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Virginia passes law to enforce maximum vehicle speeds for repeat speeders

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Re: Virginia passes law to enforce maximum vehicle speeds for repeat speeders

#61

Post by _bin_ »

DangitBobby wrote: post #49
_bin_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is precisely that. How can you hope to encourage people to move to tracks if you require them to find a pickup that can tow cars there? If you keep closing down more and more tracks? I believe in high availability of firearms because I'm principally against prior restraint. The state doesn't get to take machineguns away from people who haven't demonstrated abuse of them to the standard of reasonable doubt. T…

> How can you hope to encourage people to move to tracks if you require them to find a pickup that can tow cars there? If you keep closing down more and more tracks? I doubt most people speeding in the streets do track or street racing as a hobby, so I think track availability is pretty much irrelevant. I think I should have the freedom not to get splattered by dumbasses going 100 in a 50MPH zone. Why don't I get tha…

You are allowed to use the state to restrict the freedom of people who are going 100 in a 50MPH zone. You don't get to use the state to restrict people with a theoretical capacity to go 100 in a 50.

Re: Virginia passes law to enforce maximum vehicle speeds for repeat speeders

#62

Post by _bin_ »

alistairSH wrote: post #55
_bin_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is precisely that. How can you hope to encourage people to move to tracks if you require them to find a pickup that can tow cars there? If you keep closing down more and more tracks? I believe in high availability of firearms because I'm principally against prior restraint. The state doesn't get to take machineguns away from people who haven't demonstrated abuse of them to the standard of reasonable doubt. T…

I used to race cars. Driving a race car on the street is dumb AF. Rollcage will crush your skull if you aren’t helmeted and in the 6-point harness. Suspension is bone jarring (and expensive to maintain). The exhaust is not legal. And on and on. Nobody races steeet legal cars. Except maybe a few drag racers, and half those cars probably have illegal tires or emissions removals, but they drove on the street anyway. Sou…

Most street racers have some illegal modifications, but the guy driving the riced-out kia isn't really safety-conscious. The hope is to use punishment to shove those people towards tracks (which more people might use if they hadn't been pushed out by noise complaints and such).

Re: Virginia passes law to enforce maximum vehicle speeds for repeat speeders

#63

Post by amiga386 »

_bin_ wrote: post #19
margorczynski wrote: post #3

I think a general speed limit for all vehicles would be a good idea. If you want it removed then your vehicle can't travel public roads, any kind of modification of it in secret would be a crime. Not sure about the US but in Europe (at least the EU) 150km/h max would be fine, at least it would make life harder for some sociopaths that treat public roads as a racing track.

This would be incredibly annoying. You what, have to tow your car to a track if you want to race? So now you need two vehicles? Given that outright street racing is common amongst blue-collar or inner-city demographics, this is an unrealistic expectation that will just push more people away from legal venues. It's a policy that says "you can't enjoy your hobby" in disguise that shows disregard for others' preferences…

I don't know how much racing you do, but as far as I've seen, racers do tow their race cars to the track. They rent or own tow trailers and transporters.

Race cars are usually heavily modified and aren't street legal, and the drivers don't want them dinged up on the way to the track, and if they fail while racing they need a way to get it back home.

If you're racing a street-legal car on a track... it's unlikely to be very good at racing, compared to all the other cars there that are stripped to bare minimum.

Perhaps you're thinking of a demographic who can't even afford a second car but like the idea of racing anyway, so they break all laws and race the one car do they have, on public streets without permission, which is strongly disregarding others' preferences for remaining alive, uncrippled, and their vehicles and street furniture remaining unscathed.

Re: Virginia passes law to enforce maximum vehicle speeds for repeat speeders

#64

Post by mindslight »

_bin_ wrote: post #16
mindslight wrote: post #5

Does anyone know why Virginia has always been so notoriously draconian about speeding? Is it DC-adjacent policy wonks outsized faith in the effectiveness of top-down prescriptions, lots of DC politicians flagrantly violating the law, culture clash between stuffy suburbanites and yokels (Virginia was the first place I ever saw a trans truck), or what?

The yankees' roads are all really bad. Old, narrow, sharp turns, and often crowded. I hate driving up there. By comparison, Texas we have long open stretches and up to eight lanes each way, so obviously it's less of an issue. I'd actually assume it's due to proximity to DC, which would tend to massively increase the population of "but the data say"-type technocrats.

We're talking about interstates though. And from my New Englander perspective traffic mostly self regulates without draconian speed limit enforcement, it's the slow end of the distribution that is far more scattered and worse for road safety.

For surface roads, I'll take our bespoke road layout over a grid any day. Although I do share the sentiment that driving in the Northeast Megalopolis is much more suffocating than the rest of the country. Coming back from a road trip and hitting New York State is like vacation is over, time to get home on the interstate.

