One of the issues that comes around from time to time is the question of how to reconcile liberty with risky behavior. A little while ago in these parts, it came up in a discussion of driving, and how some of us are fond of driving very fast indeed, and not just at racetracks. But the issue comes up in all kinds of different contexts, so lets give it a think.
First, because my brain is wired like a lawyer’s, is the question of what we mean by “risky behavior”. Risky behavior is something that could, to some degree of probability, cause some degree of harm to others, but hasn’t yet (at least as done by you).
I’ll distinguish it from “harmful behavior”, which is something that has actually caused harm to someone else. Risky behavior becomes harmful behavior when the probability of harm collapses to 1.
I’ll also make the distinction between behavior that could cause direct harm to others, and behavior that is only likely to cause direct harm to you. The example here might be playing Russian Roulette in the privacy of your own home. Even if you blowing your own head off will have bad knock-on effects to other people, such as those who, against all odds, care for you, those knock-on effects are what I consider indirect harm. Indirect harm is its own can of worms, and I think we have a good-sized can of worms even without it.
Of course, evaluating risk and whether to accept it can’t really be done without also evaluating benefit. This raises the question of “benefit to who?” and also the questions of “how much, how likely, and how direct, is the benefit?”
Let’s acknowledge the slippery slope here (which is hard to miss in our current safety-obsessed society). Once you start down the road of saying “Yes, there are some kinds of risky behavior that society should penalize or prohibit”, that road can get pretty steep and icy. However, saying “We should never do anything that could start us down a slippery slope that I don’t like the bottom of”, is a recipe for paralysis reminiscent of the Precautionary Principle. Consider laws against murder. They currently have an exemption for self-defense, but there is no reason why starting down the road of “Thou shalt not kill” can’t get sufficiently steep and slippery that the exception gets increasingly narrow and eventually read out of the rule. We can all think of examples of just that happening in Current Day, right? That doesn’t mean murder shouldn’t be illegal, though.
So, to get back to the seed of this post, what about driving at very high speeds on public roads. Is it risky? I think it is – it has some degree of probability, cause some degree of harm to others. And the degrees of probability and of harm are higher than driving at “normal” speeds. So, who benefits, and how? I think one benefit is mostly if not entirely to the driver – its fun. Another is to the driver and any passengers – they save time. I’m not really coming up with any others.
At this point, we want to compare risk and benefit, right? And we run smack into a difficulty: the benefit is impossible to quantify. Not only that, while the risk may be quantifiable, I think the full picture of harm is difficult-to-impossible to quantify, as it involves serious injury or death. While these can be monetized (and indeed trial lawyers literally have books that attribute values to death and various kinds of injury), because the benefit can’t be, monetizing the risk/harm doesn’t really help us compare them.
Another difficulty, at least for me, raises its head at this point. Namely, balancing risk and benefit makes it very easy to fall into utilitarianism, which is a moral philosophy that I’m just not crazy about. Utilitarianism is either a way to ignore the moral component of actions or is a way to smuggle in moral values under the veneer of dispassionate analysis. Regardless, that’s beyond the scope of this post, so we’ll just plant a warning flag here and move on.
So, (enforced) speed limits, yes or no? We have a subjective benefit limited to the driver (and any passengers), and a non-zero risk of potentially serious harm to others. Sounds like a yes, right? We can make exceptions for long open stretches of road, if you like, but in general, it’s to see why people might not want to accept the risk (or perhaps, have it forced on them) of encountering cars on the road going 50, 60, 80 miles per hour faster than everyone else. This of course raises the question what speed limits there should be, which is another rabbit hole, that points to the perennial issue of what the rules will be and who will write them.
This is a general problem with living in a society with rules, but it may be more acute when talking about risk acceptance/management, because this, as anyone who has seriously engaged in it can tell you, gets very subjective very fast. One can quantify the hell out of both of the inputs to risk (harm and probability) and on the benefit side, but these are all projections, the mere raw material to be processed by our inherently intuitive response to risk acceptance and rejection.
We can all think of risks that we would rather not have other people impose on us, and risks that we don’t particularly mind having other people impose on us. Some risks have benefits for third parties (namely, us) that we might think make it worthwhile. Some risks may be so remote or the impact so trivial that we just don’t care. But everyone, I think its safe to say, will have a different list.
And the community that we live in has something to do with that. If, for example, you drive in Germany, you can expect a higher caliber of driver on the autobahn, which makes the risk of high-speed driving (considerably?) less, and easier to accept.
