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Virginia passes law to enforce maximum vehicle speeds for repeat speeders

fastcompany.com

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

#811

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

CalRobert wrote: post #730
Aurornis wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a parent, these comments are always so weird to read. Kids play outside, including unsupervised still. Kids getting hit by drivers is statistically very rare (though no less tragic) Suggesting that “many” of the kids who “try” to play outside get killed by cars is the kind of conclusion you can only arrive at by living life through hyperbolic headlines or the dramatic evening news.

Having a toddler who’s a runner radicalised me. Every walk outside required a death grip.

> Having a toddler who’s a runner radicalised me. Every walk outside required a death grip.

Ha. I had twins. One was a sprinter/climber and the other was One Slow Plodding Step At A Time. We took most of our walks at 10pm.

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

#812

Post by vel0city »

bookofjoe wrote: post #651
vel0city wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's illegal to drive without insurance in Texas as well. It's also illegal to murder someone and yet people still do it from time to time. Stealing is illegal and yet stuff gets stolen. Drunk driving is illegal and yet people drive drunk. Turns out just making something illegal doesn't completely stop the action. When we build our societies where you need to drive to function it's not surprising people will continue…

>Approximately 17% of drivers on California roads are uninsured, according to statistics from 2022 presented by the Insurance Information Institute. This means nearly 6 million drivers in California may be unable to compensate those injured in accidents.

/s/may be unable to/almost definitely unable to/g

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

#813

Post by tfourb »

ryao wrote: post #727
ChoGGi wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone doing 60 doesn't see each other because we're all doing the same speed, the ones going faster are the dangerous drivers.

When everyone is driving beyond the speed limit, the ones actually obeying the speed limit are the dangerous drivers. It is unfortunate that speed limits in the US have not corresponded to how people actually drive since 1973.

How does this make sense? If I'm driving the speed limit and someone else is crashing into me from behind while speeding, they are the dangerous driver. No matter how many other people also ignore the speed limit.

Also, increasing the speed limit does nothing to make traffic safer. That doesn't make any sense at all, as increased speed is correlated very well with increased accident rates and severity of traffic-related injuries:

https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/eu-road-safety-po...

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

#814

Post by AngryData »

topherPedersen wrote: post #703

Thank God. People on the roads are extremely reckless and we don't do anything about it. Our highways are lawless for the most part. People can drive however they feel like it. You literally have to kill someone AND be drunk before you actually get in trouble and are locked up. If you kill someone sober though, it's totally fine under our current system. In my opinion, if you get caught driving recklessly, the punish…

Thats really only true for people with money. The problem isn't that current laws are insufficient, it is that the US justice system is largely based on profit motives, and people with money can make prosecutions against them unprofitable to push. You can bet your butt that if you went in to those same cases without the money to draw everything out for years that they would hammer you with fines and fees and programs and jail time.

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

#815

Post by wpm »

alexjplant wrote: post #370
GuB-42 wrote: post #205

There are cars that can go way over 100 mph, and they almost all speed controlled by software. High performance cars are often speed limited by software to about 150 mph. How is this legal? Cars with speed limits that high belong to the track, not public roads, with a possible exception for emergency vehicles. There are some rare (emergency) situations where "superspeeding" might help, but I can think of many others…

> There are cars that can go way over 100 mph, and they almost all speed controlled by software. High performance cars are often speed limited by software to about 150 mph. How is this legal? Good question. My guess is as follows: Per the NHTSA [1] alcohol, excess speed, and not wearing restraints are the top three causes of vehicle-related deaths in the US in roughly equal measure (although alcohol edges out the oth…

> In other words speed is only contextually dangerous while driving drunk and not using safety equipment are inherently bad which is why I'd imagine the latter two have been legislated.

Neither of those are blanket dangerous. Driving a car on a rural road in the middle of the night is about as dangerous whether you're doing 100mph or mildly drunk. Not being restrained is only dangerous if you crash or someone crashes into you. They can all three be performed in normal road conditions without actually resulting in a crash, injury, or death.

But everyone speeds. It's fun, everyone does it once in a while, as a treat! And driving sucks too, so the faster you go the less you have to do it. You can't punish everyone, but you can punish a drunk because, gosh, that couldn't/wouldn't ever be me. Those drunk jerks! And seatbelts? You only get punished for those if you get pulled over and don't remember to put it on.

