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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

#881

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single residential street in America is full of cars parked or moving at 25+ mph. It's a miserable experience for anyone outside of a car and dangerous for smaller children who don't pay attention and can run into traffic.

>Every single residential street in America... Even the largely carless (read: not many cars parked on the street) ones like my neighborhood that had a whole bunch of kids happily playing outside and in the street this weekend without issue? Every single one ?

The street directly in front of my house is largely like that. I don't even feel very safe doing the edging standing in the street, people turn down the street off the 40MPH (probably going 45-50MPH) main road next to it and blindly start heading down the residential street at 25-30mph.

The cul-de-sac behind my house through the alley is a good bit calmer. That's where my kids go to play.

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

#882
post #875

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait -- I have to pay for a breathalizer in my new vehicle because other people can't follow the law? That's BS. I don't drink alcohol and I hate everything about this.

> I have to pay for a breathalizer in my new vehicle because other people can't follow the law? That's BS. Not to be too pedantic, but this is the nature of most taxes and regulation. It's part of living in a society.

This isn't an argument for absolutely any cost one should choose to impose. I had a hard time finding exact stats but one should I think assume that less than 1/10th of 1% of cars have such a device installed.

This means that one is installing 1000 devices for each one in use. It should make more sense to me to provide a means to communicate with such a device wirelessly and software support for making starting contingent on such communication.

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

#883

Cities can replace smooth asphalt with rough brick and cobblestone, and replace traffic lights with traffic circles / roundabouts. If they really want to force cars to slow down, they could, in a way that doesn't take anyone's rights away and doesn't require any vehicle manufacturer to play ball. Freedom isn't free. It's always cheaper to take away people's freedom instead of doing the hard work of building infrastru…

That's a possible solution to the problem of cars in general going too fast for a given area.

That is not the problem Virginia is trying to deal with with this legislation. They are trying to deal with the problem of a very small number of drivers who are driving much faster than the speed limit and much faster than even most speeders go.

These are drivers that have been convicted of speeding at more than 100 mph. That is a criminal offense of the same level as drunk driving rather than a mere traffic infraction.

It is just those drivers that they are trying to slow down.

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

#885

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.

It’s not 30 over, it’s 30 over the limit, or anything over 80 mph. They tried to nail me for reckless driving for going 82 on an empty interstate, when the speed limit was 70. Then, because I have a common name, the dumbass lawyer I hired showed up to the court date of a different person with the same name as me who was also charged with reckless driving, no one showed up to my court date, and I was threatened with j…

§ 46.2-862. Exceeding speed limit. A person is guilty of reckless driving who drives a motor vehicle on the highways in the Commonwealth (i) at a speed of 20 miles per hour or more in excess of the applicable maximum speed limit or (ii) in excess of 85 miles per hour regardless of the applicable maximum speed limit.

https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacodefull/title46.2/chapter8/a...

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

#886

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.

I think you're just out of touch with reality. Maybe the fact you're a parent has tainted your view - some type of bias against admitting things might suck. When I was a kid, the amount of kids outside was easily orders of magnitude more. Things I did as a kid are pretty much unthinkable now. I mean, as young as 7 I was riding my bike miles away. It's not that things are worse now, it's that enough kids died that new…

I think things are different now, at least where I live.

Take a look at this photo from 1995: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F5...

Note how visible all of those primary school children would be to anyone using one of those cars in the car park. Now imagine the same scene today with the car park full of modern cars (and 'trucks') where the bottom of any of the vehicle's windows would be well above many of those children's heads.

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

#887
post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the parent comment didn't leave any room for nuance or considerations, instead broadly stating: > Laws should reflect the values of the democratic consensus, speed limits included. Maybe they considered the nuance to be something obvious, but their statement is still flawed. The funny thing about nuance is that most nuance isn't visible to the naked eye and requires some degree of familiarity or expertise t…

Most people don't drive past schools at excessive speeds. The speed limit should be set such that most people are naturally inclined to drive at that speed anyway, given the context of that stretch of road, not set to the fastest speed which outlier maniacs drive at.

