Reading some of the recent threads about Hummers (the vehicles, not the sex act) got me to thinking. A common opinion is that H2’s and H3’s are dumb vehicles, but people should have a right to buy dumb vehicles if they want. One problem with that theory is the externalities involved: a larger car is much more dangerous to others in an accident. Currently, fines for speeding are graduated by speed: the faster you are going the heftier the fine. Would it be feasible to work vehicle mass into the equation as well? If you are speeding in a bigger vehicle you are more dangerous, so your fine is proportionally larger. Any thoughts?
Sounds good to me! I drive a Saturn. 
I don’t, generally, speed (and when I do I try darn hard to make sure that I’m either speeding to keep up with the flow of traffic, or not going enough over the limit to make it worth anyone’s while to pull me over.)
And as a person who isn’t generally speeding, the speeders who really piss me off are the ones who can’t seem to figure out that I’m not going as fast as they want me to be until they are in the vicinity of my bumper. I’m not sure I’ve seen a correlation between that behavior and size of vehicle.
So, I’ll vote–need more information.
It makes sense, the heavier the vehicle the more momentum it has and the more kinetic energy. This does raise some interesting issues, first cops will go after large SUV’s more then compacts, to ensure a healthy revenue stream, but puts truck drivers in a very bad place, where the weight of their semi could be 80,000 lbs, or about 10x that of a large SUV, making them strong targets of minor violations such at 5 mph over the limit.
I’m not sure that I see the problem with this: large trucks can cause even more damage than hummers when they crash. I read recently of one that burned down part of an interstate in the Bay Area. Truck drivers are professionals, and should know how to drive safely and legally.
They could cap the maximum fine based upon the weight class of an SUV, so semis would be in the same fine class as an SUV… or they could exempt semis from graduated fines all together.
Well the issue is that the way things are structured almost every time we get on the road we violate the law. One example, speed limits are set in ways that they are lower then the natural speed of the road. If speed limits were actually set at the correct levels and enforced at those levels then I could see it. To have the above happen, I would like to see speed limits jump 15-20 mph and absolutely enforced at those levels, meaning 1 mph over means about the same fine as 16 or 21 mph over the current level.
But with the current system with a speed limit and with a mystery enforcement tolerance it can’t work.
OK capping it may work.
No.
Most States implement maximum speeds for cars and trucks. Either they continue putting Hummer vehciles in the “car” category or they put them into the “truck” category. I don’t see the point of putting them in the former category and then adding additional fines. If Hummers pose a significant risk to motorist and/or have a propensity to cause property damage then classify them as trucks and be done with it.
(I drive a '93 Taurus. Seeking donations)
- Honesty
Count me against it. Giving the cops even more reasons to selectively enforce a law is no good.
By the way, we’re all kind of just assuming that larger vehicles cause more damage than smaller ones, aren’t we? Is that wise? Smaller vehicles are more likely to be raced on the street, and are probably more likely than minivans to be driven at unsafe speeds. Doesn’t that make smaller cars more dangerous, and shouldn’t that mean that we ought to enforce speeding laws on smaller cars more vigorously?
Yes, the system where there are different limits on interstates (e.g., 65 mph for cars and 55 mph for trucks) is unnatural. If trucks obeyed those limits, they would annoy all the car drivers. So they drive at least 10 mph over the limit, and I’ve never seen a truck pulled over for that.
Mmm. So the 1,000 pound 550 Spyder replica of my dad’s might actually be free to do as it wills?
Oh, I am so totally in favor of that. “Write me up for 125…”
And small cars are more dangerous to the passengers inside them in the event of a crash. Let’s ticket the little cars more aggressively since the owners of them are too cheap to be concerned about the safety of their passengers!
(What? The logic makes just as much sense as the OP!)
Although it wouldn’t apply in the case of hummers, there are cases where semis pretty much have to speed. When taking a big hill the semis often need to hit the hill at a higher speed or it becomes a burden getting up the hill (and a traffic hazard, if you’ve ever seen a huge semi going 35 with it’s emergency blinkers on because it couldn’t take the hill at a higher speed.)
Likewise, sometimes it’s just not feasible for the semis to slow down like regular vehicles when going down big hills.