The complications and rabbit holes multiply. Where I think this all lands is in a pretty unsatisfying place, but it’s an unsatisfying place a lot more people need to get a lot more comfortable with:
There is no one answer. It depends. There is a balance to be struck.
People seem to hate that, which is profoundly immature. Our world as social animals is made up of balances to be struck, landing spots to be found that are tolerable to most even if few think they are ideal. Some portion of our current malaise is the refusal to accept this truth, which drives our culture war and rampant safetyism, to name two. Like it or not, we live in communities, and a community must have a set of shared beliefs about how to approach the world and each other.
Moralistic righteousness can be corrosive to this, especially as it tends to turn into a competition in escalation. Too many people believe “Doing right ain’t got no end,” and not enough ask “Can’t we all just get along?” Hyper-rationalists (ahem) can fall into their own version of this, where being right, and even moreso, being seen as right, becomes an overriding impulse, even when there is little riding on being right, and the cost is relationships of far more value.
I believe in some form of “deep libertarianism”, that you can’t have a small state unless you have a society that has no need for anything more because it has a deep well of shared beliefs (one of which needs to be a suspicion of the state). As a society navigates what risks to accept and what risks to prohibit, that well of shared beliefs will make the inherently subjective decision easier to reach. A society that is run top-down by a punitive, even carceral, state will have every such issue elevated to a point of contention, the kind of conflict that the state will need to resolve. And the state’s reflex will always be to ban it, to refuse to accept the risk. It may even be that one gauge of how healthy a society is, is at what level risk acceptance/prohibition occurs – at the social/civil level or at the state level?
As I like to point out to all the Karens, you took thousands of risks commuting to work this morning.
LIFE IS RISKY
As I like to point out to all the Karens, you took thousands of risks commuting to work this morning.
“THAT’S DIFFERENT!!!!!!11!1111!!!!!!!!11” – all the Karens
It’s always different when it inconveniences THEM.
But, as the philosopher Pogo ‘Possum once said, “there are more of them than there are of us.”
No risk it, no biscuit.
I like taking calculated risks, but I hate gambling.
Gambling is calculated risks, and picking a side.
I have calculated the chance of losing to the house to be too high. And I hate losing money.
As always, it depends on the game and the players. When I had a group of friends that would gather for poker, there were some times I would bet against the player instead of the cards (such as the guy who always goes for outrageous bluffs pre-flop).
Yep. I had a group I played with in Houston. I could hold my own against the table, but in head’s up against the other guy who was always able to grind it out, I would lose to nearly every time. He could obviously read my tells, but I couldn’t read his.
In my poker playing days I wasn’t a very good player. I played with friends and set a limit on how much I could lose without it being a problem. Set a time limit in agreement with the other players. “We quit at 11 ’cause we have to work tomorrow”. Sometimes I’d win, sometimes I’d lose but it was a fun night out.
“If you don’t know who the mark is”….
Poker was always fun for a group of us, we played nickel/quarter so on a good night I would win around $20 and on a bad one lose about $20.
I was pretty good and won a lot more often than I lost, so one night I took $100 to the casino.
I can’t describe how bad I was when playing for actual money.
When I got a good card, I might as well have showed it to everyone, same with a bad one.
As long as I didn’t care I was pretty good, but never again will I play for real money.
It would be nice if the speed limits reflected the actual speed driven.
Here in south eastern VA most speed limits on the highway are 55-60.
EVERYONE drives 70 mph and the cops won’t pull you over unless you are faster than that.
However, it gives them the power to pull anyone over that they want for speeding.
That and HOV lanes are 2 of my pet peeves about driving here.
It’s the delta that’s so problematic.
Put a reasonable speed limit and minimum speed limit on the road.
Right now you’ve got 55 MPH limits with people doing 85 MPH. So people that arbitrarily obey the limit create large differences in speed.
This is why we need remote access to your vehicles /Government.
Posted a bit too soon. This is why I like highways that post the minimum and maximum. It sets the expectation that I will encounter vehicles going 45MPH, but the majority will be at speed limit or slightly above.
Of course, evaluating risk and whether to accept it can’t really be done without also evaluating benefit. This raises the question of “benefit to who?” and also the questions of “how much, how likely, and how direct, is the benefit?”
“Yeah, why not?”
That doesn’t mean murder shouldn’t be illegal, though.
Aside from self-defense there is always “he needed killin'” that might be applicable.
