If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
The net effect of a moderation policy like yours is further entrenching of the status quo, since that's always the most "polite" opinion. Any challenge to power structures or other entrenched ideas is always read as "impolite", because that's how power reacts to a challenge.
If you go by how badly other commenters behave, how vitriolic various replies are or you feel they are, and so on, that's a recipe for a downward spiral, because literally everybody feels that way. I'm not saying everybody behaves equally badly (that's not so), or that everybody is equally right on the issues (also not so). I'm saying that everybody is subject to the same cognitive biases, which have hugely distorting effects on perceptions and therefore on behavior.
One of these biases is that we evaluate our own behavior in one way and other people's in a completely different way. I've been describing it this way lately: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Another bias is that our image of the group is determined by the datapoints that we notice and place the greatest weight on, and those unfortunately tend to be the ones we dislike or find painful: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... That means that people have a distorted tendency to see the group as worse and more hostile to themselves than it really is, which leads to a "why bother" and eventually a "fuck it" sentiment which you seem to be feeling when you say things like "I've long since noticed that being polite doesn't matter here". The problem with these perceptions is that they end up creating the very situation they feel they're reacting to.
The solution is to prioritize taking care of the commons, no matter how badly others are behaving or one feels they are.
Sorry, but no they wouldn't. They might make YOU feel better, but it would do VERY little to solve the problem. In fact, I'd bet a fair amount of money that you'd end up with deadlier vehicle vs pedestrian accidents because you'd dramatically increase the number of hit-and-runs, reducing the number of pedestrians that receive prompt care.
The consequences are already quite severe, though subject to some uncertainty and heavily based on the circumstances of the accident which... is probably pretty appropriate. In basically every other context in criminal policy, increasing penalties beyond a certain point really doesn't affect the underlying rate of the target crime by very much, and can actually be harmful. Three strikes laws are a good example where a run-of-the-mill crime gets turned into a situation where you might as well go for broke and murder every policeman you see because you're going to prison for life anyway so criminals are incentivized to do whatever they can do to escape.
The point was that killing someone with a car is a crime that is almost never prosecuted, not that the penalties are too low.
"While 25 percent of pedestrian deaths are attributed to the driver’s failure to yield, pedestrian behavior looks pretty bad too — they lie down in the street, dart into the road, cross improperly, and so on"
So it would make sense, at least ostensibly, that the majority of drivers receive little punishment. Now, in a place like New York, I have a hard time believing that in the majority of instances drivers are the only witnesses.
Unless it's malicious road rage with video evidence of the incident and intent, it's probably not going to be the penalty they deserve.
I get it, everyone makes mistakes. But when your mistake costs someone else their life, you deserve to have the book thrown at you.
I'm hopeful the increasing amount of cameras in cars will allow for more strict prosecution, as they establish a clearer record of fault (e.g. did biker zoom out of nowhere across a red, or did driver miss obvious biker).