Posted by felineflock 2 days ago
2. Do you really think cell phone addicted drivers will be MORE attentive when their signal starts to go in and out depending on their proximity to this driver? No, they will be more frustrated, looking at their phones more to see what is wrong, trying to redial....
I agree that this guy was an idiot, and generally speaking that's a somewhat fine argument against vigilantism, but I also have witnessed the complete inability of the justice system in the several countries I've lived in to handle even the barest minimum of enforcement of the law.
When I lived in California, I would every single day, stop cars from making illegal right turns across a bike lane when bicyclists have right of way. Me biking forward and blocking the right turn on, signaling with my strobe, could be seen as a form of vigilantism, but if I didn't do it, inevitably I would have seen a bicyclist get run over on one of my commutes.
Unless, maybe you have some clear personal definition that separates vigilantism from direct action/
If you publicly shame an alleged criminal within your free speech rights, you're not a vigilante. If you cross into harassment or stalking in your attempt to take the law into your own hands, that's a vigilante.
Deciding who can and can't use a mobile phone? That's part of the monopoly of violence that defines the government's exclusive power, just like imprisonment.
3. Just imagine being in a car accident, and some idiot in the vicinity didn't realize why traffic is slow, and takes multiple minutes to shutdown their jammer. Or is unable because they're the other party involved in the accident.
Going full SV utilitarian, I'm curious what's the net change in accidents between
(1) texting
(2) no texting?
I've read that texting is the equivalent of having 2 beers. Even "hands free" is distracting. I continue to see people sucked into their phones and oblivious that they're operating a 4,000+ pound machine.
Is that supposed to be a lot, or a little?
We talking two 12oz coors lights for a 300lb career sailer or two 16oz quadruple IPAs for a 90lb nail salon tech?
One beer will start to impair you.
Everyone thinks they're light texting on the road. Just like people think they can drive drunk.
>One beer will start to impair you.
Thank you for illustrating exactly the problem. Impairment is a binary in colloquial usage. Statistically no average-median-ish person has ever been impaired in the colonial sense by one average beer. Any everyone knows this. Two average beers applied to an average person won't get you to the legal limit without aggravating circumstances (i.e. zero time to metabolize + empty stomach, or perhaps conflicting medication).
I will be the first to admit you can give a bunch of people one beer and detect statistically significant difference vs a control group or you can give one person one beer many times and evaluate against a baseline and detect a statistically significant difference. But statistical difference does not "impairment" in the colloquial sense make. And everyone knows this based on their own observed life experience, even people without experience should be able to deduce this by observing how the world behaves for if what you say were true, the way things work would be very different.
And by using the term impairment to describe/quantify the impact of one beer and then re-using that term in contexts where it may overload with the colloquial more binary usage the upper bound of what "one beer" is such that one beer at the top end may equal two or three at the low end.
So now we nor does any casual reader know if texting is equivalent in danger to two "real beers", which almost makes it sound not bad for how distracting it seems to be, or if it's equivalent in danger to two "paternalism beers" in which case it's pretty seriously dangerous.
And this key word overloading problem seems to be endemic to all manner of issues these days.
In this case, the guy thought he was preventing people from using their phones while driving, which is a good thing, but he was too dumb to realize it would have negative consequences apparently.
I spend time in the "third world" where they honk all the time and don't care about road laws (i.e. lane lines are merely suggestions, no requirement to buckle your seat belt), non existent road law enforcement.
It's amazing. Every type of vehicle shares the road in relative harmony. It's the ultimate "mixed use/complete streets" liberal wet dream of transportation infrastructure. It maximizes the utility of the roads. There's also far fewer lifted trucks and similar which harms the visibility of the highly alert drivers.
Everyone is still on their phones, but because they are used to a far more chaotic roads, they pay FAR better attention. Furthermore, the average health is infinitely better (almost no obesity), so even their 80 year old grandmas are far healthier and thus more fit to drive.
Unironically deregulate the roads. We need to radically increase speed limits, significantly reduce penalties for meme stuff "i.e. california stopping at stop signs", and yes go after "do-gooders" who think that risking jamming ambulances is worth getting their "slightly safer roads"
Unironically, put Tullock's spike in every car.
Traffic cops are road marauders/parasites. Many tickets shouldn't exist. And no, I don't have any driving tickets.
> Traffic cops are road marauders/parasites.
I do agree with this, but mostly because better road design and cameras can completely eliminate the need for traffic cops.
that sounds like Los Angeles to me...
Absolutely, unequivocally destroyed by actual metrics. These "chaos" places like India have absolutely atrocious road safety, with hundreds of thousands of deaths yearly. They only look good per capita because of the relative rarity of vehicles and miles driven, but driving is a perilously dangerous activity there and in similar countries.
The bit about obesity is just doubly weird nonsense.
Similar principle here.
That's not a meme. Rolling a stop sign is failing to obey a traffic control device at the expense of everybody around you. I've almost been hit multiple times as a pedestrian, cyclist, and motorcyclist by ignorant drivers pulling such shenanigans.
If you think that encouraging people to run stop signs is a good idea while harboring contempt for this guy then your worldview is, charitably speaking, inconsistent to the point of absurdity.