While momentum may increase damage, you have not presented any evidence that there is additional damage to be caused. For example, if you total the car and crush the people in it at X, then it doesn’t matter if you’re travelling at X or 2X, the damage will be the same. Or, similarly, if a structure can withstand an imact of X without damage, then it won’t matter whether you’re travelling at X-Y, or X-Y-Z; the damage will be the same.
Speeding tickets, just like any other driving infractions, should be directly proportionate to one’s income or car value!
A $1,000 doesn’t affect you and me or Bill Gates in the same way…
If you can afford a 911 Turbo or a Ferrari, chances are you can afford both the ticket and the court fees to fight it.
I say, that $1,000 infraction should be turned into a 0.05% of the car’s value (for example) fine… The index being set at $20,000 (cheaper car would have to pay that minimum index).
Hence, if you’re driving a $20,000 (or less) car it will cost you $1,000 and if you are driving a $200,000 car, you’d have to pay $10,000.
That should help you slow down a bit…
Or should we start to educate people on how to drive better at high speed and learn from Germany where most Autobahn are speed-limitless and yet, still achieve the lowest number of traffic-related deaths in entire Europe!
Pickup trucks are in general lighter then SUV’s of equal size, I’m not sure what a Audi A6 is, but I would like to see which one is actually safer for the driver and passengers. If the A6 is a large car I would wag that it is safer for the driver and passengers then the Ford Expedition King Cab. But since these weights are close, the fines for infractions would also be close. It’s not increase the fine based on if it’s a SUV, it’s increase the fines based on the cars/SUV’s mass.
Also you seem to be inferring that SUV’s are safer then cars, this is not the case, large cars are statistically safer, so lets stop that one right now.
And this is safety of the occupants of the car/SUV, it has nothing to do with the safety of the public at large when said car/SUV is operated in a illegal manner.
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Yag Rannavach** Here’s another way to look at it, lets say you are sitting in your car, and you see a Hummer coming at you at 75 mph in a 25 mpg school zone, the collision is not avoidable, if you had the chance somehow (the magic wand) would you change that hummer into a civic?
I’ll try again.
It doesn’t much matter which one you get hit by if they’ll both leave you just as dead. If you claim that the civic will cause less harm than the hummer at certain speeds, then I would like to see a cite that says what those speeds are, and what the difference in damage is.
My God, You people are really, really sad in your collective hatred of SUVs.
It’s been my experience that the high dollar SUVs are the least of the speed demons out on the road (likely because they are typically too damned expensive to be owned by the one demographic that would speed in them). Most of speed offenders are the Honda Accords with the 3’ spoiler and the trashcan muffler to show off the sound of the beast’s four cylinders of fury.
Should we charge obese people more for their meals in restaurant’s as well?
Should home rental rates be scalable in accord with how many people will be living there? After all, the more people you have in a house, the more wear and tear the house will receive, right?
Should prostitute’s charge less for men with smaller members, and more for the well endowed men, who might inflict more wear and tear on her vagina?
This is patently stupid.
Deceptive, because there are far more regular sized cars on the road in which the statistics for accidents can be drawn, thereby reducing the average.
All that would do is make a bigger sample to draw from, making the statistics more accurate. You don’t reduce the average of accidents in your statistics just by drawing a bigger sample.
My point is because you have a relatively small amount of SUVs on the road compared to regular-sized vehicles then, statistically speaking, you are likely to get a larger than accurate ratio for the SUVs than the more accurate smaller cars. If you have 100 apples and two oranges, and eating one of the oranges makes you sick, then fifty percent of all oranges you own will make you sick, compared to the 10 bad apples making 10% of the lot bad for you. Even though there are five times more bad apples than oranges, eating an orange in your pool makes you five times more likely to get sick.
If there were the same amount of SUVs on the road as regular-sized cars, then your statistics would mean something.
Hence my point, implementing a system where a fine is a few dollars difference based on a minor weight difference is an unreasonable, stupid system. The current system works just fine, there’s really little reason to complicate matters further.
Your above physics equation wasn’t remotely an answer to my question for a cite. I don’t think anyone is denying that a larger vehicle can cause more damage, I’m saying I do not believe that the level of damage they are capable of inflicting to the “public” is meaningfully greater than that of a Civic or Accord, and until I show a little bit more than a basic high school physics equation, I’m not going to accept that claim. Government should not make laws that are unreasonable, fining owners of slightly heavier vehicles when there isn’t any evidence suggesting that a 1,000 lbs. difference will meaningfully affect the safety level for the public when comparing two cars both going say, 75 MPH is just stupid.
I never said that. SUVs are more dangerous than cars because (most SUVs) are designed in such a way that they are more susceptible to rolling over, and roll overs are (IIRC) the most fatal type of car accident. However, I do believe that in a collision between two vehicles, an SUV or a truck is safer than a Ford Escort.
