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Comment by unixuser7104 | Hacker News Reader

How would you react if told you could no longer drive your primary mode of transportation?

I agree. We should legalize drunk driving so that no one can be denied their god-given right to drive a car.

~No one in the US is letting their "god given right" be denied. They are driving their car anyway even when the government says they can't.

So to answer the question, they would act in insubordination, and anything harsh enough to stop the insubordination won't be practically implemented.

This question is the exact point they’re making about the biased response to/willingness to create bike vs car laws.

How would you react if told that your primary mode of transportation is causing a big increase in deaths? Isn't that a more relevant question?

"How would you react if told that your primary mode of transportation is causing a big increase in deaths?"

I'd ask to see the data since TFA shows only a 7.5% increase due to size. The rest of the 75% increase is due to other factors.

Edit: why disagee, is my data wrong?

Is that not a significant enough number in and of itself?! Like it even begs the question, how were they allowed to go onto the roads in the first place, when it's not even a hard to reach consequence.

200 out of 350M is a small number. There are plenty other things we could address that makes a bigger impact. The bigger factor is pedestrian alcohol consumption, but nobody wants to address that.

"only" a 7% increase in deaths

200 out of 350M is a small number. There are plenty other things we could address that makes a bigger impact. The bigger factor is pedestrian alcohol consumption, but nobody wants to address that.

Complete indifference.

That's the same class of argument as telling people they shouldn't use Signal because criminals use Signal.

I think there is a difference here. Signal qua signal isn't dangerous. Its purely what one does with it that might constitute a criminal act. In particular, using signal is unlikely to cause problems accidentally.

Driving a giant truck for no good reason entails a certain risk because of both the inevitability of human error (on the part of the driver but also others) and basic physics.

Furthermore, one might argue that the right to private communication is more important than the marginal improvement in life that you get from driving a big car for no particular reason.

Like consider a person who wants to drive a car filled with TNT. By its very nature this is a danger to others regardless of the intent of the driver or other drivers. Society might be argued to have an interest in regulating such behavior. I think there is a good case to be made that unnecessarily large vehicles differ in degree only from the TNT case, but differ categorically from using signal.

I'm not making the case that the differences justify banning big cars, but there are differences between the two situations.

It is nothing like that argument and I think you know that.

Complete indifference to a big increase in deaths?

Complete indifference to the implication that I am in some way responsible for crimes committed by others just because I use a similar tool.

I suppose you'd have to sell it, possibly at a loss, just like you'd have to sell a restaurant that failed a food safety inspection.

> just like you'd have to sell a restaurant that failed a food safety inspection. reply

Oh my sweet summer child...

At the absolute most they might get shut down for a shift or two.

Are you talking about the bike or the SUV?

My primary mode of transportation is an e-bike; how should I react?

Why would that be happening? No-one is preventing people from driving.

i would be upset that i had bought a murdertruck

Utter disbelief. (will that do?)

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