I agree with your sentiment but not your tone. There is a lot of anti-suburban, anti-car elitism on HN that is apparently ignorant of the very real need for personal transportation for the vast majority of people, even in many major cities. I would support increased driver training requirements (especially specific training and experience with loss of control on various surfaces), but not without a way of ensuring that the transportation and employment needs of everyone, including youth, are still met.
Also, you're probably aware, but your account has been dead for a long time, apparently due to excessively harsh and/or personal negative comments.
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But a pervasive public transit system, combined with cycling and walking, achieves that. What it doesn't achieve is the capacity to ship large items between arbitrary points, and a distinct comparative slowness when traveling long distances (vaguely defined).
And you could just as easily argue that the health of a society is degraded by the over-usage of what amounts to an isolating coffin on wheels. There are no opportunities to casually chat with a stranger (unless you carpool with different people, or yell out the window at stopped traffic lights) while in transit: only the endpoints of your trip matter for the cross-pollination you speak of. I would expect this results in zones of high quality surrounded by the mortar of low quality areas.
Incidentally, I picked up this book today: http://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/dp... I haven't read it yet and thus cannot recommend it.
I'm not sure what it means for my account to be dead, it seems I can comment as normal? is there any way to make it undead, without making a whole new account? I'd be willing to change my tone, I'm trying to become more positive this year ^_^
It means that your comments are only visible to people who turn on "showdead" in their profile settings, and it's impossible to respond to you directly.
In theory you can try to contact one of the YC or HN site admins, or PG himself, if you want your account restored. I don't know what's involved or what sort of argument you should make. It might be easier to begin your new tone and new resolve with a new account.
It's just like in those all-american teen high-school shows where the bully sticks an insulting label on someone and they go about their day not knowing that there is something nasty stuck to the back of their shirts... meanwhile everyone else quietly sniggers until some kind soul lets them know what's up.
As someone who was socioeconomically prevented from getting a license until his mid-20s, no, it's not. A license in many cases is a ticket out of poverty and a chance to break the cycle of poverty. This is especially true in rural or far-flung suburban areas.
That said, the poor behavior of young drivers is a legitimate concern. I'm all for addressing it. Just not a fan of economically disenfranchising people.
That said, youth need experience, we are not ready made adults and have to suffer the consequence of our mistakes to learn much of the time. Studies showing that adults make fewer poor decisions should realize a lot of that is because of the previous poor decisions that person had already made.
I wonder if an argument could be made that the observed phenomenon of extended adolescence is a direct result of the excessive sheltering of youth.
Which means that apparently by the time my brain actually matures next year, I'll have been able to vote for 7 years, hold all legal responsibilities for 7 years, drink legally for 7 years (outside the USA) and 4 years (inside the USA), and apply for a driver's license for 9 years. I'll have actually lived outside my parents' home for 7 years, been in a single steady relationship for 6 years, supported myself financially for 3 years and held a driver's license for 2 years.
Apparently my legal qualification and actual, demonstrated ability to behave like an adult - all of which is actually pretty normal for someone my age whom I know - either demonstrates unusually precocious brain maturity, or doesn't actually require brain maturity, or these "studies" are showing the effects of society's treatment of young people as barely-functional retards for ever-more-extended periods.
There are ways of addressing this that do not involve increasing the likelihood that you kill yourself, though. Better police in the neighborhood, better public transportation in the exurbs, better access to educational materials, better communication infrastructure, and so on.
These are, of course, harder solutions. It is certainly easier in terms of policy to simply roll the dice and acknowledge that those who survive the commute are more fit for society by virtue of not being dead.
Is it? Is it working? I just spent five minutes on Google trying to answer that question, but if it's out there it's buried under megabytes of high-Google-juice warnings about teenaged driving.
It's only a positive development if it's working. If it isn't working, then it's just an expensive imposition sucking away time and funds that could have been spent on something more productive. But I honestly don't know which is the case. Anyone have a better bead on analysis than I do? I think it's an interesting question. Many of these programs have been going on for long enough that there ought to be an answer out there somewhere.