Most driving related crimes don't go punished because the judges and the juries are probably guilty of the same damn thing, all the time, and gee whiz, I'm not a criminal, so this person isn't either.

Its why you can pulp a pedestrian in your car while speeding and dicking around with your phone and get off pretty much scot-free.

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

#816

Post by usefulcat »

dataflow wrote: post #342
usefulcat wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in the left lane and being tailgated, then it's your fault, if there is no one in front of you. If you're in the right lane and being tailgated, it's the fault of the tailgater. There's a reason why some states have traffic signs that state "left lane for passing only".

I'm talking about the right lane. And people tailgate in every lane when they feel you're going slow. Just with more frequency on the left lane. And it's not like you can always choose. Highway lanes split in two all the time.

In my experience, if someone is tailgating you in the right lane, then speeding up is not likely to make them tailgate you any less, because such a person is either not paying attention or intentionally being a jerk.

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

#817

Post by wpm »

Gareth321 wrote: post #417
jakelazaroff wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren’t mutually exclusive. What reason is there ever for a car to go 110?

> What reason is there ever for a car to go 110? reply What reason is there ever for a car to go above 40mph? The obvious answer to your question is: quality of life. People like getting places faster. The purpose of governance is to balance quality of life with public safety. No matter how slow the speed limits, some people will die each year, so we're not haggling over the concept itself, but rather were we draw th…

This utterly ignores any context of German drivers and roads vs those in the US, context that makes comparing the Autobahn (which doesn't have that many unrestricted zones, and even fewer times of day where you can actually stretch your legs due to traffic).

This reads like "I speed all the time and how dare you say it's a bad thing" cope.

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

#818

Post by zoklet-enjoyer »

potato3732842 wrote: post #683
zoklet-enjoyer wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds good to me. People shouldn't be driving 30 over. Reckless driving should be taken seriously. These don't sound anti-car. They're pro-life and safety.

The public doesn't take "reckless driving" seriously because it is not defined in a serious manner. It encompass people who are going 60/65/75 (depending on state) in a 55 on the interstate that's actually a 45 because of an inactive construction zone and also people who are going 60mph on 30mph city streets (probably genuinely reckless per common usage of the word). They're two very different degrees of misconduct a…

"You wanna see reckless driving taken seriously the first step is to stop advocating for definitions of reckless that include behavior the general public doesn't see as reckless."

Where was I advocating that? Also, just because the general public believes something doesn't mean it's true.

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

#819

Post by wpm »

Gareth321 wrote: post #625
GuB-42 wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is that, but in this case it is not particularly authoritarian. - There is already a whole lot of regulations on what makes a car street legal, including rules that can be quite unpopular among drivers and yet important on a large scale. In particular those related to the environment. - Limiting the top speed of cars does not imply surveillance or advanced GPS-based systems. The idea is just to make it so that…

I think you're logically correct. It's the feeling such a policy elicits which makes it untenable. I agree with your points conceptually, but the moment I would have to install a government speed limiter on my car is the moment I vote for someone else. It feels invasive, and I don't like feeling like the paternal hand of the government is all the way up my ass, controlling my gas pedal.

I'm sure the "chronic shit driver, bad enough to have a judge mandate a speed limiter" vote is a big block that politicians will be lining up to appease. Just like the "chronic drunk driver, bad enough to have a judge mandate an interlock" bloc.

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

#820

Post by snowwrestler »

jollyllama wrote: post #760
snowwrestler wrote: post #551

The Fast Company article says “Republicans in Virginia just passed a law to make it a punishment for repeated traffic violations.” But the Virginia legislature is currently controlled by the Democrats. And the delegate quoted in this local news story is a Democrat: https://wjla.com/news/local/anti-speeding-device-car-reckles... That story is probably more useful than the Fast Company one. It clarifies that the new la…

> It does not require manufacturers to pre-install them, and it does not use the electronics built into the car. It sounds analogous to the breathalyzer devices that are an option for judges in some jurisdictions. There's already a law on the books requiring breathalyzers in all new cars by next year: https://live959.com/law-mandates-mass-cars-to-have-breathaly... Presumably, anti-speeding tech will be made mandatory…

This refers to the federal infrastructure bill, which directed NHTSA to issue a regulation requiring technical systems to detect and prevent impaired driving. Here’s a status report from NHTSA to Congress from December:

https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2024-12/report-t...

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