Vehicle Crimes.. too often a slap on the wrist

IMHO, wielding a vehicle dangerously is about as bad as the various gun related crimes. Perhaps I should not have even mentioned guns but it seems like the way the justice system and society in general deals with them might be contrasted although that need not be the focus here.

I can see the first instance of drunk driving carrying only some kind of counselling or treatment as long as it was clear that the next would result in a very very harsh penalty.

I understand that licenses can be suspended for failing to pay parking tickets. The reason your license is suspended should carry added weight if you drive… not sure whether it does.

Reckless driving should be punished big time as well.

Does the need to drive to make a living and support a family impact punishment policies?

Don’t most “gun related crimes” involve using a gun to deliberately harm another person? And is that treated any more harshly than using a motor vehicle to deliberately harm another person?
I was under the impression that many places do treat drunk and/or reckless driving harshly, much more so than they used to. Plus, drunk driving is far less socially acceptable, in general, than it used to be. But I agree that, if reckless driving isn’t taken seriously, it should be.

This is why a DUI can keep you out of Canada. It’s taken as a more serious offence here. Police at crash scenes, on the news, purposely avoid using the word accident. Often going out of their way to explain, “We are not calling this an accident as this, was 100% preventable.”

The best way to kill someone is to hit them with a vehicle & then suck down a bottle of liquor. That’s the way that one will do the least amount of time for killing someone.

FWIW, motor vehicle collisions are being called “crashes” or collisions" in more and more places by the police in the U.S. in that there are very few that are actual non-preventable accidents.

But aren’t most accidents preventable? Since when does the word “accident” mean that it couldn’t have been prevented?

“Preventable” isn’t precisely the right concept – what they’re trying to avoid is the connotation of random chance and lack of fault that is carried by the primary meaning of the word “accident”. The word has a legitimate alternate meaning as a vehicle crash but it still tends to convey the sense that the thing was due just to random chance and no one is at fault, which is pretty misleading when there’s a reckless idiot involved. An accident in the sense of the word’s primary meaning would indeed be something that could not have been anticipated and therefore prevented, like a completely unexpected random mechanical failure.

Skip that second step and more than likely you won’t spend any time in jail. The American Motorcyclist Association magazine is chock full of stories about motorcyclist getting mowed down, and the cage drivers get away scott-free.
*
“Oh, gosh! I didn’t see him!”*

Yup. Just claim you were distracted by doing something legal. A few years ago, a college student on a bike was hit a few blocks away from my office and killed. No negligence on the cyclist’s part, just riding on the road legally. Driver admitted she was distracted (I think she was operating the radio). No charges filed.

That’s ridiculous, IMHO. A driver has a basic duty to drive with due care and attention, and if the driver strikes a cyclist or pedestrian then absent extreme extenuating circumstances the driver by definition has been negligent in that duty. I would say that remains true even if the distraction arose from a commonplace activity. It’s not the fault of the now-deceased cyclist that the driver didn’t have the competence to simultaneously drive safely and piss around with whatever she was pissing around with. This is not like someone suddenly jumping out in front of the car. Seems to me that either the cops were totally incompetent or they were limited by pretty stupid laws.

In this thread from 2011, note that it carries a very harsh penalty if you hit me. I’ll make damned sure of it.

I’m post #4. Notice how many posters whined about ole pullin being a big meanie to the drunk driver. People like them are why we keep burying their victims.

The one thing I want to point out here, referring back to the opening post, is that the various laws we have dealing with all sorts of things, were not written all at once, and coordinated conceptually and philosophically with each other.

This means that most comparisons between how one kind of “criminal” is dealt with, and another, aren’t actually valid in any way.

On another more esoteric level: the fundamental difference between gun-related “damage” and vehicle-related “damage,” is that when someone buys a gun, the entire purpose of doing so, IS to “do damage.” (Not illegal damage, that’s not my point. ). When someone buys a vehicle, unless it’s a military vehicle, or one destined specifically to be used in a demolition derby, it is NOT bought with the goal of crashing it.