You’re going to have to demonstrate that there’d be a meaningful difference in damage delivered based on a Hummer slamming in to you versus a Civic. Is a hummer bigger and thus more likely to cause more damage? Yes, but again, my opinion is that there’s little evidence to suggest that the difference in damage potential is remotely close to the level of justifying legislation. A 75 MPH collision is going to result in a catastrophic amount of damage no matter what two vehicles are involved.
http://www.atlantainjurylawblog.com/honda%20rear%20ended%20by%20tractor%20trailer.jpg
Mass matters, dear.
Yes I think even Martin Hyde knows this, but it doesn’t support his point so he choses to ignore it and degrade some of the fundamental laws of physics to the state of childish nonsense and beneath him. Also making a case that 2 vehicle close in weight should be fined the same amount for violating the law, which I agree - it doesn’t matter if it’s a 4 ton SUV or car, 4 tons is 4 tons (again we get into those childish laws of physics - sorry).
Also the claim above about not having enough SUV’s on the road to be statistically significant is nonsense, there are plenty of them and good statistics.
As for smaller cars in general being driven faster then Hummers, well if the Hummer is not speeding then it won’t get any fine, the civic will - so that’s fair. Also younger drivers will typically drive faster and take more risks, and be less likely to afford a Hummer and settle for a Accord. I think it’s more likely that a Hummer owner is in a better financial position to destroy his Hummer then a Accord driver.
One has pointed out that dead is dead, it doesn’t matter if X units of destructive energy is used or 2X, which is true - though the Geneva convention even speaks out about overkill - but I digress. But the chance that the destructive energy will kill and cause damage is related to how much energy there is.
Just to point out here, that in the case of large vehicles such as trucks and buses, there is already extra incentive not to speed. In my jurisdiction, your driver’s licence can be cancelled if you accrue more than twelve demerit points. I only drive 5000 to 10000 kilometres a year, but a professional driver in a big rig will be doing many, many times more than that. Yet he or she has the same number of demerits available, so is many, many times more likely to lose his or her licence, assuming the traffic laws are being broken at the same rate per kilometre as I break them. And when that licence is suspended, I’ll just catch the train to work, but the trucker will be out of a job.
The trucking community here is agitating for more lenient rules for trucks, rather than tougher ones. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Yes, but I have a certain sympathy - I remember one guy saying he had twenty years’ experience as an interstate bus driver, and had a clean record until two unlucky accidents within twelve months. He was saying that all that is between him and defaulting on his mortgage is the hope that there won’t be that one idiot in a small car who changes lanes in front of him and jams on the brakes at a stop light. I can see his point.
An average tractor trailer can weigh something like 10-15 times as much as even the largest SUV. I’m asking for verifiable, actual evidence that a 1,000 lbs. difference between automobiles is sufficiently meaningful when it comes to damage inflict in car-on-car collisions that it justifies a legislative differentiation in how drivers of said vehicles are fined for speeding.
You guys are talking “past me” if that’s what you want to do, fine. And in response to kanicbird’s subsequent post, I’ve not once denied that mass doesn’t matter. I’ve not once suggested that I have no understanding of basic physics.
What I’ve asked for is some actual support for the idea that an SUV, because of its greater mass, causes so much more damage than a vehicle about 1,000 lbs. lighter that it justifies the fines we’re talking about.
Also, since we’re so hung up on mass. What about fining based on how much the vehicle weighs at the time of the accident? I have an Audi A6 which is why I brought it up earlier in the thread (and to answer kanicbird’s question, yes, it’s basically a normal, sedan-type car.) I weigh about 235 lbs, lets say I have three of my male friends in the car who weigh around 200 lbs., that adds 835 lbs. to the car, meaning my car with a listed weigh of 4145 lbs. would be getting pretty close to the weight of say a Ford Explorer being driven by a smaller, female with no passengers (although still not as much as an Expedition King Ranch.)
Those who do not remember history are doomed to make fools of themselves. In this case…
http://www.internetautoguide.com/reviews/45-int/sport-utility-vehicles/ford/expedition/2004/index.html
SUVs have issues in collisions due to more than just mass, actually. They’re less stable than a car, inherently, and can hit cars over their front or rear bumpers. Speeds being equal, a SUV will do more damage to a equal mass car, than the car will do to the SUV, assuming they hit the equivalent location.
That said, this idea for speeding tickets is pretty stupid, generally. Adding layers of complication to already stressful situations is a bad thing. Frankly, I blame speeding tickets and other traffic-control issues for the expansion of police departments and the decrease in good relations between police and citizen, as any citizen can now be considered a lawbreaker, as traffic/parking violations are revenue issues, not matters of public safety.
Look it boils down to this, a car frame hit by a 4 ton automobile is going to have to deal with twice the impact forces of an impact with a 2 ton automobile.
Since even a 2 ton impact at excessive speeds can devastate an autoframe and severely endanger the people inside. Don’t it stand to reason driving something more massive requires more careful drivers?
In Finland, traffic fines generally are based on two factors: the severity of the offense and the driver’s income.
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/public/wsj_finland.html
Food for thoughts… :smack: