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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

I think perfect enforcement of laws would be great. Because traffic tickets are so random, nobody really changes their behavior to avoid them, and it becomes more of a reverse lottery than anything else. Meanwhile, children on their way to school also lose the reverse lottery, but instead of a $300 fine, they die.

Perfect enforcement also puts pressure on lawmakers to make reasonable laws. If it's just some guy that you don't relate to being burned by stupid laws, you're not going to care. If it's everyone, you are going to care.

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Edit: op added his second paragraph after I, and several others, replied. While the second paragraph is more reasonable on it's own, I still highly disagree with the implied reasoning of the first paragraph.

I disagree vehemently.

People drive a speed they feel comfortable driving. Full Stop.

The only time a speed limit sign changes behavior in the vast majority of drivers (in the US anyway) is when a cop is present.

The smarter way to reduce speed in the sections of road that actually are more dangerous is to make them look more dangerous, for example by painting lines on the road that make you think you're travelling faster than you are.

There are major roads where, except for rush hour, 100% of cars on the road are travelling well above the speed limit because it is set far too low for a modern vehicle driving on a multi-lane, fairly straight highway.

This causes a fairly similar attitude toward speed limits that a large percentage of the population has toward pot: you scaremonger about something that obviously isn't dangerous in 95% of cases (pot / 35 MPH, 6 lane roads), which makes the remaining 5% of cases that are actually dangerous (Heroin / sharp turn with low visibility) seem less dangerous because you spent so much effort to conflate the two.

Meanwhile, we're unable to have a sober conversation about the subject that results in speed limits and road laws that make sense because of think of the children! scaremongering, e.g., "children on their way to school also lose the reverse lottery, but instead of a $300 fine, they die."

"People drive a speed they feel comfortable driving. Full Stop."

Reminds me of this AutoBahn video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utOX6R4ImNg&noredirect=1

Maybe you should have read OP's comment until the end before posting your angry reply. He said, that if laws were perfectly enforced, it would basically mean that the set of laws would very quickly be trimmed down to the set of useful laws. In the examples you cite, pot would become legal, and we would get better traffic laws (i.e. "contextual" speeding laws, only when children are present on the pavement/only when the visibility is low).

I did read until the end. I quoted the end. He then added a second paragraph that is more reasonable.

In his initial post, Op didn't ask for 100% enforcement so that we would then get sane laws, he called for 100% enforcement because children are dying.

I do agree that full enforcement would likely lead to vey quick changes in the law.

The only time a speed limit sign changes behavior in the vast majority of drivers (in the US anyway) is when a cop is present.

And that would exactly be the case, if you were tracked and got a ticket the moment you crossed the limit.

So the idiot who drives 50mph on my street, which is 1/4 mile long, and has children under the age of 12 in all ten houses on this road should be allowed to drive whatever speed he feels comfortable? There's a lot of externalities to his behavior. My intuition tells me that in your world where people drive a speed they feel comfortable is why we have so many traffic accidents. I don't give a rats ass about how comfortable a driver is.

This is exactly what I'm talking about.

You're conflating all instances of speeding with "the idiot who drives 50mph on my street, which is 1/4 mile long, and has children under the age of 12 in all ten houses on this road."

Instead of being able to have a measured conversation about what speed is safe in a given street or area, we get hysterical fear mongering that does two things:

1. It causes the speed limit on a majority of roads to be set to a level that is well below a safe speed to drive, instead of setting reasonable limits in most places and then carving out exceptions in places that are more dangerous.

2. Your tone, both when talking about behavior you'd like to see changed and when referring to the other people whose comfort/time/opinion you "don't give a rats (sic) ass about", is alienating and all too common in these kind of conversations.

Both of these factors contribute to people, en mass, deciding speed limits (on their own) are never actually meaningful, and so they must use other factors to decide how quickly they should drive.

Maybe Traffic Calming should be implemented on your street, instead of posting a small sign that people will ignore?

> It causes the speed limit on a majority of roads to be set to a level that is well below a safe speed to drive, instead of setting reasonable limits in most places and then carving out exceptions in places that are more dangerous.

OK, I'll bite.

I'm assuming you're talking about the US. Do you really think that a "majority" are set to a level "well below" a "safe speed"?

You think 25 mph on a residential street is too low? There's a British video of how even low-speed collisions can be fatal for pedestrians.