That’s the position of the AMA, too. Their legal arm is pretty bull-dog about trying to get car drivers stiff penalties in the cases of deaths of motorcyclists.

And of course, fundraising for that endeavor. But, hey! You get a cool pin.

TB #2 makes a valid point.

But let’s consider the objective panorama.

Many if not most of the speed limits on U.S. roadways were set at a time when some cars on the road had 2 wheel drum brakes.

Today modern cars

have:

  • radial tires
  • 4 wheel power disc brakes
  • anti-lock
  • traction control
  • autonomous braking
  • etc.

Stopping distances have been cut in half.

But the same tired old speed limits linger.

The problem is, driving a car at 55 MPH under conditions where it could safely be driven at 70 MPH may be more dangerous, not less.

Why?

Such slow speed is so mind-numbingly dull the driver may be prone to distraction:

  • read the map
  • read the newspaper
  • text
  • tidy the glove box
  • whatever

Pick up the pace, and the view out the windshield is interesting enough to hold the driver’s attention.

I don’t buy this argument for a minute. There’s no reason one would be less bored driving 70 than 55. And those hypothetical extra deaths caused by boredom wouldn’t be as numerous as those avoided by a lower speed, anyway.

And finally : being bored is no excuse to text or what…read the newspaper??? Are you joking? The responsibility of the accident lies squarely on the driver…what?..reading the newspaper??? Not on boredom-inducing speed limits.

Driving is safer at 70 than at 55? Good, let’s keep it this way. Cars are safer now than then? Extra good. There’s no reason to reduce safety on one side just because it was improved on the other side. Unless you think for some reason that the number of road deaths should be kept constant.
No, seriously…reading the newspaper???

I got a new car last year. It’s a cute little Honda Civic coupe.
I live 10 miles from town, and am disinclined to dawdle.
The highway speed limit is 55 MPH.

Many if not most drivers exceed the posted speed limit there.

BUT !!

Not only that.
I drove from Northern New York State to North Carolina late last year.
Some of the highways have posted speed limits of 70 MPH.

BUT !!

I had to do 80 MPH or more just to keep up with traffic.
There were signs along the way that said:
80 MPH is reckless driving
Yet we’d hit the occasional speed trap doing 80 MPH or better, and the COPs would just watch us pass by.
I saw no wreckage either way, on that ~1,800 mile round trip.

Perhaps we should both beware of confirmation bias.

My point is:
if those speed limits were set when stopping distances were twice what they are now; what makes these standards set over half a century ago so immutable?
Reductio ad absurdum:
If 55 is better than 70, then is 40 correspondingly better than 55?
And if 40 is better, why kitty-foot around?! Human life is at stake! Why not 20 instead of 40?
BUT !! If we change it from 55 to 20, why not seize the opportunity to maximize the benefit, and just make the speed limit one MPH?

You know the answer to that as well as I do.
That blade cuts both ways.
If 55 MPH is good, does that mean 110 MPH is twice as good?
Candidly, I wouldn’t want to see a 20 year old garbage truck full of left-overs and bird cage dressing careening down my local highway at over 100 miles an hour.

Thank you for helping me to make that point.
I’m not excusing it. I’m explaining it.

So please explain.
What’s magical about 55 MPH?

My personal physician, GP MD used to commute from home to office in familiar style.

  • He’d usually have coffee.
  • He’d usually have something to eat, a muffin, a doughnut, whatever (not quite sure what it usually was).
  • And he’d usually have a newspaper as well.
    His sons went to my school, and we got into a discussion about it on home room one day.
    I don’t recall the doctor ever causing a problem with it.

BUT !!

“Distracted Driving” including talking on cell phone, or texting, is bedeviling law enforcement, and there are now laws against it.
Of course, exceptions are made for police, who are legally empowered to drive and talk on their 2 way radio at the same time.
It’s OK for them, but not for you or me.