In the last few days I've taken a few Waymo's around SF and driven back and forth on I-80.
I-80 is definitely a hotbed of aggressively dangerous driving and the violent use of vehicles against others that aren't driving how you want them to (and I'm a fast driver).
Have those two experiences very much back to back, I joked about how once we get robo-taxis we'll never go back. Human drivers are dangerous enough of the time -- it's not like I've ever driven on I-80 and NOT seen crazy, pants- staining driving. It's every mile or two of the whole stretch.
(Waymo feels so much more mature and pleasant than the last FSD Beta I tested.. Elon should be embarassed.)
I'd argue that the main issue on US highways is a lack of discipline.
US drivers get away with murder in terms of undertaking, tailgating, camping in fast lanes under the speed limit, not to mention driving vehicles that are in such states of disrepair that it's a miracle the drivers get anywhere.
I'm way more relaxed cruising at 160km/h in Europe than literally any stretch of the I-5.
> US drivers get away with murder in terms of undertaking, tailgating, camping in fast lanes under the speed limit, not to mention driving vehicles that are in such states of disrepair that it's a miracle the drivers get anywhere.
Great, so why aren't those things ever candidates for this kind of automated enforcement? Why is it always "speeding"? In addition to the ones you listed, there are so many distractions now, too. Take a ride down any US freeway as a passenger in some kind of elevated vehicle (like a double decker bus) such that you can see down into people's cars: Probably 1/2 or more are totally out of it, distracted zombies scrolling on their phones. Nobody is calling for this to be cracked down on either.
It's always just "speeding". Like if we solve that, we're done.
> I'd argue that the main issue on US highways is a lack of discipline.
That is a fair point, but unfortunately there is no good solution to that... otherwise we wouldn't need laws and their enforcement in the first place.
It's all about risk... if people are speeding too often and too fast that it's becoming dangerous (which I 1000% agree with), then I think more strict enforcement is warranted.
Conversely, we don't outlaw going outside just because someone could run you over... the risk is not high enough. But I think the risk of injury or death from speeding is very high.
If I go in a crowded night club and start swinging a golf club around, but not at any specific individual, is the end result violence? Was my action violent?
To me it's an extremely clear yes. The only reason I can see why we view this differently is just because we've all agreed this doesn't apply to choices made while driving. But I can't see why that would be the case.
On your first point, that sounds like violence to me, sure. It's almost guaranteed to cause harm, and the club swinger probably knows that.
On your second point, the likelihood that speeding will cause actual harm to another person is vastly lower, and certainly not an outcome expected or intended by drivers generally speaking. Seems silly to call that "violence" when we can just call it irresponsible, negligent, etc.
The risk of pedestrian death in a collision goes from about 10% at 25mph to over 50% at 40mph, and this level of speeding is absolutely normal in the american city I live in.
A pedestrian dying because of a driver's decision to speed in this way is predictable, absolutely expected. Shit I doubt my odds with a golf club at a party are anywhere near 50%. So why is one violence and the other not? I think only because we have decided it is not. But again that decision is exactly what I'm challenging. Calling it silly is not a convincing argument to me.
Of the subset of unintentional crashes it's hard to say how many of them are from irresponsible driving behavior. But I do know that the vast majority of people driving around me on highways/freeways/etc do not obey the speed limit and instead just sort of travel in high speed flocks. Like they don't care that they're operating extremely dangerous vehicles doing an extremely dangerous thing. This is not intent to cause harm but more like playing catch with a loaded firearm.
People driving at the speed of surrounding traffic are not creating a particularly high risk even if their speed exceeds the posted speed limit. People driving at a different speed from surrounding traffic do create an unusual risk, even if that speed is legal and the other drivers are speeding.
This becomes less true in places like Germany where lane discipline is very strict. It's not rare to see extreme speed differentials on unlimited speed sections of German Autobahns, but it is rare to see crashes there.
> People driving at the speed of surrounding traffic are not creating a particularly high risk even if their speed exceeds the posted speed limit.
The whole "everything is fine as long as everyone is doing the same speed" bit is a myth.
For every percent increase in speed, this leads to a 2% change in injury accidents, a 3% change in severe injury accidents and a 4% change in fatal accidents.
Just to be clear, are you and others in this thread advocating driving the posted 45MPH speed limit on a highway where the actual flow of traffic is going 65MPH? And you don't think that's going to be disruptive to the point of causing accidents?
Just to be clear, are you and others in this thread advocating for driving 20 mph faster than the 45 mph speed limit just because you see other criminals doing the same? That's wildly illegal and would probably get your license revoked.
> People driving at a different speed from surrounding traffic do create an unusual risk, even if that speed is legal and the other drivers are speeding
Driving the limit in the right lane is almost always fine.
People who do not drive the speed limit are objectively breaking the law. And generally each flock travels at a different speed. After all, they have no way to communicate a common speed standard like, say, a speed limit.
I agree say this is generally true in the United States, where driving discipline on highways is basically non-existent. Although I would stop short of calling it "extremely dangerous".
How many people would need to die each year for it to be considered extremely dangerous? Literal wars have been started over fewer deaths than the US road network racks up in a year. OK I’m being facetious but the extent to which we’ve normalised 40,000+ deaths a year really is remarkable, can you imagine the reaction if smart phones killed that many?
But speeding-related fatalities accounted for 30% of traffic fatalities in the US for 2022. Which implies there are plenty of other issues, such that I think saying "speeding is violence" doesn't really do anything to address the problem.
Roadway injuries and deaths are both leading causes for many demographics and the US has a death rate three times Canada's, per capita. More than 4x the UK's.
> violence really does imply some intent to harm another person, or people.
That is one of the meanings/senses of the word, but not the only one.
It is perfectly reasonable to say that driving ~200km/h is a violent speed without saying the the driver is being violent because those are two different senses of the word.
> Within an individual human context, violence usually requires intent.
There is a sense of the word that implies intent, but that is only one of the senses and another sense that means "forceful or strong" is often used in describing traits of individual humans and their behavior emotions. A violent nod is not a nod intended to cause harm. The violence of someone's emotions refers to their strength, not their intent.