We don’t have to convince the public to accept more enforcement, that’s not how traffic laws are made or enforced.
What we have is a system of cultural attitudes that’s bad for us. People are dying all the time because of lax attitudes. What you’re advocating is status quo. Why? Is it a good thing that a lot of people in NYC who choose to jaywalk get hit by cars?
I’m not on a mission to change things, I don’t care that much if people jaywalk. I’d prioritize speeding enforcement far above jaywalking. I’m just pointing out the obvious — that fretting over how safe it is for autonomous cars to obey the law is just “enculer les mouches”, to use the French term. It’s nitpicking the tiniest of margins while ignoring the primary cause of the problem.
Jaywalking was @Sangermaine's straw man issue, not mine. I was thinking more about speeding and aggressive driving than about what pedestrians do.
Your comment seems to indicate you might not know how traffic laws are made or enforced. They are rarely touched by elected officials.
I honestly don't know why I'm getting such vigorous push-back here. My original comment was about safety and nothing more. People hate speeding and seat-belt laws too, yet it's a fact that lower speed limits and mandatory seat-belts save lives.
Near where I live there was a bridge that lorrys kept getting stuck under, and the local council were very confused.
Then measured it, and found the warning sign wasn't right -- it said 15' but it should actually have been 14'.
They changed the sign, and the accidents reduced dramatically. Having a lower limit reduced accidents.
Unfortunatly someone looked at the statistics and thought "we're still getting accidents. Last time reducing the sign on the bridge by 1' caused them to go down, lets reduce it further and save even more lives!"
So the sign was reduced to saying 10'. And accidents went up because people ignored the signs.
Lower speed limits may save lives in some circumstances, but in the UK the safest roads are the fastest roads, which seems to contradict your statement.
If you put a 30mph limit on the motorway, it will cost more lives 1) It would be ignored by many, so difference in speeds will be higher 2) People would route down more dangerous back roads rather than staying on the safest roads 3) The extra time spent on the motorway has a cost too. The average life is say 40 million minutes long. If your speed limit adds 40 minutes to 1 million people's day, that's 1 life a day you're costing
You could argue that we should stop all vehicles, but then the economy collapses and you end up with civil war as we can't support this population level with an agrarian society
― George Bernard Shaw
In other words, you're assuming a massive (no, even "10 000 cars" is not "massive"), coordinated, correct deployment. I'd like a pony and world peace while we're in fantasyland.
I can't find a source for this, but I imagine they are not ever making net profit on tickets when a trooper makes 75k per year minimum not including overtime or benefits[1] plus 60k+ for a new cruiser[2] plus all other training and administrative overhead (dispatcher etc).
[1] https://www.criminaljusticedegreeschools.com/state-trooper-r...
[2]http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-cop-cars-2015...
Why would they need to make a net profit? That standard isn't applied to anything else the police do. We already have traffic enforcement as well as many other police services paid via taxes. The argument that it costs too much to increase enforcement in any way doesn't really hold much water. Whether people want enforcement is a different story, but the point I brought up that you responded to is purely one of safety. We can debate all the myriad reasons why we can or can't change our cultural attitudes, but it's still true that increased enforcement of human drivers would have a far greater impact on overall safety than fine-tuning autonomous cars to break certain laws in certain locales.
Letting driverless cars break some laws or have "aggressive" driving profiles will never happen anyway, so it's moot. It would be too much liability for the car manufacturers. So how would you make roads safer?
Fair point.
>Why would they need to make a net profit?
At the end of the day the resources either come from somewhere else or it costs more taxpayer money. Yes, I agree it would improve safety.
>The argument that it costs too much to increase enforcement in any way doesn't really hold much water.
It does though because it is the only solution and the fact that is costs too much is the main reason it isn't done already.
>So how would you make roads safer?
That isn't my job and it isn't a pressing political issue in most places. If autonomous cars exacerbate the problem, they should lobby the state and local government to spend more on traffic enforcement to enable them to operate safely.
More spending is not the only solution. And cost is not the only reason we're not doing more. Despite my suggestions to increase fines, the people making and enforcing traffic laws are not out to make a profit, and they are sensitive to the costs to drivers.
Where I live, the state lawmakers mandated raising speed limits in opposition to the Highway Patrol's safety recommendation for lower speed limits and increased enforcement. The speeding laws and their enforcement are lax here because of politicians, regardless of the known safety consequences, and not because of costs.
> That isn't my job and it isn't a pressing political issue in most places.
This is a thread about car safety that we both chose to participate in. I would hope that in doing so, all participants might be willing to offer constructive ideas and not just criticism.
@Rotdhizon offered an idea, as did I. Since you suggest mine won't work, it's fair game to ask you for alternatives, isn't it?
FWIW, in my mind some kinds of "increased enforcement" don't involve punitive measures. "NSC estimates traffic fatalities in New York fell 3 percent last year and have dropped 15 percent over the last two years. Safety advocates say the decline may be due to New York City's push to eliminate traffic deaths by lowering speed limits, adding bike lanes and more pedestrian shelters." https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/14/traffic-deaths-edge-lower-bu...
Establishing spaces for peds & bikes is something that factors into the existing costs, and doesn't necessarily mean any more spending at all. The increased safety means that the state gets back some money that was spent on emergency services. Lowering speed limits doesn't cost anything.
"Your comment seems to indicate you might not know how traffic laws are made or enforced. They are rarely touched by elected officials."
>I would hope that in doing so, all participants might be willing to offer constructive ideas and not just criticism.
People try to dismiss criticism by saying "well do you have a solution?" but that is fallacious and you can make a valid point without offering a different solution that addresses that point