And the risk on you from driving fast is vastly different than the risk to me from you driving fast. Since the road is a shared resource, the rules of use must operate conservatively even without utilitarian considerations arising.
“He needed Killin'”
I see you are a fan of the Agatha Christie genre.
My mind immediately went to people being charged DUIs for not driving (sleeping in the car). They engaged in risky behavior and chose not to elevate to harmful behavior and rewarded by the State of being charged with the harmful act they did not commit.
Yep. When I was in my weekend retreat for my OVI, one of the guys in the class got picked up because he had gone into the back seat of his car and slept it off. Because he had the keys in his pocket, he was cited and arrested. To say he was pissed would be an understatement.
I threw my keys on the dashboard and avoided the charge. Then they gave me a ride home.
Still would have gotten charged here. The law was if the intoxicated person “could reasonable be assumed to be able to take control of the vehicle”. Per the cops, the guy would have had to put his keys either in his trunk or under the car to avoid a charge. Which is bullshit.
Should have been a “migrant”.
I had a friend who did that, and he lost the damn keys we needed to drive home the next day. Took hours to figure out he put them behind a television set for some reason.
What if you locked them in the glove compartment?
Probably would be fine, but that would probably fall to officer discretion. When we learned of that law, me and my friends would often wonder if some asshole cop had used it to bust passengers in a car yet.
“There was a reasonable assumption that your passenger was intoxicated enough to grab the wheel, taking control of the car.”
I knew a guy who got busted for DUI. The passenger in the car, who was even more drunk, was woken up by the police, forced to get out of the car, and then charged with public intoxication.
“could reasonable be assumed to be able to take control of the vehicle”.
Under that standard I could be drunk and asleep on the couch in my living room having keys in the house and car in the garage and be charged as such. How the fuck could that not be thrown out? The law I mean, not the charge.
How the fuck could that not be thrown out?
Article F, Section Y, Paragraph T, Line W.
You may have matches in your house, maybe even a lighter for the BBQ. You could accidentally or even intentionally start a fire. It’s better to assess those things now and eliminate them, screwdrivers have been known to be plugged into outlets, you just can’t take a chance…
I would ask why you let the cop into your house while you were asleep.
But yeah, it’s a shitty law on top of many others.
Once I was drinking at a friends house for a UFC party. One of the Marines said something to one of the wives present and there was a whole kerfluffle.
Next thing I knew, I was sitting by myself, and I didn’t feel that drunk so I decided to go home.(original plan was to sleep on the couch)
5 minutes later, I realized I was way too drunk to drive. I was in an unfamiliar area in Virginia Beach but since I lived in NC most of the driving was highway.
I didn’t know how to get back to my buddies house and knew if I tried, I would probably get busted. If I stopped and slept in the car a DUI was a certainty.
On the highway, I had a few “Guess I’m changing lanes now”, but I made it home.
It was one of the few times in my marriage that my wife was actually mad at me.
If VA didn’t have the “sleeping drunk in a car is a DUI” law, I would have stopped.
A very long time ago, I realized a large chunk of the population apparently believe if something is too difficult/dangerous/ destructive for somebody, it is too difficult/dangerous/ destructive for anybody. And that’s how laws are born.
Shorter version “There ought to be a law”
Exceptions can be made with 1,000s of hours of unnecessary and useless training or alternatively if a state or federal employee.
Man I can’t believe you just gloss over the notion that there are even such a thing as “public roads”! This and all other issues would be easily handled if they were all blah, blah, blah….
OK, kidding, but somebody was going to do it. Anyway, good article, and thanks.
Two of the lines that I try to use with my kids and with my “work kids” are “the Engineering answer to everything is ‘it depends'” and “there are no perfect solutions, only trade-offs”, both of which you happily touch on. Sowell’s thing about the first rule of politics being to ignore the first rule of Economics applies here too – you can’t solve everything with rules and force and punishment, but everyone likes to pretend they can.
And the other thing people need to be reminded of in the speed example is not that some speeds have risk to others and some speeds don’t – it’s that the risk is on a curve. Just BEING on the roads means that others’ actions are presenting SOME risk to you. Part of your closing “shared beliefs” point is that when there are shared beliefs, “we” can pretty much all agree. I hate to use the term “common sense”, but there ya go.
So, I’m rambling a bit, but again, good article.
You both just explained why progressivism can’t work: “you can’t solve everything with rules and force and punishment”, but everyone likes to pretend they can, and why libertarianism is not a viable ideology at this time: “the notion that there are even such a thing as “public roads””
Principle: private roads would solve problems and save money.
