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Comment by Avitas | Hacker News Reader

Be careful what you wish for. I don't think you intended to push the boundaries, but I'll do that for you.

Again, I consider this quite a stretch of your vision. But, imagine having supervision include things such as:

- ...Vehicle sensors. Exceeding the speed limit, making an illegal turn, failure to maintain safe distance, littering or any other violation automatically relays infraction details to relevant government agency and ticket is automatically issued

- Direct supervision of every trade (whether monetary or barter) for taxation and violation purposes

- Supervision of normally private / personal (i.e., at home) things for medical, safety and potential criminal behavior

I am not sure where the line should be drawn, but I would not feel comfortable with pervasive, unlimited supervision.

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"Vehicle sensors. Exceeding the speed limit, making an illegal turn, failure to maintain safe distance, littering or any other violation automatically relays infraction details to relevant government agency and ticket is automatically issued"

35,000 people die every year on our streets because of careless driving. There's no right to privacy in what you do in public that endangers the lives everyone around you.

Killing a cityfull of innocent people every year is not some kind of civil right.

People who can't drive safely and within the law don't have to drive at all. Those who do have a responsibility to comply with public safety measures, including traffic laws and enforcement tracking. It makes little difference if that means cops or electronic tracking, except that electronic tracking can do a better job keeping us safe.

-- "supervision of every trade (whether monetary or barter) for taxation"

I don't know why you're shilling for tax evasion, either. And I'm a libertarian: I don't like the taxes, but that's no excuse to cheat while they're still the law.

Laws can't satisfy every single edge case. I have to sometimes run red protected left turn lights (very carefully) on my motorcycle because they don't sense it. Sometimes you have to swerve out of your lane due to an emergency, etc.

We have judgement for a reason. I also feel like the current fines associated with various law breaking have the expectation that not all of the behavior will be captured and thus it's rather high. If I got an automatic $5 fine every time I went 10 mph over the limit I might be more amendable to it than if it was $300 each time (as it is now). Again, if I am speeding 15 over in the middle of a deserted highway it's different than doing so in a residential area.

Also per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i... I would not say ALL of those deaths are caused by "careless driving". In fact the majority is probably due to alcohol, falling asleep, etc. although I suppose you could consider being drunk while driving "careless".

Just because our laws are poorly suited for new technology doesn't mean we have to be stuck with the tech we have. With more automated traffic enforcement, our laws would have to better model our expectations, as you point out. If we had speed cameras on 100% of roads, I doubt people would be okay with $300 fines for speeding, so it's bound to change.

That's a cute notion. It's exceedingly rare for a law to disappear once it's on the books, while mission creep for current laws is all too pervasive.

The idea that people balking at fines will cause the fine amounts to drop is equally silly. Consider the times the (local / state / federal) government introduces a temporary tax ... or builds a road that will only at first be a toll road. All too often, these temporary things become permanent fixtures.

Driving while tired (including driving for too long without a break) is careless. If you are tired enough, I believe the impact on your reactions can approach that of you being tipsy.

I have driven after working 30ish hours straight and think it's something best avoided.

Driving while tired can well surpass tipsy. http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/about-this-sho...

Who is more dangerous? The traffic moving at 70 mph (which is 5 mph over the legal limit) or the car that merges into that traffic at 40 mph? In my view one is doing something technically illegal while the other is doing something technically legal but batshit insane. An automated system would ticket all the safe drivers in this scenario.

"People who can't drive safely" and people who can't drive "within the law" are two separate groups with limited overlap. And I 100% reject to your idea that they "don't have to drive at all." Driving is a necessity. (And if it isn't, let's get those idiot drivers off the road...)

Complying with "public safety measures" is not the same as driving safely. Everyone has a responsibility to do the latter and should not be penalized for it for not doing the former. I keep away from other cars and stay with the flow of traffic. That makes me a safer driver (even if traffic is doing 5-10 mph over the limit) than the guys who drive right next to each other doing the speed limit or less.

Electronic tracking doesn't keep us safer. Case in point: The shortening of yellow light timings beyond legal limits in order to increase revenues from red light cameras.

And even those red light cameras we have now have humans making all the decisions. I've triggered those cameras many, many times while making perfectly legal right turns on red.

> Who is more dangerous? The traffic moving at 70 mph (which is 5 mph over the legal limit) or the car that merges into that traffic at 40 mph?

