I’m not suggesting that the moral character of the individual is in any way relevant here, and I’m glad driver’s licenses are not issued or revoked on that basis. This is instead a straightforward question of public safety - anyone who consistently demonstrates that they are unable or unwilling to safely operate a motor vehicle on public roads according to the clearly posted and non-negotiable law should not permitted to risk the lives of others, and will be subject to escalating sanctions in order to accomplish that. There is definitely room for improvement in the system but it is fundamentally reasonable and sound. Yes, essentially anyone who lives in Toronto can get by without a car. Even if someone is severely physically disabled and confined to a wheelchair they can still use not only the fully accessible bus and subway system but also a separate disabled-specific transit system that provides door-to-door service using the same fee scale as the broader system. Toronto may not be a perfect utopia but it has gotten pretty close to solving this particular problem.
Ironically, people that are severely physically disabled are the ones that won’t be owning cars so a good wheel-chair accessible city with reliable public transit is needed most for them.
anyone who consistently demonstrates that they are unable or unwilling to [follow] the clearly posted and non-negotiable law
This right here is a moral argument. You’re suggesting that people are repeatedly making a conscious decision to “break the law”.
The entire concept around “if only they just didn’t choose to break the law” is a moral argument that places sole blame onto the individual for externalities that occurred as a result of the punitive nature of modern justice systems because they are based on the assumption that the individual “deserved to be punished because they are a ‘bad person’ for repeatedly ‘breaking the law’, so the consequences are their fault” instead of taking into account the material circumstances, understanding that humans are fallible creatures who unconsciously make mistakes, and not assign blame or punishment as it is inefficient at repressive, especially when those externalities have far reaching consequences for those of lesser means resulting in the punishment being unfairly weighted based on financial status. Instead, we need to improve our roadways to influence drivers through affecting the material conditions directly at the root cause.
And cool, that’s your anecdotal take on Toronto and a single service exclusive to disabled people. What about non disabled people? They exist, in Toronto, you can go read those anecdotal accounts in the FuckCars sub on Reddit who speak about how car-centric areas of Toronto still are. Their anecdotal accounts are just as valid as yours. You simply assume that there are no situations that would be limiting to someone. I am making the opposite assumptions.
I emphatically disagree that it is “fundamentally reasonable and sound”. I am fundamentally opposed to this kind of justice system and believe it to be systemically flawed and oppressive.
Though this is getting into the larger topic about the validity of hierarchical, punitive justice systems. The entire point is cities need to stop relying on ineffectual and harmful stop-gap methods and instead improve the damn urban design which is proven to be leagues more effective without the systemically harmful side effects.
This right here is a moral argument. You’re suggesting that people are repeatedly making a conscious decision to “break the law”.
Well, that’s exactly the case. People have speedometers in their cars and speed limits are posted in visible places. If someone is incapable of seeing the speed limit or the speedometer or someone is incapable of comparing one to the other, then they are not fit enough to drive.
In my area they are extensively using a system called “section control”, where cameras take a picture of your license place when you enter and exit a certain section, and from the time it took you to get from A to B they calculate your average speed. That way speeders are caught at a rate of almost 100%. And suddenly everyone manages to drive at a fair margin below the speed limit.
Because it’s a concious decision to break the law and drive too fast. And if people choose to do so, they should expect to be fined and shouldn’t expect compassion.
Because it’s a concious decision to break the law and drive too fast
No, it isn’t. You can claim that it is all you want but it just makes you look like a judgmental simpleton who only cares about subjective bullshit to avoid critically thinking about the systems we live under or and failing to make allowances for the fact that humans are not perfect beings who unconsciously make mistakes, regardless of our intentions. Speeding occurs predominantly due to a simple mistake from people needing to pay attention to a myriad of information while driving, and the speedometer slipped their attention and their foot relaxed a little. It happens to literally everyone. You are no different; if you try to say that you are, you’re a fucking liar.
If someone is incapable of seeing the speed limit or the speedometer or someone is incapable of comparing one to the other, then they are not fit enough to drive.
No shit people who are blind and suffer from certain limiting disabilities shouldn’t be behind the wheel but that is why we have licensing exams. It has nothing to do with a discussion on speed limits and how to enforce them, twit.
they should expect to be fined and shouldn’t expect compassion.
Then you admit you willingly forsake your humanity and discard compassion for blind obedience to an unjust system. I have little to no respect for you and those like you who blindly and uncritically support a system which disproportionately harms those who are already struggling the most.
I have never gotten a single speeding ticket in the last 17 years since I have a license.
Not one.
Speeding is a choice. If you can’t stay below the speed limit, you are too incompetent to drive and a danger to yourself and everyone else on the road.
It is not injust to stop you from endangering other people with your gross incompetence.
