(OT) Cornell footabll player killed in car accident

[jeh25]

[Q]CowbellGuy Wrote:
 Because they know how to drive. Driving in Italy is like an amusement park ride. Cops don't care what you do. You can drive 140 k's on the sidewalk between two old ladies in a school zone, and a lot of them do. The difference is they don't hit anything, because they're much better drivers. If we forced people to be better drivers, we wouldn't have to waste money on superfluous legislation. Case closed.
[/q]
Fair enough. However, given the poor urban planning decisions we've made for the last 50 years, we *can't* tighten driving standards now without condeming an entire segment of society to poverty. Like it or not, we, as a culture, have made choices for the last half centruy that preclude us from tightening licensing standard. Now we have to live with those choices.

[Ben Rocky '04]

Yes, people have driven without seatbelts for decades. So what?  If fewer people wear seatbelts, the number of accidents will stay the same, and the percentage of them resulting in injuries and deaths will go up.

Parents need to set examples for their kids, yes.  If they are setting bad examples, I am all for changing their behavior.  Call me a liberal.  Age, do you think that children should be required to wear seat belts?

JEH25 is totally right.  We have created a culture and an urban growth pattern that makes us rely on cars for everything we do.  We shift jobs, build malls and situate businesses so that they can be more accessible to cars.  Cars are our way of life right now, and as such, need to be regulated.  Since airbags and safety glass exist primarily for the benefit of those in the vehicle and not other people on the road, should we stop regulating them too and let consumers decide of they want such features?

We're lucky to be in a State that actually has vehicle inspections.  Most don't, Age.  I've been pulled over 3 times since I got my license 6 years ago for having a busted taillight or some other minor infraction, and I'm glad that some officers pay attention to such things.  Those same officers are hopefully applying that diligence to making sure idiots aren’t killing themselves or their children by driving like Americans with out seat belts.

[Lauren '06]

[Q]Shorts Wrote:

 Although this seems to be getting quite far off the title topic:
[Q2]Clearly, the inspection process is not working.[/Q]
As a Connecticut resident, I'd have to say that the NY inspection process works infinitely better than the CT inspection process.  Which is to say, we don't have one right now.[/q]
I have even more terrifying stories from, not surprisingly, Florida...

Florida does not have vehicle inspections at all, same as Connecticut.  Driving tests for people applying for first-time licenses are done on closed courses, they include no interaction with real traffic, pedestrians, or road signs, and they don't include parallel parking (how people managed to fail this the first time is beyond me, but they've done it).  And worst of all... a friend of mine went for her driving test on her sixteenth birthday, a day when the DMV happened to be packed with people.  She went up to the desk to get her place in line.  Being that she was a cute, docile looking thing with straight A's in school, they simply took her picture and handed her a license without testing her at all.

Yes, I am all for making driving tests more stringent, not to mention making them the responsibility of the nation and not the state, so that stupid things like this don't happen.

[Greg]

I can see the SCOTUS reasoning.  Driving = Access the national highway system = Commerce clause = Federal regulation.  The Warren court would have done it in a heartbeat.

I'm not that big on state's right but, no, I don't see it -- it should stay a matter of state law.  The appropriate remedy for stupid laws is to make them smarter, not turn them over to the Feds.  IMHO.

[Jacob 03]

i'm glad someone else busted out the con law reasoning on this one so i didn't have to be the legal nerd.  thanks, greg.  

he's right too, laur...er....banshee.  i think state governments are generally dumber than the federal government, but changing systems overnight isn't always the way to go.  that's why age's proposal for abandoning seat belt laws to improve driving has its problems.  even if it eventually improves driving skill down the line, too many people will die during that fun transition period where everyone still drives awfully and fewer people are sporting seat belts.  

as for silly state driver's license tests... until 1998 the New Mexico Motor Vehicle Department required someone to simply show up with a birth certificate showing age of at least fifteen years to obtain a license.  no test, no classes.  and this was the rule, not the exception.  and this in the state with the highest percentage of uninsured motorists on the roads (despite being amongst those majority of states that require insurance).  


