[HN Gopher] Virginia will punish fast drivers with devices that ...
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Virginia will punish fast drivers with devices that limit their
speed
Author : reaperducer
Score : 11 points
Date : 2025-03-27 20:43 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| somethingsome wrote:
| That seems very dangerous, sometimes you need to accelerate a bit
| to avoid an accident.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Pay walled, but if your catching reckless tickets you really need
| to have your license taken away.
|
| Your either a safer driver or not.
| to11mtm wrote:
| ... Previously the in VA Reckless was automatic at 80MPH but
| now it's 85MPH.
|
| At 80MPH I would play devils advocate, I've had to go to 80MPH
| even in Michigan to avoid hazardous drivers[0]. But in general
| I'd hope that if someone got pulled over and ticketed for such
| it was flagrant.
|
| At 85 It's hard to say what I'd need to avoid in an accident
| unless I was already doing 80.
|
| [0] - Most recently, a 'just shy of overdimension criteria'
| truck that was doing 75 where trucks in general should only do
| 65, while on a cell phone...
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| To be fair, it's the norm in most of the country to hit 15
| over _. If you 're going with the flow of traffic at a safe
| following distance on a 70, I can easily see how someone
| would hit that. Especially right after the border.
|
| _ Edit: the interstate, not city or back roads
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Don't know where you're from. Around here it's 5mph over.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Your either a safer driver or not_
|
| Source? Like, are driving violations concentrated in a minority
| of drivers?
| geoffpado wrote:
| Yes. Drivers who have experienced traffic violations before
| are significantly more likely to experience a crash in the
| future:
|
| "Over half of the observational studies demonstrated that
| traffic offenders were more likely to commit a subsequent
| traffic violation or had elevated risk of crashes. [...]
| Traffic offenders are a high-risk group for subsequent
| violations and crashes." -
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10634619
|
| "After adjusting for confounders in the regression model,
| drivers with three or more driving offences had 2.25 (95% CI
| 1.98 to 2.57), 2.87 (95% CI 1.60 to 5.17) and 3.28 (95% CI
| 2.28 to 4.72) times higher rates of any crash, crashes that
| resulted in hospital admission or death and single vehicle
| crashes compared with drivers with no driving offences." -
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9510411
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Measuring violations is a poor measure, as enforcement varies
| wildly, and the worst offenders are probably also the most
| aware of when and where enforcement happens, so are good at
| dodging enforcement.
|
| A better statistic would be at-fault crash rate. I imagine it
| follows the Pareto Principle: 80% of crashes are likely
| caused by 20% of drivers. I tried to find statistics to back
| up my intuition, but apparently statistics about fault are
| not tracked well.
|
| Though supposedly, on average, American drivers experience
| one crash per 18 years, and 77% of drivers have been involved
| in a crash. But those stats say nothing about _fault_. I got
| into a crash only two months after getting my license, but it
| was because I got hit by someone running a red light, so I
| was not at fault. It 's been 24 years and around 300,000
| miles since then, and I have yet to have another crash,
| though I've gotten two speeding tickets over that time.
| freedomben wrote:
| I'm fully expecting this sort of thing to be mandatory for all
| vehicles at some point in the not too distant future. The tech
| has been there for years now, and I'm honestly surprised some
| politician hasn't honed in on it and started mandating it be used
| for law enforcement yet. We're barrelling toward a world where we
| are under constant surveilance, and tech can and will be used to
| ensure that laws are enforced proactively rather than reactively.
| I'm sure there will be pros and cons of that world, but having
| seen some of the absurd laws in place I suspect there will at
| minimum be some really painful years of evolution.
|
| I'm sure mandating everyone have these things would go over like
| a lead balloon with the current culture, but that will change.
| They're following the classic playbook of starting with just a
| very small and unsympathetic minority (in this case reckless
| drivers). They can then slowly expand the covered group from
| there until it covers everyone. And of course law enforcement
| vehicles won't be speed limited, nor vehicles carrying important
| people. It wouldn't be safe to limit them.
| to11mtm wrote:
| IIRC the EU is trying to mandate breathalyzers in all vehicles.
| I think they're working towards GPS based speed limitation
| being a standard thing too.
|
| OTOH the US hasn't tried to do that yet...
|
| Fun to think about why. On one hand there's the additional cost
| to consumers as well as overall complexity in design (how do
| you make that not look like ass?)
|
| On the other hand, I'm betting that given the US justice
| system, at least one lobbying group would prefer more fines
| and/or the cost of filling up a jail cell vs preventing the
| action in the first place.
|
| As far as general speed limiters... IDK I'd like to be able to
| outrun a tornado. Also I'm guessing some car makers wouldn't
| like that they cannot truly market a 'top speed' of a vehicle,
| then you've got the track day folks who know their business
| would be hurt by govt-mandated speed limiters on road vehicles.
| morkalork wrote:
| There's a whole lot of behaviours that are fine-able offenses
| they society lets slide. California stops, modest speeding etc.
| I'd like to hope we're grown up enough to recognize that and
| not build the torment nexus but signs are not looking good.
| neither_color wrote:
| >Del. Patrick A. Hope (D-Arlington) said various advocacy groups,
| including Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the National Safety
| Council, gave him the idea. He drove a car outfitted with the
| technology and was impressed. "It was easy to use, and once
| you're engaged it's impossible to go over the speed limit," he
| said. "It will make our streets safer."
|
| How do you reconcile "left lane is for passing, slower traffic
| keep right" with hard speed limits and speed regulators? I've
| never found a satisfactory answer besides the German highway
| system.
|
| Let's say all cars are electronically limited to the speed of the
| Beltway that goes around Virginia and Maryland in a circle around
| DC(55MPH). The Beltway has left exits and right exits, as well as
| merging traffic from the left AND the right. Sometimes you need
| to get across 2-3 lanes quickly. How do you pass someone going
| the speed limit enough to create a safe following distance and
| then merge over in front of them if they are going at exactly the
| speed limit? Merge behind them instead? What if there's someone
| behind you and you can't brake?
|
| In the Maryland side of the beltway, wherever there's a hard
| speed limit enforcement mechanism, i.e speed cameras, cars
| suddenly slow down when they get to the camera and then floor it
| as soon as they're out of its range. Locals who drive there every
| day just memorize the camera locations. The sudden drop in speed
| from people going 70+ down to camera speed creates a more unsafe
| situation than if we just allowed people to speed more in the
| left lane and actually formalized it instead of this wishy-washy
| gray zone system that depends on law enforcement feeling like
| pulling you over if you're unlucky or an outlier.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How do you reconcile "left lane is for passing, slower
| traffic keep right" with hard speed limits and speed
| regulators?_
|
| I'm okay with serial speeders losing the ability to pass.
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