Edit: Let’s put this differently: Are you seriously argueing that you are incapable of controlling the speed of your car and I should feel sorry for you for that reason?
Speeding isn’t simply a choice. That’s your biased, uninformed assumption of a stranger’s moral character when you have no actual idea what happened in the moment.
Just because you never got a ticket doesn’t mean you never caught yourself speeding absent mindedly, for an unknown length of time that the speedometer slipped your attention, for any number of perfectly valid reasons, before catching yourself and slowing back down. For that time period you were, technically, speeding. Lucky you that those times you made that mistake it didn’t also occur as you passed a pig in a speed trap and you lose your license after a series of unfortunate events and mistakes.
Edit: Let’s put this differently: Are you seriously argueing that you are incapable of controlling the speed of your car and I should feel sorry for you for that reason?
No, absolutely not. My argument has nothing to do with a judgment of the individual or their capabilities or something as petty as “feeling sorry”. It is that I know they are human, and humans make fucking mistakes. Plain and simple. So no matter how much you try to dictate their actions, even by threat of penalty, you will never have 100% compliance because of this. People will slip up, and the current system of blaming the individual and penalizing them for it without there being any actual victims is IMO ass backwards and the least effective method of prevention. I’m saying instead of blaming the individual, blame the conditions of the road that makes it possible for people to comfortably speed on. Traffic calming is a fucking thing. If a road has an issue of people driving faster than those living or working there are comfortable with, lobby the fucking city to upgrade the road infrastructure. We, collectively, are perfectly capable of improving the material conditions we fucking live in instead of trying to coerce people into specific behavioral patterns by force.
You are not a victim if you “absentmindedly speed”, same as you are not a victim if you “absentmindedly drift into opposing traffic” or “absentmindedly drive up the highway in the wrong direction”.
Driving absentmindedly means you are not paying attention while operating a multi-ton vehicle which moves with a murderous amount of speed. That is not normal and no, you are not a victim for doing so, no matter how sad and poor you feel about the fact that you are not fit to drive.
Stop feeling like a victim from driving dangerously. If you are not capable to focus on operating your vehicle you are not fit to drive. You are a danger to yourself and others and you should not drive.
And no, not being in control of the speed of your vehicle is not normal and it is not ok.
And you will not get pitty points if the “evil system” punishes you poor little bunny for endangering others because watching your speed is too much to handle for you.
There’s nothing immoral about you being incapable of driving. There’s something incredibly immoral about you choosing to get behind the wheel regardless.
Be a simple minded fool and only think on the surface level. Whatever. I’m done trying to talk to someone who clearly doesn’t want to think about what is being said.
Moral judgements about individual choices and behavior are not necessary here. The fact is that the behavior of problem drivers, however it came to occur, threatens public safety and must be discouraged if we want to protect the lives of innocent people. I will readily admit that it is a moral judgement that public safety is more important that the convenience of a relative few, you’ve got me there.
I suppose it’s not ideal that discouraging dangerous driving has to take the form of punishment but I’m not sure how else this important goal could be accomplished. Is there anywhere in the world that has successfully addressed this problem using other methods? For better or for worse people respond to these incentives, and in the absence of better alternatives we have to accept this reality if we want government to be effective.
It’s not ideal that wealthier people are discouraged less by monetary fines, but the province of Ontario does also impose non-monetary demerit points that will eventually lead to license suspension regardless of the ability to pay.
I don’t expect you to take my word or anyone else’s for this, feel free to look up a TTC system map and review some of the schedules if you want to have a better idea of just how much coverage the TTC provides in Toronto, all with prices much lower than the total cost of ownership of a private vehicle.
Is there anywhere in the world that has successfully addressed this problem using other methods?
Yes, Not Just Bikes on YouTube has done videos on some. Other mentions are the Autobahn, but that’s a special case which is also predicated by the structure of the road system. and Paris has been expanding its efforts to retro fit roads in certain areas into green spaces and pedestrian/cycling infrastructure, which effectively removes speed limits. Not to mention all the eras of industrial society before the personal car became the dominant model of transportation but I get that Pandora’s Box has been opened and that evil ain’t going back in any time soon but I do fundamentally believe it should be a goal of getting back to.