YEAR DEATHS POPULATION
1999 5,508 24,099,614
2000 5,561 24,272,121
2001 5,513 24,515,654
2002 5,943 24,742,879
2003 5,582 25,019,050
2004 5,564 25,510,811
2005 5,234 25,839,430
2006 5,186 26,116,159
2007 4,986 26,327,320
2008 4,067 26,408,974
2009 3,514 26,378,690
2010 3,159 26,206,325
From 2000 to 2009, the # of traffic-related deaths per 100,000 resident population dropped by 26%. Assuming the decay is exponential, that's about 3% per year. In contrast, the # of teen deaths dropped by about 4.5% per year.
So we can reasonably conclude that teenage auto-related deaths are falling at a faster rate than overall auto-related deaths.
Is the fatality rate for all inexperienced drivers dropping the way it is for teenagers? If not, that suggests that the apparent improvements aren't so significant as they seem. In particular, social and regulatory changes that make it more difficult for teenagers to drive, but not for young adults may only shift what age group the problem affects.
If you reduce the driving privileges of people with blue eyes, I'm sure that the auto-related fatalities of blue-eyed people would decrease.
I'm not sure of the correct way to measure the success of driving restrictions, but I would suggest that it is something other than this type of statistic.
If there exists a mushroom that tends to be lethal in even small quantities and its usage in recipes is restricted, then the fatalities caused by it will go down.
You might disagree with the method on deontological grounds, but you can't really deny that it is functioning well on consequentialist grounds.
A lot of people think that if obtaining a license is harder, the roads will be safer, but it's more an urban wisdom than science. If you take various numbers from around the world, you will notice there is no linear correlation between those two, especially when harder is pay more than you should and sit in class harder, instead of learn how to run a special stage on snow and ice harder. Also, in places where driving is a privilege, drivers tend to feel privileged. The sad truth is just that almost everywhere driving training simply sucks, with the well-known exception of Finland.
I've heard Austria also cares about training for winter conditions.
Wow, restricting people's freedom, a great development? Seriously ? Why not restrict access to computers considering the recklessness of "hackers" ? And so on.
You are going to build a bleak future if people do not drive as much.
Imagine that Google's self-driving car efforts come to fruition. That self-driving cars are common, legal, and trusted.
Who needs to drive in that future?
More: Imagine a successor to Zipcar with a fleet of self-driving cars. Who needs to even own a car? You just log in and summon a car from a nearby lot. It's there in a few minutes, and it takes you where you need to go; when you need to go back home, you summon another one.
In the future, owning a car and knowing how to drive it yourself may well be considered eccentric.
GPS-driven cars are not going to be any good for that kind of usage.
Last I checked robots still can't vote. And if it came down to voting between Google cars and human cars. Well, fuck Google. Roads are built by taxes, which are paid by people. As long as everyone pays those taxes everyone is entitled to use them.
The self-driving car has been solved for over decades. They behave well on closed tracks and that has never been in dispute. The real development is making them work in an environment with cars, people, bikes, pets, etc.
What if computer-controlled cars were 10X more efficient than human controlled cars? That means 10 times more traffic for the same amount of roads (or the same traffic on 1/10th of the roads). The economic case then becomes tremendous.
I pay taxes. I would like my taxes to be used more efficiently. I don't care for any idiot who wants the freedom to drive their own cars.
> The self-driving car has been solved for over decades.
This is not true at all. Its only recently where autonomous self driving cars in real environments have become viable.
> The real development is making them work in an environment with cars, people, bikes, pets, etc.
I'm sure they would be able to do that, but then we aren't getting the 10x improvement in traffic capacity if a few humans are still allowed to drive (i.e. the safety margins will have to remain human). The allure of self driving cars is not really "we don't have to drive anymore" but "we can utilize our infrastructure and resources way more efficiently."
Democracy isn't about efficiency. It is about effective representation. That means the guy with the 50 year old manual antique has the same say as the guy with the computer-driven Jaguar.
> I don't care for any idiot who wants the freedom to drive their own cars.
Well nothing I say now will really matter. Guys, one guy has the only correct opinion on this matter so skip the debate and proceed straight to tyranny.
> Its only recently where autonomous self driving cars in real environments have become viable.