I've personally found the speeds in the USA to be eminently reasonable. 25 mph: residental, 30 mph on undivided business streets, 40/45 for multilane main streets. 50 mph for minor highways, and 65+ for interstates and major highways.

Edit: And my actual main point is: A) Speed limits are currently set politically, not scientifically, and B) Yes! let's have this conversation rather than shouting down anyone who wants to change the status quo and painting them as a child-killer.

I'm mostly talking about the US, although I've since moved to the UK, but I still do most of my driving when I come back to visit the US.

As a point of reference, I'm most familiar with Chicago/Illinois & St. Louis/Missouri speed limits, and I think Illinois speed limits tend to be set unreasonably low (lower than almost anyone on the road is actually driving), while Missouri speed limits are generally more reasonable, if a little cautious.

"You think 25 mph on a residential street is too low? There's a British video of how even low-speed collisions can be fatal for pedestrians."

And places where pedestrians are regularly crossing the middle of the street are perfect spots to implement Traffic Calming, and to be honest, 99% of my complaint is regarding non-residential streets.

"25 mph: residental, 30 mph on undivided business streets, 40/45 for multilane main streets. 50 mph for minor highways, and 65+ for interstates and major highways."

I would say this is generally what they are set to in St. Louis, but they're systemically 5 to 10 MPH lower in Chicago and most of the surrounding suburbs.

Missouri has recently also instituted variable speed limits that change based on weather and time of day. This to me speaks mountains about the true intention being closer to safety than either revenue or giving cops the ability to pull basically anyone over.

Should be 60+ for minor highways, 75+ for interstates, and 85+++ for interstates and major highways outside of metro areas.

Fair enough. I now see that speed limits are set differently in different parts of the US. My driving has been mostly in the western and southwestern states.

No, I was simply providing an example of how your thinking is flawed. People simply ignore externalities when it comes to driving safety.

I'm sorry you feel alienated because I'm not sympathetic to unsafe drivers. I feel correspondingly alienated by your lack of concern regarding pedestrians, and the dangers cars pose to small children.

Traffic calming would probably be unsuitable to my road; it's about 1/4 mile long, and only wide enough for two cars. When cars park on the street, it makes it a swerve event when two cars come from opposite directions. Speed bumps might help to some degree, but from what I've seen of the drivers behavior, they'd probably just enjoy that.

I think you're giving drivers far too much credit for making rational judgements regarding speed.

The flaw in your argument is, "I trust myself driving, but I don't trust anyone else."

I am a great driver and people had been present when I got myself out of 'sticky' situations--avoided red-light runner t-bones, people merging into me, parking lot fender benders who don't check their rear, etc.

Problem is, there are plenty of bad drivers out there who would happily go 80-90 and drive recklessly in their parents' BMW (Palm Beach teenagers, anyone?). The deaths due to traffic accidents are staggering and it's a huge public health issue. If speeding is not illegal, then it could be difficult to show wrecklessness or other mitigating circumstances should there be a manslaughter case. IMNAL, but I think it could have wider and unexpected implications.

I agree that many speed limits are somewhat arbitrary, but I disagree with 'smart' means of reducing people's speed. People need to learn how to follow the rules or they don't belong in society... it's as simple as that.

The flaw in my argument is that I'm calling for reasonable and evidence based traffic laws and road planning, rather than making it a political fiasco that's more about revenue generation than safety?

Whereas your argument is, the status quo is fine, people just need to follow the current rules better, even though all evidence says people aren't going to do so?

I agree with the revenue generation/political issue... I think those unfairly influence traffic safety laws.

I think there are certainly some areas where speed limits should be much higher, but my point is that you need to balance your desire to drive faster with the risks of people who are not as responible as you causing major accidents.

Your counter case of reckless teenagers is a strawman -- traffic deaths have dropped over the last few decades. Previous Poster didn't say there shouldn't be speed limits, but was arguing against imagining that lowering a speed limit would generally do anything meaningful in reducing traffic speeds.

Speed limits, when using the textbook, are set by running a study of car speeds on a particular stretch of road, then setting the limit where something like 80% of drivers are at or under it. This survey is done with either cameras or those nearly invisible pressure strips they glue to the road surface, and most people drive through without noticing at their normal speeds.