I’m not saying speed limits are completely useless but you have to first take in the material conditions of the road and understand people are going to drive at the speed that is most comfortable to them. That’s just how humans generally are. That’s why I mentioned that most speeding is simply an absent minded mistake. Paying strict attention to the speedometer slipped their attention among the many other things you need to keep observant of while driving or just simply were pulled into complacency by a boring, routine drive
It just isn’t an effective method of trying to force people to drive at an arbitrarily predetermined speed even if the road conditions are safe to do so. Also, due to the systemic structures which dictate the overarching experience that I personally find unjust, I fundamentally oppose a political entity having the hierarchical authority to take away someone’s means of being able to travel or imposing financial penalties but that’s getting into much deeper politics than I care to get engaged with. I’m too tired for that right now
I’m not suggesting that the moral character of the individual is in any way relevant here, and I’m glad driver’s licenses are not issued or revoked on that basis. This is instead a straightforward question of public safety - anyone who consistently demonstrates that they are unable or unwilling to safely operate a motor vehicle on public roads according to the clearly posted and non-negotiable law should not permitted to risk the lives of others, and will be subject to escalating sanctions in order to accomplish that. There is definitely room for improvement in the system but it is fundamentally reasonable and sound. Yes, essentially anyone who lives in Toronto can get by without a car. Even if someone is severely physically disabled and confined to a wheelchair they can still use not only the fully accessible bus and subway system but also a separate disabled-specific transit system that provides door-to-door service using the same fee scale as the broader system. Toronto may not be a perfect utopia but it has gotten pretty close to solving this particular problem.
Ironically, people that are severely physically disabled are the ones that won’t be owning cars so a good wheel-chair accessible city with reliable public transit is needed most for them.
This right here is a moral argument. You’re suggesting that people are repeatedly making a conscious decision to “break the law”.
The entire concept around “if only they just didn’t choose to break the law” is a moral argument that places sole blame onto the individual for externalities that occurred as a result of the punitive nature of modern justice systems because they are based on the assumption that the individual “deserved to be punished because they are a ‘bad person’ for repeatedly ‘breaking the law’, so the consequences are their fault” instead of taking into account the material circumstances, understanding that humans are fallible creatures who unconsciously make mistakes, and not assign blame or punishment as it is inefficient at repressive, especially when those externalities have far reaching consequences for those of lesser means resulting in the punishment being unfairly weighted based on financial status. Instead, we need to improve our roadways to influence drivers through affecting the material conditions directly at the root cause.
And cool, that’s your anecdotal take on Toronto and a single service exclusive to disabled people. What about non disabled people? They exist, in Toronto, you can go read those anecdotal accounts in the FuckCars sub on Reddit who speak about how car-centric areas of Toronto still are. Their anecdotal accounts are just as valid as yours. You simply assume that there are no situations that would be limiting to someone. I am making the opposite assumptions.
I emphatically disagree that it is “fundamentally reasonable and sound”. I am fundamentally opposed to this kind of justice system and believe it to be systemically flawed and oppressive. Though this is getting into the larger topic about the validity of hierarchical, punitive justice systems. The entire point is cities need to stop relying on ineffectual and harmful stop-gap methods and instead improve the damn urban design which is proven to be leagues more effective without the systemically harmful side effects.
Well, that’s exactly the case. People have speedometers in their cars and speed limits are posted in visible places. If someone is incapable of seeing the speed limit or the speedometer or someone is incapable of comparing one to the other, then they are not fit enough to drive.
In my area they are extensively using a system called “section control”, where cameras take a picture of your license place when you enter and exit a certain section, and from the time it took you to get from A to B they calculate your average speed. That way speeders are caught at a rate of almost 100%. And suddenly everyone manages to drive at a fair margin below the speed limit.
Because it’s a concious decision to break the law and drive too fast. And if people choose to do so, they should expect to be fined and shouldn’t expect compassion.
And for that exact reason it is fucking stupid.
No, it isn’t. You can claim that it is all you want but it just makes you look like a judgmental simpleton who only cares about subjective bullshit to avoid critically thinking about the systems we live under or and failing to make allowances for the fact that humans are not perfect beings who unconsciously make mistakes, regardless of our intentions. Speeding occurs predominantly due to a simple mistake from people needing to pay attention to a myriad of information while driving, and the speedometer slipped their attention and their foot relaxed a little. It happens to literally everyone. You are no different; if you try to say that you are, you’re a fucking liar.
No shit people who are blind and suffer from certain limiting disabilities shouldn’t be behind the wheel but that is why we have licensing exams. It has nothing to do with a discussion on speed limits and how to enforce them, twit.
Then you admit you willingly forsake your humanity and discard compassion for blind obedience to an unjust system. I have little to no respect for you and those like you who blindly and uncritically support a system which disproportionately harms those who are already struggling the most.
Nobody forces you to speed.
I have never gotten a single speeding ticket in the last 17 years since I have a license.
Not one.
Speeding is a choice. If you can’t stay below the speed limit, you are too incompetent to drive and a danger to yourself and everyone else on the road.
It is not injust to stop you from endangering other people with your gross incompetence.
Edit: Let’s put this differently: Are you seriously argueing that you are incapable of controlling the speed of your car and I should feel sorry for you for that reason?