The speed limit should be set given the context of what should be safe for the area with the road, and the road design should encourage drivers to drive at that speed.

If its a stretch of road where we don't want cars going more than 30mph, we should set the speed limit at 30mph and design the road, so people tend to go about that speed. Not have a stretch of road where we want people to go 30, build a road people feel comfortable driving 55 in, and then decide "welp, nothing we can do, just change the speed limit I guess."

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

#888
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.

It's a rare stretch of American interstate highway where the majority are sticking to the speed limit. On different roads the ratio of speeders to "speed limit doers" varies, but interstates have fairly consistent driving conditions and the safe speed for those conditions is consistently higher than the posted limit. Usually traffic on American interstates is staying at the speed limit if : there is a fair amount of…

There are a number of interstates (and interstate like US highways) near me that have posted speed limits of 70MPH but any normal day you'll find traffic going 55mph or even less.

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

#889

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compulsory preferential voting is a much better protection against tyrants. This guarantees worse outcomes. You will be effectively forcing people to participate that typically don't care about politics and will be ignorant of many of the issues they are voting on. The reality is that most elections are won in the same way the X-Factor, or "I'm a celebrity get me out of here". It is nothing more than a popularity c…

Absolutely not my experience coming from a country with compulsory voting, and having lived in a country without. People in the country without were generally more ignorant of their own politics, and the few people I met who understood what was going on were hesitant to vote. Compulsory voting, and in particular compulsory preferential voting also has a highly centralising effect, which adds to long term stability.

> Absolutely not my experience coming from a country with compulsory voting, and having lived in a country without. People in the country without were generally more ignorant of their own politics, and the few people I met who understood what was going on were hesitant to vote.

All of this is an anecdote. It isn't proof of anything.

I also think that the people that you think are more informed actually weren't more informed and were probably just happened to have the same brand of politics that you happened to subscribe to, and vice versa for the people that you thought were ignorant / uninformed. I see this pattern in almost all mainstream political discussion.

BTW being actually informed means having a deep understanding of the topics at hand and the majority of people simply won't have this because they may not have the time/motivation to delve into such topics. The vast majority of people aren't willing to do this seriously and end up just parroting what they've been told by people on the TV/Youtube/Twitch/Tiktok etc.

> Compulsory voting, and in particular compulsory preferential voting also has a highly centralising effect, which adds to long term stability.

I doubt there is any proof to this assertion at all.

Also why would be a centralising effect be considered a good thing?

Many people (including myself) are disenfranchised with the current political class/system because they don't offer anything different, so you are telling me (someone that is disenfranchised) that I should support this because it will guarantee more of the same. You aren't selling me this idea.

I don't want to participate in the circus that is politics. I see it nothing other than a popularity contest, where my choice is largely irrelevant (as the voters always get shafted) and the candidates are all almost always scumbags that I wouldn't want representing my interests anyway.

So you are suggesting not only that I have to vote (something I think is absolute waste of time), that I also have to put a preference of how I would rank these people I want nothing to do with, so I propagate a status quo that I want to see demolished.

You aren't selling me on this idea.

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

#890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compulsory preferential voting is a much better protection against tyrants. This guarantees worse outcomes. You will be effectively forcing people to participate that typically don't care about politics and will be ignorant of many of the issues they are voting on. The reality is that most elections are won in the same way the X-Factor, or "I'm a celebrity get me out of here". It is nothing more than a popularity c…

>> This guarantees worse outcomes. [Citation needed] An opposite argument is that compulsory voting smooths out or buffers the extreme radical urgency of any faction that might, in the right circumstances, carry the day in a low-turnout election.

Why put the [citation needed]? I've told you what my rationale is behind my statement. Just argue against my logic.

> An opposite argument is that compulsory voting smooths out or buffers the extreme radical urgency of any faction that might, in the right circumstances, carry the day in a low-turnout election.

That is a bad thing IMO. I am (and many other people) are disenfranchised by mainstream politics and I want to see more radical ideas/policies/opinions, I (and many others) don't want more of the same.

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