When I was a kid the local newspaper converted to automated forklifts that loaded and unloaded paper rolls to the presses. And they managed to do this with humans (pressmen, school kids) walking amongst them. Even with 2-ton spools they could stop on a dime. But the warehouse was built for them, embedded sensors, special handling tools, etc. The automation part has been done, it's solved.
And logistically, how do you ensure everyone has one of your cars? Do you give them away for free? You can't force everyone to buy one. And you certainly can't build a road exclusively for it, the public
Now say Beijing implements the change: within the 5th ring road, autonomous cars only. Most people don't own one of these cars, but its fine...the city and various private companies have a fleet of 100k or so that they treat basically as taxies. Because no humans are involved in the system, they can achieve 10x densities, basically solving traffic, parking, and pollution problems overnight.
Could your average human being handle tailgating and slack-free synchronous movement of a bunch of cars? Of course not! That's why they aren't driving anymore. Could we disable the system outside of cities without traffic? Ya, but in China, the traffic and infrastructure problems are everywhere, it will catch on.
Now your western cities, they don't have traffic problems mostly, not on this scale. But these cities will then have to compete economically with other cities with the system. Its a world market, if it the new system is 10x better, the other cities will have to follow to remain competitive; perhaps some Disney like places will exist where people can drive cars, but that is how the future works!
Well and I don't care for any idiot that calls other people idiots because he does not agree with their opinions.
Imagine how out of place/disruptive a horse buggy/donkey cart would be on a motorcar street (I don't have to imagine, unfortunately). Now, they pay taxes too, don't they have a right to be there no matter how disruptive that is?
However, all European motorways ban vehicles that cannot go faster than 30mph(50kmh) from them, because they are supposed to be used for fast travel only, so there is a certain amount of people banned from using them,purely because they don't have a car and can't use motorways on a moped or a bicycle - even thought they pay taxes so their "rights" are somehow violated for the good of others. So I imagine that major motorways and maybe town centers could be made automatic-only. But, in the countryside, if somebody wants to drive in manual,why not? There is little joy in driving in the city,with all the tragic jams and such,but driving on the empty, countryside roads is a different matter entirely.
An improperly driven car can harm other people, even with the best intentions of the inexperienced driver.
An improperly used computer by a well-intentioned user -- not so much.
It is the faults of the designers they make them visible like that, but they do it, and it is an issue.
They are switched in many Western European countries, and imho that works fine. Also because there generally is more public transportation and/or neighbourhood pubs/clubs.
(though some countries have raised the drinking age, making them come about at the same time, which is even worse)
A 16 drinking age, 18 driving age does create quite a different youth culture though. Less fuss about alcohol (though it differing more with parents permissiveness), more about cars, and early networks and contacts being more local.
Not to mention it's easier to illegally gain access to alcohol than it is to illegally get access to a car, so the probability that the higher driving age law would be flouted would be lower than the rate at which the drinking age law is flouted right now.
This is not true at all. I do not know where he is getting his information. And there are literally no requirements for the permit. All you do is take a vision test and a knowledge multiple choice on the computer which anyone can pass if they know the simple basics.
>and once they are allowed to drive, they are often restricted to driving in the daytime without passengers.
This only applies to people with a provisional license (if you are under 18), and you can have passengers as long as they are in your family (brothers or sisters), and this only lasts for the first 6 months.
Talk about permissive.
(This was in 2006)
This would be a great development indeed, if alternate forms of transportation like buses, light-rail and train services were vastly improved.
While I champion the idea of bike commuting (ie live close to where you work), carpooling and vanpooling (have done all three for years sequentially), the goal of getting more dangerous drivers (ie, inexperienced teens) off the road shouldn't disenfranchise them. Non-drivers need transport as well, and most US cities are abhorrent for this compared to other developed countries (HK, France, UK, Brazil, Russia all have amazing transport systems).
This is a great development, considering the recklessness of many young drivers and their relatively high accident rates.
I always thought that the roads would be much safer if our legal drinking age and legal driving ages were switched, so that we'd have years of experience dealing with the effects of alcohol before we hit the roads, which would hopefully decrease incidents of driving under the influence of alcohol.