EDIT:  removed two unintentional vehicular puns

[CowbellGuy]

[Q]Jacob 03 Wrote:
age's proposal for abandoning seat belt laws to improve driving has its problems.  even if it eventually improves driving skill down the line, too many people will die during that fun transition period where everyone still drives awfully and fewer people are sporting seat belts.[/q]
I said that very tongue-in-cheek. I also said I feel people should wear seatbelts, but the Libertarian in me doesn't think anyone should be forcing us to. It was all just a part of the argument that already-bad drivers are made to feel even more coccooned, in part due to this type of legislation, resulting in even more diversion of attention from the actual driving.

[billhoward]

Deaths per 100 million miles make sense compared within one country over time to balance the effects of population growth and good economic times. And you can make some comparisons among developed countries. In emerging nations, the whole country probably doesn't drive 100 million miles, so it makes more sense to compare it to 100,000 population.

Most of Europe is better than the U.S. on either measure. The U.S. is something like 16 deaths per 100K population, Sweden is down around 5, former Iron Curtain countries can be up over 20. Germany is better than the U.S. (about 10) although the East Germans went crazy circa 1990 when the wall came down, their on-par-with-W Germany marks bought lots of cars, and a lot of them died.

There's a whole fascinating field of study about how best to spend scare resources. Essentially, rear side airbags in $75K Mercedes do not save as many lives as blood pressure screening for people over 40 per million dollars invested. No surprise there.

[Josh '99]

[Q]CowbellGuy Wrote:
I said that very tongue-in-cheek. I also said I feel people should wear seatbelts, but the Libertarian in me doesn't think anyone should be forcing us to. It was all just a part of the argument that already-bad drivers are made to feel even more coccooned, in part due to this type of legislation, resulting in even more diversion of attention from the actual driving.[/q]I believe, to a degree, seatbelt laws are a liability matter as well as a safety one.  Not only are you protecting people from their own bad driving, you're also preventing drain on medical resources, financial drain on the insurance industry (which, indirectly, goes on to impact people's insurance rates), things like that.  They're not *just* about keeping you from hurting yourself.

That said, I completely agree with you that testing should be more stringent.  Way too many people out there on the roads who have no fucking clue what they're doing.

[jeh25]

[Q]jmh30 Wrote:


That said, I completely agree with you that testing should be more stringent.  Way too many people out there on the roads who have no fucking clue what they're doing.[/q]

Other problem is, everyone that advocates this solution assumes they'd pass. Ever notice that everyone assumes they are a good driver?

Even we assume this is true, think about how others we know would be affected? Like would your mom or grandparents pass? If they had a license taken away, how could they cope with activities of daily living? Could they get to work or buy food? Sadly, the answer is no thanks to sprawl, big box retail and the death of mixed use zoning.

I'm a big fan of free markets when they can actually address a problem, but when
they don't work, we need government regulation instead. (cf free rider problem/ tragedy of the commons).  Even better is when the government sets up an artificial free market to address a public problem. For example, I fully support trading of pollution credits and sale of green tags as a free market solution to air pollution.

Anywho, gotta role. More on this later.

[CowbellGuy]

[Q]jeh25 Wrote:
think about how others we know would be affected? Like would your mom or grandparents pass?[/q]
I'd be in favor of anything getting my grandfather off the road. But seriously, it's not like there's some genetic predisposition to bad driving in Americans. You think it's something in the water? TEACH them how to be good drivers. Even if it's gradual, we'd be better off for it down the road (no pun intended). Should you immediately revoke licenses? Of course not. But you can make bad drivers better and new drivers good with better training.

[billhoward]

[Q]But seriously, it's not like there's some genetic predisposition to bad driving in Americans. You think it's something in the water?[/q]

Americans probably do believe there is a genetic predisposition based on national origin toward bad driving. Just never their own national origin. Many Californians believe DWO explains much of the bad driving in that state.

[ninian '72]

DWO?

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

"Driving while oriental"  which in the PC world should be "DWA".  Not to be confused with "FWA" - Flying while Arab.

And taking their cars away is not that much of a burden on seniors as you might think.  My dad was forbidden from driving while undergoing chemo last year.  He got on with his life just fine.  Most major cities have special transport systems for seniors, even those with miserable public transportation systems.  And with the internet, it's as easy to shop online as it is to shop in the store, and that includes for groceries.

At least that's what my father, the computer illerate, told me.

JH