All, one-up that one. How about someone merging into a 60 to 70 mph highway flow at 40 mph with three cars behind him that also need to merge and are now stuck behind someone creating an incredibly dangerous situation because they are (conjecture) afraid of the accelerator. I have see potentially horrific situations just like the one I described on the California 5 freeway. This is a major trucking route which is full of 18 wheelers. They, of course, keep to the right-most lanes. I saw a woman (sorry ladies, it was a woman) merge onto the freeway at what had to be 35 mph and get right in front of a semi doing at least 60. Right behind her two cars who were just stuck there desperately trying to figure out how not to get killed by this semi that had to lock all its breaks.

Nah, give me someone with years of experience (not a teenager) driving fast any time. They are generally much safer drivers than the fools who are afraid of going over the posted speed limit. I've never had a problem getting on the freeway behind someone who's got the pedal to the metal and knows how to match traffic speed and merge safely.

Every time I am stuck behind someone merging at 40 into a 55 I whisper a silent plea for mass adoption of SDCs

What I do, stuck behind such a driver, is spot it quickly and hang well back. Then I can accelerate to match the traffic behind such a dangerously slow driver. Plus, if they have their accident early, I have lots of space and time to deal with it.

Drivers behind me often misunderstand this.

> There's no right to privacy in what you do in public that endangers the lives everyone around you.

It's pretty terrifying to see that argument in favor of the government tracking everyone's detailed vehicle statistics.

>35,000 people die every year on our streets because of careless driving. There's no right to privacy in what you do in public that endangers the lives everyone around you. Killing a cityfull of innocent people every year is not some kind of civil right.

And who said that amount is big?

Perhaps it goes with the territory -- driving machines that weight a ton for hundrends of miles with 70 mph, and it's not just the driver going 5 miles over the limit, but other factors that could be statistically inevitable despite any surveillance.

>I don't know why you're shilling for tax evasion, either. And I'm a libertarian: I don't like the taxes, but that's no excuse to cheat while they're still the law.

So do you do immoral things to if they are "still the law"? Slavery was the law too at a not too distant past, as was segreggation (and some of us lived at that time too).

"John Spartan, you are fined five credits for repeated violations of the verbal morality statute."

I have to agree here, I'd have less problem if all camera feeds that the gov't has access to are available for all citizens, including police cars, etc.. at all times.

Also, the fact that discretion is rarely something one thinks of when it comes to the police or prosecutors lately with nearly 1% of the U.S. population in prison.

>I have to agree here, I'd have less problem if all camera feeds that the gov't has access to are available for all citizens, including police cars, etc.. at all times.

Remember that stalkers exist. Madison, WI did this momentarily a year or three back, and a lot of abusers and such used it to stalk and harass other people much more consistently than they could have otherwise.

>>- ...Vehicle sensors. Exceeding the speed limit, making an illegal turn, failure to maintain safe distance, littering or any other violation automatically relays infraction details to relevant government agency and ticket is automatically issued

I am afraid that this is already happening with trackers fitted by insurance companies. Going over the speed limit, or flooring it from the traffic lights is not going to get you a ticket, but your insurance premium will go up(and that can hurt more than a ticket). I hope that there always will be a choice of policies without trackers.

Regarding vehicular tracking...

I realize that there are voluntary tracking programs in-place for insurance purposes. That is the reason I specifically mentioned the somewhat fantastical thought of an automatic ticketing system for every type of vehicle-related infraction one can imagine (e.g., littering, endangering for lack of maintenance).

From what I've seen on the roads, something like this would mean crushing financial burden for many people for the first few days, weeks and months of operation. On the flip side, I think we would see a welcome change on the roads.

Wouldn't that be something? On second thought, maybe that is not such a bad idea.

We seem to have a cultural attitude that most dangerous and illegal behaviors are socially acceptable just as long as one is operating a motor vehicle. That thinking really does baffle my mind.

We have a very real privacy issue with potentially tracking vehicle movements by authorities and/or private companies. I think somehow there can somewhere be a middle ground that makes the roads safer while preserving some privacy. Perhaps?? I personality think there isn't nearly enough to deter dangerous driving at the moment.

Hopefully we just will all have self driving cars in a few years instead.

There should be a distinction made ib every discussion about this subject between "dangerous" driving and merely "illegal" driving. Sometimes they are the same, like speeding through a school zone (never do this!). But sometimes they are not, like when four lanes of traffic on a limited access freeway all decide to drive at 80mph in a 65mph zone. In that case, driving 65 would be the much more dangerous choice, as it forces other traffic to back up and make more lane changes (more opportunities for accidents).

Speeders love to argue that speeding is not dangerous. Or that THEY are such good drivers that they know how to speed safely. I am not 100 percent convinced of that. The reason being is humans are very, very bad at analyzing risks as well as being very bad at analyzing their own skill. Famously 93% of drivers think they are above average in driving skill.[1] As far as cold hard facts, i don't know if they exist but government organizations claim speeding kills. The reliability of such claims of course can be challenged. Physics also tells us that if number of accidents remain constant than higher speeds during an accident would lead to more damage/death/injury.