If it's set slower for political reasons, obviously then many more people are going to naturally be driving faster than the limit. The primary function for this is to increase ticket revenues, not make people safer. Indeed, adding things to the road to make it feel like you need to slow down, and not just a speed sign, do more to control traffic speeds.

Alternatively, it's the one case where I'd consider arguments for speed cameras. Yes, they too only affect local traffic speeds (just before them and a little after). But if the concern is speed in a particular corner of a road, put one up. People will know they're there, slow down, and be safer.

It's not a strawman because eggregious accidents are the ones that generate excesive 'reactionary' changes to local roads. Particularly tragic accidents are the ones that can get political and media coverage necessary to cause 'knee-jerk' changes that are not necessarily evidence-based. The problem is drunks, immature drivers and seniors can and will continue to contribute to these issues regardless of the traffic laws.

Also, traffic deaths dropping is irrelevant because there is no causal relationship. It could be safer cars, more seatbelt use.... heck, changes in weather patterns or population densities could all contribute and it's going to be futile to argue laws may prevent traffic accidents. The point is that when an accident happens, laws need to be on the books so that people can be prosecuted for their mistakes.

So if egregious accidents will contribute to 'knee-jerk' changes regardless of traffic laws, it is indeed a non-argument and a strawman when considering the case of changing the way traffic laws are set.

I poorly supported that with the traffic deaths dropping bit, quite true.

Separately, it would be more apt to observe that traffic speed limits set not with respect to natural driving speeds are shown to increase traffic collisions, because speeds set too high will have some drivers naturally driving far too slow to be safe, and speeds too low will also have drivers driving too slow (the posted limit) versus the natural speed of the road which some will drive.

In the same spirit, children should also wear a GPS which will bite them in the ass if they move outside the playground area. And their parents should also wear similar GPS in case they'd try to go to some nasty places to buy drugs instead of educating and feeding their children. To protect kids, everyone should wear a GPS.

Except for those who write and enforce the law, of course.

"Tough on crime" policies rarely change behavior. It just puts more people in jail and creates more public dissent in communities.

Perfect law enforcement is what exactly? Reducing incorrect stops and searches? Or trading everyone's privacy for accurate and efficient punishment?

Traffic violations are so common that I think perfect enforcement would almost instantaneously lead to changes in the law.

The first day of perfect enforcement in Northern Virginia, for example, would lead to about two million tickets being issued. After the entire legislature had been strung up by their thumbs, the new legislature would no doubt realign all speed limits and other laws to match how people actually drive, rather than some insane ideal of how they should.

The politicians would simply carve out exemptions for themselves. I have seen no evidence that .gov has ever been this responsive to the impact of the laws they write.

It's never been tried on anything like this scale, though. Imagine literally 50% of the population getting a citation on the same day.

I have friends working in traffic departments for various cities. They tell stories of sending out speed recommendations based on the design of the road, houses, intersections, etc. The speed limits come back from the politicians much reduced.

Roads are designed to be driven at a particular speed. This is the speed most drivers use.

Having a lower speed limit gives a false sense of safety. It's basically the "think of the children!" argument.

Police use judgment, not just about giving you a ticket, but when and where they will look for infractions, so it's not a reverse lottery. It's not random. The think of the children argument is often used to enhance laws and punishments. I don't really mind the GPS everywhere tracking, but what you're asking for is ridiculous even to me.

I've received a single speeding ticket in my life. It was from an automated camera set up on a section of freeway where the speed limit is 45 and the average speed of traffic is about 60. There's a speed camera set up there. The trick is that the camera can't be certain of which car it's tracking unless there's only one car in view. Given the density of traffic there, it's a total crapshoot as to whether you'll be alone in the camera's field of view as you go past. Given the speed of traffic there, it's difficult, and dangerous, to drive slow enough not to get a ticket if you are.

And this is hardly unique, of course. Cops operate under similar constraints (although they can tell cars apart better than a camera system) and their placement is unpredictable.

There are certainly non-random components, but there are substantial random components too.

I've received two speeding tickets in my life. One was a speed trap where a road went from a 50 mph limit to a 30 mph limit, and there was always a cop waiting there. It wasn't, however, random: everyone duly slowed down to 35 except me who drove through at 55. In retrospect, the speed trap itself is justified. It was positioned where the road transitioned from unincorporated county to an incorporated city, and the city didn't want cars zooming through its Main Street at 55.

