Yeah I feel like the United States could dramatically improve its road safety if it kept maybe 1-3% of its drivers off the road permanently.

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cultofmetatron a day ago | parent | next [-]

the problem is that our urban planning is so F@#$ed that taking away someone's ability to drive is tantamount to sentencing someone to poverty. In most of the country, you are completely dependent on a car to hold down a job, get groceries and pretty much anything else. In most other countries, not having a car is a mild to moderate inconvenience you can work around.

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dns_snek a day ago | parent | next [-]

That's not a good reason. Other forms of criminality and reckless behavior don't get this kind of extreme leniency.

People shouldn't have their license taken away over 1 speeding ticket but there need to be escalating punishments that include license suspension, community service, jail time. If someone works their way through all of these and still ends up speeding then they can't be trusted to drive a vehicle on public roads.

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tenebrisalietum a day ago | parent [-]

Drivers licenses in most if not all of the U.S. are a joke, and people will still drive with suspended licenses, especially if they have to for work. Driving on a suspended license should allow the state to impound your car, though, then it would be respected.

	▲	epistasis a day ago \| parent [-]
		Jail time should also be considered too, for repeat offenders. Cars are a weird sort of thing, where they both are the justification for a surveillance state and lots of monitoring, but we also have extremely lenient penalties. It's difficult for me to understand how the US arrived at our current set of laws.

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estimator7292 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why do we care about this type of sentencing to poverty and not every other way we condemn our citizens to poverty, homelessness, starvation, and death?

Maybe that shouldn't be the only alternative in our society

	▲	cultofmetatron a day ago \| parent [-]
		The alternative is that we invest in better public transport and walkable infrastructure. then we can both increase penalties for driving badly AND raise the bar for getting a drivers license in the first place.

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BobaFloutist a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>the problem is that our urban planning is so F@#$ed that taking away someone's ability to drive is tantamount to sentencing someone to poverty.

We're talking about NYC, they'll be fine without cars.

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SubmarineClub a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sounds like a good reason not to commit traffic crimes then.

Start punishing these people severely so that they might serve as an example to the rest

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kelseyfrog a day ago | parent [-]

Has that ever worked?

AFAIK, all evidence says that people don't consider consequences. If they did, they wouldn't be behaving like that in the first place. Punitive punishment feels much much better for people who have a specific set of values.

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almosthere a day ago | parent | next [-]

Escalating punishments often tend to take the "1-3%" of the bad people out of society that cause all the crime.

Remember from recent history these people that had 34 arrests or 73 arrests and they're out murdering people?

	▲	kelseyfrog 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I mean the serving as an example to the rest part. Has that ever worked?

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AmVess a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes, it works. The state that I used to reside in has draconian DUI/Traffic laws, and not coincidentally low traffic death rates.

Driving with license revoked or suspended was a serious charge and resulted in impound of vehicle and mandatory jail time. Repeat offenders would have their vehicles seized.

DUI laws similarly brutal. 2nd time offenders faced potentially life-altering charges and penalties. Get into an accident with injury to another person while DUI? Huge jail time. Felony DUI results in permanent loss of driving privileges.

Speeding 20 over the limit? Enjoy your reckless driving charge which is as serious a dui charge.

I read that getting a license back after a 2nd dui carries and average cost of $50k. Getting 2 dui's within 10 years automatically bumped 2nd dui to felony....no more driving for you.

Lax driving laws and penalties do nothing more than get a lot of people killed.

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spamizbad a day ago | parent | prev [-]

If my choice is jail or relocate and find a new job and home in a city with passable public transit (even if its just the bus) I know which one I'd pick.

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littlestymaar a day ago | parent | prev [-]

The problem is how do you enforce that though.

The modern world is so cat centric people would rather drive without a license than accept to live without a car. And until you can reliably catch and jail license-less drivers, the bet is worth it for them.

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randerson a day ago | parent | next [-]

If they were to catch and jail just 1% of license-less drivers, in a visible way, it would be a deterrent to the other 99%. But the rate of being caught & punished is negligible (at least in the states I've lived in) so people know they'll get away with it.

I previously lived in a country where the cops set up random roadblocks to check everyone's license & registration and look for signs of intoxication. When there's a real risk of waking up in a jail cell you're less likely to order that third beer. But in the US when renewing my tabs I feel like the joke's on me because half the cars here seem to have expired tabs or illegal plates and nobody ever checks.

