Right.

The programmer in me fumes at that imprecision.

The human in me says "thank God". Because there a myriad valid times you cannot turn on signal 300ft before lane change, but you should always do it in reasonable time :)

If I turn on a new street and there's a car parked 200ft down the lane or if a kid jumps on the road or if I become aware of an obstacle or a car cuts me off or I want to give somebody room at a merge etc etc... I may not be able to do it in 300ft but I should still try to do it in reasonable time.

There's no "winning". Overly precise is inhumane in some scenarios, Overly vague is inhumane in others.

Perhaps we could both give a vague description, and also a precise condition which is to be considered a sufficient but not necessary condition for the vague condition to be true?

Such as “must signal within a reasonable time (signaling at least 300ft beforehand while not speeding is to be considered a sufficient condition for signaling within a reasonable time)”

Downside: that could make laws even longer.

Hm, what if laws had, like, in a separate document, a list of a number of examples of scenarios along with how the law is to be interpreted in those scenarios? Though I guess that’s maybe kind of the sort of thing that precedent is for?

That sounds like case law? Eg: It’s why we call “Roe v Wade” as we do.

What’s the difference between “precedent” and “case law”? I had thought that when I said “Though I guess that’s maybe kind of the sort of thing that precedent is for?” that that covered things like citing “Roe v. Wade”.

I’m not a lawyer, I just play one on HN.

I thought precedent was a broader term that also covers accepted practices or processes.

> The human in me says "thank God".

You're more charitable than me: I assume there will be infinitely more times where the imprecision is used for probable cause for a stop, than there will be times where someone was going to pull you over because you properly responded to a road hazard

Oh fair enough.

But I think there's a difference between "intent of change" and "abuse of change" / "threat surface of the change". Sometimes there's a clear, direct line between the two, but (and this is me being charitable:) I think a lot of the time there isn't. Which is to say, I don't think it's necessarily a contradiction that a) The law was changed to make things better/easier for people while b) In actual real world it can or will be abused a lot to make arbitrary trouble - the latter will depend a lot on place/politics/corruption/culture/societal norms/power balance/etc.

Reasonable time is determined by case law, and when it's a judge deciding, it's the judge's estimation of what a reasonable juror in that jurisdiction would think about the case. It's not as woozy as it seems, and is usually called an objective standard in the legal jargon. It's something that could conceivably be determined by a computer looking at all the factors that a judge would look at, and/or the relevant jury instructions that might frame the issue for a jury.

It doesn't have to be precise. The founder should wear his own glasses, go to court to defend himself and use a fusion technique: have a lawyer and his AI both reach through his glasses. If he loses, he says, "we have a bit of work to do", if he wins, he wins. Either way, great publicity.