In theory we would have safety experts analyze each road and come up with an effective speed that would be safe in optimal conditions. We don't have that unfortunately. Speed limits can tend to be somewhat arbitrary. This is unfortunate.

The other issue is, yes, it is safest when drivers are mostly operating at the same speed. How do cars all communicate with each other to set the speed? That would be issuing a speed limit. Speed limits are unfortunately set at a maximum which means driving below the speed limit is legal and potentially make the roads unsafe when everyone else is driving at or near the maximum.

It is a difficult problem that probably won't be solved until we have self driving cars. But for now i think we are not taking the human element of road safety as serious as i believe we should be. Road accidents are a MAJOR cause of death in people under 25. On the engineering side we have made huge strides in engineering safer cars and roads.

[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/00016918819...

>In theory we would have safety experts analyze each road and come up with an effective speed that would be safe in optimal conditions

That would be nice, but it's important to recognize that 1/4 of accidents are weather related. Often that is because they were going over the maximum safe speed at the time, even though it was below the posted speed limit. Per the NHTSA only somewhere around 10 to 15% of accidents are directly related to speeding, the most likely cause of an accident is inattention.

Ah, what we really need then are eye trackers in cars. Look off the road for more than two seconds? Ticket! Not watching your mirrors? Ticket! Change lanes without checking your blind spot? Ticket!

I believe I've heard of cars that will make an obnoxious noise if you appear to be falling asleep.

Part of the problem with this argument is that safety is often not the real motivation behind any particular speed limit.

On one hand, yes, I agree. But on the other - insurance companies will want to decrease their risks as much as possible. Which means that they will penalize everyone for accelerating faster than at a snails pace, for going into corners so you start leaning to the side a little bit, and of course for driving late at night. At which point, there will be absolutely no point in buying anything other than a 1.0L self-propelled shopping carts.

I know HN is extremely anti-car sometimes, but there are people(like myself) who enjoy driving. And by "enjoy" I don't mean going 100mph on country roads and overtaking like a maniac. I just like the physical act of driving, and I feel like having every one of my reactions judged by an insurance company to penalize me would kill any enjoyment I might have had left.

It would be nice if several US states could do this, and people could move there, and we could stand on the sidelines and see how it works out.

People could pick and choose where to move depending on what they like. One state could be mass surveillance and one could be anarchy. Or you could stay in a moderate state that is centrist and acts a lot like what modern states do.

It would be a lot better than the broad supernational control states and companies can have over policy and society. There is no political experimentation anymore and that really sucks.

> People could pick and choose where to move depending on what they like.

People may be legally free to move between states, but certainly very many are not economically free to move between states.

> There is no political experimentation anymore

There certainly is significant political variation between the states, with some of those single-state variants becoming popular and spreading.

There may not be changes in the direction you want or on the issues you care about -- but that's different than an absence of political experimentation.

What you say is technically true, but kind of misses the point. Historically variation between the states was so great that today's variation is practically indecernable. Political experimentation still exists, but is difficult, because of strong centralized government. A strong centralized government makes some experimentation impossible and other experimentation gets pushed to the federal level even if not appropriate to the nation at large.

Ideally by the time we get to that point of surveillance we'll have sufficiently advanced self-driving vehicles such that driving infractions will no longer be a thing.

Most financial transactions that hit the banking system at some point can already be tracked and audited. Arguably many people who elude that are basically ripping off the rest of society. As far as banks cheating people, maybe that kind of surveillance could help curb that?

Definitely would need to be careful about how far it pervades in to private life. Maybe it's impossible to limit, in which case it's probably a bad idea.

We'll just have to get used to it, then. Tinier and tinier cameras get built every year. Imagine a limit - dust motes that record and relay, blown by the wind and carried by your clothes, hair, pet into your home. Anyone can tune in to anyone, anywhere.

The only hope I see is new social rules. Can't stop people from peeking into everything; but CAN have taboos against mentioning it. So the illusion of privacy maintained, which is all people need to keep sane. Already cultures have rules like this, especially where folks lived in close confinement.

This feels like such a cop-out philosophy: just get used to it and don't bring it up in polite company. This reeks of cognitive dissonance.

No, its bowing to the inevitable. There is actually no way to avoid loss of privacy due to technology. It would be like asking everyone to quit breathing your air. Its not a cop-out to concede that, and work from there.

That all would be OK if we also had drones that followed politicians and senior civil servants 24/7 and streamed video and audio to any citizen who wanted to check up on them.

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