The other time I received a ticket, I was also driving way faster than traffic. In my experience, that's mostly when people get tickets--not randomly for exceeding the speed limit when everyone else is also speeding, but when they're going above the speed of traffic. I used to commute from Atlanta to the suburbs on I-85, where the speed limit was 55 but the speed of traffic was 75+, and I never got a ticket. My friend who did was going 80+ in a BMW M3.

Unless they use their judgment in a very non-random way that doesn't improve anything. There are many places with photo radars, which are basically money collection places. The road is straight, the traffic is low, no buildings around, the speed limit is lower than anyone will expect and the local police will always wait there.

Abraham Lincoln — 'The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.'

The drug war could have fooled me.

Yeah, because the drug war is enforced strictly. I mean, look at all the well-off white people going to prison at the same rate as poor black people.

There's no evidence Lincoln said that. More importantly, I question the wisdom of increasing suffering as the best way to get a bad law repealed. Ulysses S. Grant[1]:

I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.

Note "effective", not "best".

[1] http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/grant1.asp

Perfect law enforcement is an interesting idea but probably scary (and unworkable) in practice. There are things people can do today that were once illegal (e.g being homosexual) and if we'd had perfect enforcement, they'd have been thrown in prison. Challenging rules by breaking them is what you're suggesting but perfect enforcement would just take away those people's voices.

"Reasonable laws" are not sufficient for total/exact enforcement - this would require "perfect" laws, which is an unrealistic expectation for imperfect legislative bodies.

Your turn signal lamp was not illuminated for one nanometer less than the legally required distance...

Please realize also that the laws need to protect that "some guy you don't relate to" as well as the "everyone" that you care about.

I don't think we want perfect enforcement (for the tools to do that inevitably bring down democracy), but we need to bring laws up to par with the immense risk that driving poses.

There is ample evidence humans simply can't drive; they process information too slowly for the speeds they are driving, they are unable to make purely rational decisions, instead involving emotion, bad memories and a ton of cognitive dissonance, they are completely useless at estimating risk (or their own limitations), incapable of doing some monotonous task but staying alert, ...

Laws simply do not acknowledge that, for economical [1] or simply historical reasons. You pass the test once, and your "abilities" are never questioned again. You can crush somebody on a right-turn, and as long as you stay at the scene, are sober and repeat "I didn't see him" ad infinitum, you can drive again tomorrow.

[1]: Had we correctly considered the risks and negative externalities, this would be a non problem. We would instead have useful public transport.

Driving scales horribly. That's its first problem. If there are a few cars on the road, it's safe at reasonable speeds. At congestion, it becomes unsafe, slow, and miserable.

It's also a leaky abstraction. It's surprisingly safe for what it is-- humans moving at speeds no land animal, under its own power, can. The risk of death on the highway is about 0.5 micromorts per hour. That makes it safer than skydiving or scuba diving, and comparable to marathon running. Ultimately, those aren't bad odds. (By the way, running marathons is safer than a sedentary lifestyle by far. I'm doing a half-triathlon in October with no qualms about the risk.)

The real issue isn't speed (although that's a part of it) but complexity. Accidents don't usually happen when one thing goes wrong but when several things go wrong together. That's why they're more common on low-speed roads and in urban settings (where more random shit can pierce the abstraction of driving) than on the highway. Speed does mean, however, that the accidents that do occur will be a lot worse. Speeding on low-speed roads is actually a lot worse than on the highway. If you hit a pedestrian at 40 in a 25 zone, you'll probably kill him.

> It's also a leaky abstraction.

I'm not sure what word you meant here, but driving isn't an abstraction. It's a physical activity that occurs in the real world. It's not a simplified representation of anything else. If you die in your car, you die in real life too.

Abstraction is the wrong word, I agree. It's more of an abstraction of experience. On a freeway at 75mph, you're actually traveling extremely fast by a natural standard, but the experience is designed to feel more like a brisk walk in many ways.

Nothing is perfect.

Breaking the law sometime makes sense. Think of a person driving his pregnant wife or a injured person from an accident scene to the hospital.

Then that should be the law ("you can speed in such-and-such circumstances, potentially argued before a jury").

Agreed, but my point still remains, even that law would not be perfect.

You would always miss out something or leave something open for abusers, so, to some extent, common sense should prevail too.

Hence judicial discretion and jury nullification. But the idea of jury trials for traffic violations is economically laughable.