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immibis 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

How much of a deterrent can the police possibly impose that would outweigh the deterrent for not driving illegally, which (in your country) is being starving and homeless?

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randerson 16 hours ago | parent [-]

The cops will never deter everyone from breaking the law, but they don't have to. They just need to deter a large enough % of the population to have a positive effect.

Driving while intoxicated is not a crime of desperation. Even celebrities are often caught for DUI despite being able to afford a full-time limo driver.

Most people who drive intoxicated have jobs and reputations they'd prefer to keep, and families at home they would rather not be separated from or have to explain an arrest to.

And to be clear, we can't solve all the problems with a single measure. I'd like to see not just better law enforcement, but also a social safety net that ensures nobody is ever starving or homeless.

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immibis 10 hours ago | parent [-]

The crime under discussion is not driving while intoxicated but driving without a license.

But if you're going to bring that up anyway, how are people supposed to get their car home from the bar in a place where the government hates public transport?

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randerson 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The crime under discussion is not driving while intoxicated but driving without a license.

How did these people lose their license in the first place? The most common reason is DUIs. Followed by multiple instances of reckless driving. People are less likely to lose their license to begin with if they know there will be real consequences.

And there's a large enough population for whom driving without a license is not a crime of desperation. In many places there _is_ a public transport alternative (even if its slow and crappy). I used to give a lift every day to a colleague who had lost his license. I enjoyed the company and he paid for my gas. Many people can make an arrangement like this.

> But if you're going to bring that up anyway, how are people supposed to get their car home from the bar in a place where the government hates public transport?

Having been in this position many times: take an Uber, then Uber back to get your car the next day and plan better (or don't drink) next time.

	▲	nobody9999 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>How did these people lose their license in the first place? The most common reason is DUIs. Followed by multiple instances of reckless driving. People are less likely to lose their license to begin with if they know there will be real consequences. When I was in college in Ohio, one of my suite mates had several DUI arrests. After the first, his license was suspended -- yet he was allowed to drive to/from work/school because public transportation was minimal. After the third DUI, he was sentenced to 30 days in jail -- served on the weekends so he could continue going to school without interruption -- and still drive his car to/from work/school. I was flabbergasted by that. But I guess that's how things are often handled in places without public transportation. And more's the pity.

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nobody9999 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>But if you're going to bring that up anyway, how are people supposed to get their car home from the bar in a place where the government hates public transport?

An anecdote related to me by a former (Florida) county sheriff's deputy answers that question:

Many police will stake out bars around closing time, awaiting the intoxicated to get behind the wheel so they can be stopped, breathalyzed and arrested.

However, patrons were aware of this and the deputy saw a patron leave, stumbling, drop their car keys several times, then get into their car and drive away.

When stopping said individual, the breathalyzer and field sobriety test showed the driver to be stone cold sober. As such, the deputy sent the driver on their way.

Returning to the bar parking lot, he found that all the other patrons had departed while he was wasting his time on the one sober person -- dubbed the "designated decoy."

I'm sure other variations are and have been in use in the US for a long time -- since most places don't have public transportation or reliable taxis.

The "cars first, public transit last, if at all" culture in most of the US makes the likelihood of DUI/DWI and crashes/injuries/fatalities much, much worse.

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littlestymaar a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> If they were to catch and jail just 1% of license-less drivers, in a visible way, it would be a deterrent to the other 99%. But the rate of being caught & punished is negligible (at least in the states I've lived in) so people know they'll get away with it.

1% is actually negligible, and would not have a deterrent effect. In fact I wouldn't even be surprised if the effective prosecution rate was somewhat higher than this already.

> I previously lived in a country where the cops set up random roadblocks to check everyone's license & registration and look for signs of intoxication.

I live in a country (France) where this is still the case, and where driving crimes are the second source of jail time after drug trafficking, yet alcohol is still the #1 cause of death on the road, and an estimate 2% of people drive without a license after having lost it (and are responsible for ~5% of accidents).

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randerson 16 hours ago | parent [-]

Alcohol will likely always be a factor in the worst accidents. But France is doing something right because your fatal accident rate per capita is one third that of America's [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

	▲	littlestymaar 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's not France in particular though, America is the outlier among developed nations. In fact France is a bit behind most other European nations (but not by much).

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buildbot a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> "The modern world is so cat centric"

If only