

DUI laws similarly brutal. 2nd time offenders faced potentially life-altering charges and penalties. Get into an accident with injury to another person while DUI? Huge jail time. Felony DUI results in permanent loss of driving privileges.

Speeding 20 over the limit? Enjoy your reckless driving charge which is as serious a dui charge.

I read that getting a license back after a 2nd dui carries and average cost of $50k. Getting 2 dui's within 10 years automatically bumped 2nd dui to felony....no more driving for you.

Lax driving laws and penalties do nothing more than get a lot of people killed.

Escalating punishments often tend to take the "1-3%" of the bad people out of society that cause all the crime.

Remember from recent history these people that had 34 arrests or 73 arrests and they're out murdering people?

I mean the serving as an example to the rest part. Has that ever worked?

I mean to your point, when someone is robbing a 7/11, in today's atmosphere, no - no they don't consider it because the punishment is fairly low. In Islamic countries, if you steal you will likely lose your hand (or your head). In those countries people REALLY do consider the consequences.

Now I'm not advocating for the second option there. Just something in between. (obviously a lot farther away than the second option).

If my choice is jail or relocate and find a new job and home in a city with passable public transit (even if its just the bus) I know which one I'd pick.

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