'The Fight for the Right to Drive'

Denisovans, @Whitey. That’s much more believable.

I’m not sure about that. If an animal kills a human, they are put to death aren’t they? It’s a much less formal process than for a human, but the sentence is still death.

Not always, but even when they are, we don’t put them on trial because we understand that they lack the moral code to understand that what they did was (from our perspective) wrong. We kill them to eliminate a threat, not to mete out justice. Justice, like its relative morality, is a human conceit.

“Natural rights” is a specific philosophy. The Catholic Church is heavy invested in natural rights but those are not the same as natural rights defined by the founders. And the US Constitution enshrined slavery.

As to Virginia. My son got his license 4 years ago. The written test was very tough, it took him a few toys and a lot of studying. Nothing like the written test I took in the 1980s. And each time he took it the test was quite different. One time he tripped up on questions concerning commercial truck trailers. But he now knows what hours you are most likely to encounter drunk drivers.

I cannot comment on the driving test. Since he was 18 he wasn’t allows to take the test at the DMV, we had to pay his driving instructor to evaluate his driving. When I took the road test it was scary how simple it was, drive around the block. When I got my first license in New York the road test was much tough. I had moved from British Columbia to Virginia which is why I had to take the tests for a new license.

Seatbelt and helmet requirements do more than save you from yourself. Can you imagine a scenario in which someone gets injured and it doesn’t affect others monetarily and in other ways? Typically we all pay for the ambulance that takes the injured to the hospital, we’re all affected by the cost of his treatment, the cost of insurance, disability payments, SS payments to his family if he dies.

Theoretically it’s possible for someone to be injured and not affect anyone but himself but it would be a rare case.

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And therin lies the trap. There is virtually nothing that cannot be rationalized as having an impact on someone else and thus someone that would like to control it. Like grass? Someone is alergic and it takes precious water. Yes the slippery slope again.

Minnesota passed a hands free law which I suppose is a reasonable idea although most reasonable and responsible people don’t need a law. But the clincher was that the group of folks that lobbied for the bill stated afterwards in an interview, that it is just a start. They won’t be finished until there are no drivers in cars and everyone will be “SAFE”. 1930’s Germany revisited? Be ever vigilant.

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Please stop talking negatively about immigrants

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You are painting with a broad brush, are you part of the otherwise? Free speech is one thing, reality is another. Everyone in the US is descended from an immigrant as far as I can tell, and as so has the right to obtain a drivers license.

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Simple gibberish, Andrew. I don’t know whose post you were referring nor does your post make sense.

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Hi Andrew. DB isn’t taking away your rights by asking you to redirect your comments. Let’s stay on topic and away from the immigration comments. Thanks.

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While i concede that Justice and morality are a human concept. I also believe the death penalty (human version) is just as much to remove the threat from society, even the prison society, as it is about justice. Which doesn’t bother me a bit.

Your first amendment right to free speech is protection from government censorship. This forum is not run by the government.

It comes as no surprise to me that you haven’t read and don’t understand the Bill of Rights.

Spew your illiterate hate speech elsewhere.

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I work in insurance and bad/irresponsible drivers are penalized by higher premiums, court costs and time, limited options for insurance carriers, possible driver improvement classes, revoked/suspended license and other obstacles. I think the laws are fair and promote safer driving.

Then why do people with multiple DUIs not loose their licenses until they’ve had several of them? What kind of a deterrent is that?

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DUI offenders have to pay alot in legal fees, court costs, losing license for some time and/or installing a ignition interlock device to keep from losing their license at least here in MD. Many people end up giving up their drivers license to take their punishment. Most people will wisen up after the first DUI but as you know, some people just dont learn. Oh yea, and you can be sent to jail, so there’s your deterrent.

I don’t think there is enough enforcement for that to be true.

Getting pulled over and cited for breaking traffic laws seems to be a matter of chance with low probability.

The funny thing is that, if the government really wanted to make the roads safer, there are more effective means to accomplish that than the ones we use. Cars could be governed at the maximum highway limit in each state. Police discretion to pull someone over and not issue a citation could be removed to reduce corruption. Any economist or psychologist can tell you that positive reinforcement is more effective at modifying behavior than punishment. If you knew being pulled over for driving under the speed limit would win you season tickets to see your favorite team, would you drive slower?

Based on everything we know about human nature, ticketing one out of 100 speeders, or one out of 100 reckless drivers, is not an effective way to promote safe driving.

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Haha i like your example, and YES, I’d drive at a snails pace to get me a pair of deadskins (i mean redskins) season tickets!!

For me personally, I got my last ticket 5/31/2016 and for the last 3 years, I know I couldve been paying alot less in auto premium for me and my wife (has clean record) and that irks me knowing that. TBH, I vow to speed less going forward due to the cost of receiving a ticket. Come 5/31/19, Ill requote my policy and let you all know how much my premium comes down by removing 1 speeding ticket. For 6 months premium, me and my wife pay $1,539.98 for 11’ audi a5 and 17’ nissan murano. I expect our 6 moth premium to come down to about $1,100-$1,200.

It’s not a deterrent when you have people who get 10+ DUIs. Neither are the fines, court fees, etc

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The serial DUI offender probably isn’t, because no one will insure him. Instead,my premiums go up because you guys know you’ll have to pay an uninsured motorist claim to me if the moron rams into me.

Same goes for the revoked license. So? The license just signifies that you are legal to drive. If you don’t care about the law - you know, like people who break the law by driving drunk don’t - then you’ll drive whether you have a license or not.

Almost 30 people die per day from being hit by a drunk driver. More than 10,800 people per year. And that’s just deaths - lots of people drive drunk and manage not to kill anyone.

We apparently need a better deterrent. Yours isn’t working.

For starters, we could mandate that cops not routinely sit under bridges running radar to catch the low hanging fruit of people doing a measly 10 over. Get the people driving unsafely, not the people driving slightly faster than the limit.

A good driver could do 20 over the limit and be safer than a drunk driver, or someone playing on their phone, or someone who’s simply got poor car control.

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they do have dui checkpoints. Do you think those work as deterrents? As for cops under bridges, yea they get a hand full of 10 over drivers but they also get the ones going 20+ over as well. Yea you wont get everyone thats driving drunk, but you will get some and thats a few less off the road.

No, and I think their constitutionality is questionable despite what overly jackbooted courts have decided. Pull me over if I appear to be breaking the law. Stopping everyone for having the audacity to be on that particular road is anti-American.

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