The passengers have a choice to ride in that car don’t they? Aren’t they assuming the risk of choosing to ride in a small car? This is not the case when some yuppie barrels down the road in a hummer and hits and kills a family, coming back from the hospital with their newborn, in a Toyota Pries that they bought to be environmentally friendly.
Apples and oranges.
Really? The newborn in that Toyota had a choice to be in it? What if it was the Toyota that was speeding and hit the Hummer?
But you’re right - adults ARE assuming the risk when they get into a little roller skate of a car. That risk is that there are bigger vehicles on the road. So either spend the money to get a safer vehicle, or kwitcherbitchen.
That’s beside the point, though. If you want to fine large vehicles for being more dangerous to others, then make the owners of small vehicles legally and financially responsible for the lack of safety of their own vehicles. Or, better yet, you drive what you want, I drive what I want, and we don’t whine about each other.
but tickets are already graduated by how much you speed, so Racer McGee already pays more for a ticket than someone only going 10-15 over. And if smaller cars are more likely to speed, then they are more likely to be pulled over. But a large car speeding is more dangerous than a small car going the same speed.
Sure drive whatever you want, but just keep it on your own property, if you are in public space you are responsible for the public safety in your actions and choices, bigger vehicles (and higher speeds) have more destructive potential. It is right to charge fines accordingly.
No, it isn’t right to charge fines accordingly. Two people committing the exact same offense should be given the same fine. The difference in weight between a standard 4-Door sedan and a SUV isn’t significant enough to justify differentiating fines.
It’d be an unreasonable, incredibly stupid law.
It actually would be reasonable in the case of large trucks, tractor-trailers, logging + mining trucks. But the downside to that is because of the bigger fine potential police would probably be more likely to pull over the big trucks for even very small speeding infractions and this would indirectly lead to higher prices for anything shipped via truck (read, everything you own aside from real estate.)
Bold mine, they are not committing the exact same offense, one person is barreling down a public road at x speed with a mass of 2 tons, the other is at 4 tons. The destructive potential of the 4 tons of mass has more energy that must be dissipated if their law breaking actually causes injuries. If these vehicles run into a crowd of grandma’s, it’s going to take a lot more dead grandma’s to stop the 4 ton load.
Cite? I’d like to see some actual science on how significantly different a relatively small amount of mass makes. I don’t believe it is the mass that makes the difference in collisions but other aspects of vehicle construction.
More rigid frames common in SUVs and trucks are probably a much bigger issue when it comes to collisions than their weight. A Ford Expedition King Cab weighs in at 5607 lbs, an Audi A6 weighs in a t 4145 lbs, relatively speaking that isn’t that big of a difference. Some coal trucks weigh like 80,000 lbs.
A law that fined based on mass would be unreasonable, it’d stupid, and it’d also have the negative effect of encouraging people to buy ever lighter cars, which means putting themselves in cars which are not as safe. The effect might be significant, but I’m still not sure we should penalize people for buying safer vehicles.
And why stop at mass if you’re going to do that, you should also fine based on how rigid a car frame is because more rigid frames do more damage. A lot of older cars were a lot sturdier than modern vehicles, the “buckling” that many cars go through when they wreck is because the old cars from the 1970s and earlier actually used to do more damage to everyone involved because they were more rigid.
Also, the offense is speeding and it is not statutorily related to the weight of the car.
Didn’t do so well in physics class? I suggest looking up the following formulas for the conservation of energy and momentum.
Ke=1/2mV^2 : momentum = mV
Laws of man may be changeable, laws of physics are not and are not arguable.
Again you are protecting yourself at the direct expense of increased public risk. The public has a right to demand proper fines for a violation.
Look driving a car/suv on a public road is putting others at risk, more mass (and more speed) equals more destructive potential - this is just not arguable (yes you can demand a cite, but doing so would be ignoring the laws of physics). I’m not saying not to buy a SUV, just you should drive more carefully and should be fined more if you violate the laws set up for public safety.
Safer for who, the passengers, then I beleive that full size cars (not SUV’s) do that. But that is not the issue, we are talking about public life safety here, not saving your sweet little rear end.