Never said anyone did.
Speeding isn’t simply a choice. That’s your biased, uninformed assumption of a stranger’s moral character when you have no actual idea what happened in the moment.
Just because you never got a ticket doesn’t mean you never caught yourself speeding absent mindedly, for an unknown length of time that the speedometer slipped your attention, for any number of perfectly valid reasons, before catching yourself and slowing back down. For that time period you were, technically, speeding. Lucky you that those times you made that mistake it didn’t also occur as you passed a pig in a speed trap and you lose your license after a series of unfortunate events and mistakes.
No, absolutely not. My argument has nothing to do with a judgment of the individual or their capabilities or something as petty as “feeling sorry”. It is that I know they are human, and humans make fucking mistakes. Plain and simple. So no matter how much you try to dictate their actions, even by threat of penalty, you will never have 100% compliance because of this. People will slip up, and the current system of blaming the individual and penalizing them for it without there being any actual victims is IMO ass backwards and the least effective method of prevention. I’m saying instead of blaming the individual, blame the conditions of the road that makes it possible for people to comfortably speed on. Traffic calming is a fucking thing. If a road has an issue of people driving faster than those living or working there are comfortable with, lobby the fucking city to upgrade the road infrastructure. We, collectively, are perfectly capable of improving the material conditions we fucking live in instead of trying to coerce people into specific behavioral patterns by force.
You are not a victim if you “absentmindedly speed”, same as you are not a victim if you “absentmindedly drift into opposing traffic” or “absentmindedly drive up the highway in the wrong direction”.
Driving absentmindedly means you are not paying attention while operating a multi-ton vehicle which moves with a murderous amount of speed. That is not normal and no, you are not a victim for doing so, no matter how sad and poor you feel about the fact that you are not fit to drive.
Stop feeling like a victim from driving dangerously. If you are not capable to focus on operating your vehicle you are not fit to drive. You are a danger to yourself and others and you should not drive.
And no, not being in control of the speed of your vehicle is not normal and it is not ok.
And you will not get pitty points if the “evil system” punishes you poor little bunny for endangering others because watching your speed is too much to handle for you.
There’s nothing immoral about you being incapable of driving. There’s something incredibly immoral about you choosing to get behind the wheel regardless.
Be a simple minded fool and only think on the surface level. Whatever. I’m done trying to talk to someone who clearly doesn’t want to think about what is being said.
There is nothing deep about the fact that people who are too incompetent to drive safely should not be driving.
Moral judgements about individual choices and behavior are not necessary here. The fact is that the behavior of problem drivers, however it came to occur, threatens public safety and must be discouraged if we want to protect the lives of innocent people. I will readily admit that it is a moral judgement that public safety is more important that the convenience of a relative few, you’ve got me there.
I suppose it’s not ideal that discouraging dangerous driving has to take the form of punishment but I’m not sure how else this important goal could be accomplished. Is there anywhere in the world that has successfully addressed this problem using other methods? For better or for worse people respond to these incentives, and in the absence of better alternatives we have to accept this reality if we want government to be effective.
It’s not ideal that wealthier people are discouraged less by monetary fines, but the province of Ontario does also impose non-monetary demerit points that will eventually lead to license suspension regardless of the ability to pay.
I don’t expect you to take my word or anyone else’s for this, feel free to look up a TTC system map and review some of the schedules if you want to have a better idea of just how much coverage the TTC provides in Toronto, all with prices much lower than the total cost of ownership of a private vehicle.
Yes, Not Just Bikes on YouTube has done videos on some. Other mentions are the Autobahn, but that’s a special case which is also predicated by the structure of the road system. and Paris has been expanding its efforts to retro fit roads in certain areas into green spaces and pedestrian/cycling infrastructure, which effectively removes speed limits. Not to mention all the eras of industrial society before the personal car became the dominant model of transportation but I get that Pandora’s Box has been opened and that evil ain’t going back in any time soon but I do fundamentally believe it should be a goal of getting back to.
I’m not saying speed limits are completely useless but you have to first take in the material conditions of the road and understand people are going to drive at the speed that is most comfortable to them. That’s just how humans generally are. That’s why I mentioned that most speeding is simply an absent minded mistake. Paying strict attention to the speedometer slipped their attention among the many other things you need to keep observant of while driving or just simply were pulled into complacency by a boring, routine drive
It just isn’t an effective method of trying to force people to drive at an arbitrarily predetermined speed even if the road conditions are safe to do so. Also, due to the systemic structures which dictate the overarching experience that I personally find unjust, I fundamentally oppose a political entity having the hierarchical authority to take away someone’s means of being able to travel or imposing financial penalties but that’s getting into much deeper politics than I care to get engaged with. I’m too tired for that right now