Which isn't breaking the law, at least in Texas. You're allowed to speed for medical emergencies. That's why the police sometimes ask if everything's okay when pulling you over; if you're going to the hospital, they'll give you an escort.

I agree vehemently. In my opinion, laws should be followed, and perfectly enforced. If that makes you feel uneasy, and if the majority of the population feels the same way, the law should be removed.

Perfect enforcement would rapidly reduce the number of stupid and nonsensical laws on the books, that only exist so that the police can jail people after they have done something wrong/after they were targeted by the police or another influential person.

"Perfect enforcement would rapidly reduce the number of stupid and nonsensical laws on the books"

And if that doesn't turn out to be correct, we end up in a totalitarian regime.

Some countries have found a third option: instead of a $300 fine, you pay a $100 bribe.

Except if you run the bribing scheme, but in the greater scheme of things, there are more people not running the scheme than people running the scheme.

(Good news: industrious cops won't miss any traffic violation when their bonuses depend on it!)

I think this is one of the standard arguments for automated traffic enforcement, which has been around for years. Around me they are expanding red light cameras and speed cameras to also be able to write tickets for blocking the box and not coming to a complete stop at stop signs.

Washington DC pervasively uses speed cameras and it certainly slows me down. People now drive the speed limit on a freeway where the speed limit is an absurdly low 45 mph.

Complaints about some wide boulevards where the city routinely ran speed traps probably played a role in spurring the mayor to increase the speed limits on some roads. Certainly that's better than having absurdly low speed limits that people ignore.

The police chief credits the widespread speed cameras for a reduction in traffic fatalities.

I have mixed feelings about some of the camera (e.g. I suspect many of the Red Light tickets are people who just missed a yellow light, which feels like it should not be as stiff a fine as an inattentive driver who blows right through an intersection.)

That said, I'm 100% for blocking-the-box cameras. It's a huge problem in DC that leads to cascading gridlock and pedestrians snaking through intersections.

I was just in Holland where there's a lot of traffic cameras. They also have this thing called "Trajectory Control" where they track your license plate at the beginning and at the end they calculate your average speed. If it's higher than the speed limit, BOOM, you can expect a fine in your mailbox.

All of this was originally intended to increase safety on the road but the funny thing is that instead of watching the road more, I'm busy watching my accelerometer.

Yes officer I was making sure to travel at 44 MPH unfortunately that meant I missed that kid running out into the road.

I would prefer to go the opposite route: don't write laws unless they can be enforced effectively. This prevents us from perfect or automated enforcement of terrible laws, and also cuts down on the amount of "nice to have" legislation. It's certainly a guideline for voting for a representative.

The problem with this idea is that it would basically make rape legal (as it cannot really be enforced fairly/effectively - it boils down to he said/she said).

I would support "perfect enforcement" if the laws were revised, at least with regard to highway speed.

Residential zones should be lowered to 20-25 MPH with traffic calming (which is far more effective than posted speed limits) and strictly enforced (e.g. 28 in 25 => ticket). 40/25 is actually much worse than 100/65 on the Interstate (in low traffic) although most people aren't aware of that.

Finally, speed limits should be dynamic. In non-residential areas, about +15 higher than they currently, but with a -10 to -20 modification for rain and even more for snow and ice.

Interstates should be raised to 80-90 MPH with points and insurance notification only happening if the officer can prove that the driver endangered others, such as by weaving, or exceeding the flow of traffic. (At +15 mph relative to average flow in the left lane, that would qualify.) Otherwise, the fine can stick but the points/insurance-hit vanish. 120 MPH on the highway, with the right car and a straight road, if there is no traffic on the road, is not that dangerous. It's still not worth it IMO-- I generally drive 75-80 when there is no traffic, because I don't see a point in high speed-- but the real danger is speed variance rather than raw speed.

Finally, people who drive in the left lane and are not passing should be ticketed (except when getting on or off a left exit). Lane inversion is dangerous. Passing on the right should generally be discouraged (but probably can't be outlawed given the number of slow cars in left lanes in the US). Warnings of left exits/entrances should be posted at least 3 miles out.

"Perfect enforcement also puts pressure on lawmakers to make reasonable laws"

That's where you made a mistake. a) They want eg money from tickets. They don't care about "reasonable". b) In a meta level, rules don't work. How much AI did we get by rule based systems? Rules (laws) are strict. Reality is "fluid".

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