Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime • Hacker News Board

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#191

Post by dang » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 9:43 PM UTC

dls2016 wrote: post #186

dang wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post flamebait to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm being sincere. My research indicates both problems cause roughly $40 billion/year in damage to the economy. It's not my fault that most people posting here don't see the impact of wage theft and/or the impact of tangling shoplifters in the criminal justice system. Your median wage thief probably steals way more than the median shoplifter.

Flamebait means a comment is likely to provoke a flamewar. This doesn't vary with sincerity, but rather with substantiveness and flammability. Those are the variables you need to modulate.

We have to moderate effects (or likely effects), not intent. Effects are observable while intent often isn't, and of course it's effects which actually make a difference on the site, whether intended or not.

Intent doesn't communicate itself, especially on flammable topics, so the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate it. One way to do this is to write thoughtfully and add information. Your reply here is already much better than your GP comment. This often happens in response to moderation—people respond by explaining some of the background that was in their mind but which they didn't say earlier. The thing to do is to include more of that in the first place, and then it will be clear that your intent is substantive discussion rather than provocation.

Here are some previous explanations in case they're helpful:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#192

Post by throwaway0a5e » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #90

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a massive gulf between crime with a victim like shoplifting and general petty theft and crime without a victim, like jaywalking, that everyone seems to go willingly blind to on an ideological as-needed basis.

How much does it cost to run someone through the legal system for shoplifting? Is that an effective use of resources versus preventing the shoplifting using social services? Three strikes laws have proven very expensive and not very useful for behavioral nudges, so maybe we explore other ways to get folks to shy away from committing property crimes.

If cost were what mattered we wouldn't prosecute all sorts of crimes. It's not about the cost. It's about making it not worth people's while violate other people's property rights.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#193

Post by drewcoo » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

rwhitman wrote: post #125

This is entirely about the same politics of safety we're seeing play out with the pandemic. If jaywalking was legal, the sacrifice is that we'd have to drive slower to watch for pedestrians. As Americans our priority has been individual convenience, over collective safety of our neighbors. Its shifting slowly, but for the most part this is a battle we're grappling with as a society on multiple fronts right now.

> As Americans our priority has been individual convenience, over collective safety of our neighbors.

This runs counter to our having fire departments, public utilities, and the armed forces as just a few examples.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#194

Post by woodruffw » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 9:48 PM UTC

sonotmyname wrote: post #182

woodruffw wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the ways we recognize the externalities of our automotive culture is by making jaywalking illegal. You mean the law in one municipality that hasn't taken effect yet, and that took months of LEO-adjacent protests? We're slowly getting better, to be sure. But I don't think anybody should be content with the rate of progress.

I think you mis-read GPs post...

I'm the GP of this particular thread, so hopefully not :-)

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#195

Post by twblalock » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 9:49 PM UTC

ericmcer wrote: post #176

woodruffw wrote: post #100

We in the US do an absolutely horrific job of recognizing and compensating for the externalities of our automotive culture. The criminalization of jaywalking is one major aspect, but also consider: 1. The construction of highways through poor (read: minority) urban areas, causing mass respiratory disease and premature deaths[1]. 2. Allocation of free public space (car parking) to drivers, effectively subsidizing (dis…

Car free cities are super obtainable but seem like a total impossibility. We will never trade safety, health and solitude for convenience.

I don't think car-free cities are easily obtainable. I can't think of one that currently exists.

Even cities with world-class mass transit, e.g. Tokyo and London, are full of cars, and taxis are still a better option for some trips -- even though there are also surface trains, subways, and buses to choose from.

In those places, step 1 has already been solved: convince the population that mass transit is desirable and should be well funded. London even charges congestion fees for cars. But they still can't achieve car-free cities.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#196

Post by satellite2 » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 9:50 PM UTC

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #120

I cannot get to the site (blocked for EU) but the rule in France is two way. The driver must not enforce its priority when there is someone crossing the street at a place they should not. The price is high. A pedestrian can cross anywhere but has priority only on a zebra crossing. They are however expected to use a zebra crossing if there is one less 50 m away. It may cost you 11€ if you do not. The reality is of cou…

Exactly.

And typically, the forensics would try to determine if a driver that hit a pedestrian in a situation where it could have been avoided at least tried to brake.

If not, the driver would typically be charged for negligence and it would launch an investigation for murder.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#197

Post by woodruffw » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 9:52 PM UTC

sonotmyname wrote: post #179

ericmcer wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car free cities are super obtainable but seem like a total impossibility. We will never trade safety, health and solitude for convenience.

> safety, health and solitude Funny, those are 3 of the main reasons I live way out in the nearly-rural suburbs instead of in downtown San Francisco. It seems like some of us have made that trade, just not in the direction you're hoping for.

>Funny, those are 3 of the main reasons I live way out in the nearly-rural suburbs instead of in downtown San Francisco.

And this is precisely the problem: automotive culture presently represents a massive subsidy to rural and suburban areas at the expensive of urban dwellers.

I can't possibly blame people for making that trade. But the observation is that it's sweetened by externalities that ex-urban areas don't have to bear.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#198

Post by JJzD » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

pavon wrote: post #172

chrisseaton wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the default should be that it's your right of way in the car? Why should pedestrians keep out of your way and not cross your path? Why don't we instead say you should keep out of the pedestrians way and not cross their path? Maybe we should reset the expectation that cars own the streets, and make them a guest there, deferring to human beings in the first instance.

Because if cars are being driven at a speed where they are actually useful, then basic physics dictates that it is not safe to mix cars and pedestrians. The car can only stop so quickly, and you must also factor in that both the pedestrians and drivers are humans and will make mistakes in gauging distance, speed, visibility, and will not always have ideal response times. The legal "right of way" cannot ignore reality…

This is exactly the problem wit the car culture, almost everywhere outside the netherlands. You give cars so much space, they start behaving like it's the freeway, and then drive into buildings or do other stuff which kills drivers and other users. Of course they are speeding, and they shouldn't do that. But the netherlands thinks ahead, and tries not to give cars the opportunity to speed. So, we make a lot of obstacles and opposing traffic. Somehow drivers still do not like to kill people, slow down, and save themselves in the process.

Look at this video's and others from this channel, to see how the netherlands builds infrastructure being more forgiving of mistakes, and find out how our cities turn out more livable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra_0DgnJ1uQ

(Yes, i'm aware the suburban culture is different, hence the relation with cars)

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#199

Post by CalRobert » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

Criminalizing jaywalking wasn't about making it illegal to walk across the street. It was about making it legal to kill people doing so with your car.

If you want to kill someone in the US it's de facto legal to do so with your car. Just be sober and say you didn't see them.

Re: Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime

#200

Post by tsimionescu » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 10:02 PM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #194

sonotmyname wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you mis-read GPs post...

I'm the GP of this particular thread, so hopefully not :-)

I think they were referring to nineplay's post, which was the GP of the post that replied to you. It gets pretty confusing, I guess pointers are hard even in natural language.

nineplay's post seemed to me to suggest that they believe that jaywalking being illegal is in itself a way to deal with the externalities of the car culture - it seems they are happy with jaywalking being illegal. I would guess that is why they also got the down votes.

Your reply seems to be written as if you thought nineplay was praising people making jaywalking not illegal, which I believe is the wrong reading of their post.