Re: Virginia passes law to enforce maximum vehicle speeds for repeat speeders

#65

Post by alistairSH »

_bin_ wrote: post #62
alistairSH wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to race cars. Driving a race car on the street is dumb AF. Rollcage will crush your skull if you aren’t helmeted and in the 6-point harness. Suspension is bone jarring (and expensive to maintain). The exhaust is not legal. And on and on. Nobody races steeet legal cars. Except maybe a few drag racers, and half those cars probably have illegal tires or emissions removals, but they drove on the street anyway. Sou…

Most street racers have some illegal modifications, but the guy driving the riced-out kia isn't really safety-conscious. The hope is to use punishment to shove those people towards tracks (which more people might use if they hadn't been pushed out by noise complaints and such).

Is the guy in the riced out Covic or whatever really interested in the track? Actual racing would require most car prep, different insurance (or none), more effort overall. The generic car person is doing it for social reasons, not because they want competition.

Re: Virginia passes law to enforce maximum vehicle speeds for repeat speeders

#66

Post by alistairSH »

_bin_ wrote: post #56
alistairSH wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but electronically limiting that car to 80mph retains the “nice at highway speed” aspects while blocking the ability to go 120mph down I-95.

Well 80 would be a bad limit; there are roads in Texas posted 85 which means you can do 94 without even state troopers hassling you. I don't want a static limit because I can't go race, and I don't want a dynamic limit because 1. it's not perfect and I'd really chafe against being limited to 65 or 75 as a fallback, and 2. I don't trust the government that once tried to put in a nationwide 55mph speed limit for non-sa…

This law isn’t prior restraint - the state is trying to g to install these in repeat offenders’ cars.

But, to that point, I mostly agree. I’d rather we hired some quality road engineers and urban planners who are willing to build roads and towns that aren’t car-dependent hellscapes.

Re: Virginia passes law to enforce maximum vehicle speeds for repeat speeders

#67

Post by progman32 »

A page linked from the article (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zLaBRWMSSnjGzMOpoZwUSw_H...) cites a $4/day rental fee for the equipment, which works out to roughly $120/month. I understand there are assistance programs promised by the article. Can someone in the space help me understand this pricing model? Seems high to me.

The faq also claims there are no civil liberties implications for this since people use gps for maps anyway. There is no government infrastructure to regularly inspect my gps mapping software's correct operation, unlike the speed limiter. It's unclear what kind of data exchange happens during inspection and what the implications are for other, non-speeding drivers of the car.

Don't get me wrong, I despise speeders. I regularly compete in sanctioned motorsport and I find that the more I do, the less sympathy I have for driving badly in public roadways. I wouldn't bat an eye at a system that mechanically governs a vehicle, without the possibility of data exchange, to the maximum speed limit in the state (or a value decided by a judge). This gps system seems too easy to abuse.

I'd love to hear more about the claimed statistic of 75% of suspended drivers continuing to drive. I'm surprised that addressing this has jumped to requiring modification of vehicles and GPS surveillance. What other ways of improving compliance with suspension have been tried? Why do drivers ignore the suspension?

Re: Virginia passes law to enforce maximum vehicle speeds for repeat speeders

#68

Post by kstrauser »

mbreese wrote: post #43
lokar wrote: post #23

I wonder if insurance would be a partial solution? Allow/encourage providers of liability insurance to raise rates on people with tickets, unless they are to the electronic limit.

If people still drive with a suspended or revoked license, what’s to say they won’t still drive without insurance?

Agreed. I don't want more uninsured drivers on the road.

Maybe in this case it could work like child support: you pay the state, the state pays the insurance on your behalf, and if you don't pay the state then they're the ones coming after you.

At some point you might have to decide between letting the state garnish your wages, or giving up your car.

Re: Virginia passes law to enforce maximum vehicle speeds for repeat speeders

#69

Post by kstrauser »

dfxm12 wrote: post #21

Even a license suspension doesn’t necessarily change behavior: A federally funded study found that 75% of people with suspended licenses continued to drive. I know part of this is related to sociopathic behavior, but the bigger part of it is probably that we really need better public transit and should design walkable cities instead of cities based around cars. People still have to get to work, to the doctor, pick up…

True, but my understanding is that you can get an exception for driving to work and those other kinds of things.

Re: Virginia passes law to enforce maximum vehicle speeds for repeat speeders

#70

Post by bearcobra »

_bin_ wrote: post #52
bearcobra wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it common to refer to Virginians as being Yankees? Growing up in New England I would have assumed they’d avoid the term by being in the Confederacy

Yeah, I don't really consider virginia part of the south, culturally. Maybe it was different in the past but proximity to DC has rotted any of that away.

I can see parts of Virginia not feeling culturally like a lot of the rest of the south but I’m still intrigued by the use of yankee. Like is someone from Wyoming a yankee because they aren’t from the south or is it more cultural to you?
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