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by consp 375 days ago
It's also misleading as there is a natural penalty asymmetry. The penalty for crossing though red and getting hit by a car is death for any cyclist and a likely accident but very survivable for a car.

Around here the fines are equal in money but you can lose your license to drive a murder machine. (Sarcasm)

It might be worse if the allowed speeds around intersections and cultural preference to speed though red are higher. And by allowed speeds I mean natural speed through traffic calming.
1 comments
john-h-k 375 days ago
> The penalty for crossing though red and getting hit by a car is death for any cyclist and a likely accident but very survivable for a car.

But the legal penalty is nothing to do with what risks you took. You could have the view that the state should punish making mistakes that can kill your (in which case the bike penalty would be higher), but I (and I assume most) people wouldn't say this.

The reason the penalty exists is to disincentivise the action. If people were truly rational with all these risks, the problem wouldn't exist in the first place.

It would be incredibly odd to suggest, say, that burglars should have lower sentences if they risked their lives while doing the burglary.

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consp 375 days ago
I phrased it wrongly. My bad.

The point should have been: if you drive a machine which can result in deadly harm to others you should be more responsible and thus the fine heavier (no longer being allowed to use such machine). Try killing someone with a bike. Not impossible but more a challenge than with a car.

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ImPostingOnHN 375 days ago
Being required to show up for court isn't a fine, it's a means to make sure that a fine can be enforced. Whichever vehicle you're using, running a red light is often* legally proscribed.

The severity of the penalty can be determined by legislators elected by the people. Some of those people may want to increase the fine amount for automobile drivers. That seems like an ok thing to want.

* - often, but not always -- I realize that some jurisdictions legalize varying forms of it for some vehicles

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