Practice: private toll roads and govt does not cut taxes proportionally, in fact increases them to govern private road owners.
This and all other issues would be easily handled if
you just had to click that you agree with the terms and conditions of use! We know how that ends.
The ultimate contract of adhesion – the social contract.
Guilty as charged.
people being charged DUIs for not driving (sleeping in the car).
People should be penalized for actual harm, not theoretical potential harm.
I’m not harmed by someone speeding, until they crash into me. I kinda like the idea of preventing that from happening.
I agree. But charging somebody with a DUI for being drunk in an unstarted car is like giving somebody a ticket for speeding because they had their foot on the accelerator while going the speed limit. Sure, they weren’t speeding yet… but maybe they were going to.
That I would agree is a bullshit law/charge. Operating while intoxicated is different than laid out in the backseat of a parked car.
. Operating while intoxicated is different than laid out in the backseat of a parked car.
Intoxicated and getting laid in the back seat of a parked car is still OK, right?
/Asking retroactively for a friend
^^
I think JI raises the issue of actual/potential. Yep, someone could be driving down 435 in the KC area during heavy traffic at, say, 90mph, weaving in and out of traffic. They may be one of the best drivers in the world, but their behavior is making a lot assumptions about other people’s actions. And, at that speed, even if another driver does something illegal (say, cut across three lanes to make a late exit), if the 90mph guy collides with the second driver there’s a high likelihood that someone else is going to suffer.
You can lay out scenario after scenario after scenario about how dangerous it is to drive too fast in various conditions. But it just doesn’t fucking matter. Did someone cause harm? Yes or no?
Every day the racket clicks one step tighter to reduce some risk somewhere to prevent some possible harm that might happen. This results in every fucking aspect of our life being regulated by busybodies who can’t tolerate any risk to anybody anywhere.
But the slippery slope doesn’t exist if you don’t try to prohibit risky behavior and only punish actual harm.
But it just doesn’t fucking matter. Did someone cause harm? Yes or no?
I’ll be to your house shortly to start my hourly celebratory gunfire into the air.
With or without a suppressor?
And that is exactly the argument everyone makes to say we should never wait until harm has been done, we need to stop it from happening.
The problem is that “need to stop it from happening” is an impossible job without imposing a totalitarian police state (and even that doesn’t work).
And by the way, our home owners association prohibits celebratory gunfire between dusk and dawn.
so you have to do your celebratory gunfire when people are More likely to be out and about?
Then I shall celebrate the break of dawn (five minutes after) and the pending dusk (5 minutes before).
Stupid cannot be eliminated – that is true. Maybe it can’t even be minimized, but that doesn’t mean we surrender to it. [And it is equally stupid trying to have laws to prevent all harms.]
OK. But if you’re shooting in the general direction of my house, I will shoot you in self defense. The neighbors will likely follow suit.
But if you’re shooting in the general direction of my house, I will shoot you in self defense.
NAP violation. I’m shooting in the air. That I’m being negligent and risking some of the bullets falling in your direction isn’t aggression, it’s just risky behavior.
Besides, if you’re justified in shooting me for endangering you by doing risky things with a gun, how am I not justified shooting reckless speeders for enangering me?
how am I not justified shooting reckless speeders for enangering me?
Sounds like self-defense to me.
Another factor is that we regulate, because we do not allow people to defend themselves.
“Did someone cause harm? Yes or no? ”
Yeah, this seems reasonable. I would add to it by amping up punishments. In my example above, the speeder causes an accident resulting in death then s/he gets charged with manslaughter.
I agree that I think most traffic violations should be enhancements to criminal acts instead of being criminal acts themselves.
I could even see a compromise position allowing officers to pull over to give warnings, which could then later be used as evidence in a trial later to push for higher penalties.
Killing someone, while not acting in self-defense, is killing someone. Doesn’t matter if it was a robbery gone bad or an asshole driving drunk or speeding.
And of course all slippery slopes are exactly the same gradient and sheen of ice.
I watched regulations ratchet up continuously my entire life with the pace of regulation accelerating.
In this case, it is not a fallacy to claim that this slippery slope doesn’t exist or it won’t lead to an oppressive state, because we’ve already become an oppressive state.
I cannot write coherently while trying to also work.
Then stop trying to work. 😉
Regulatory escalation is no more inevitable than slippery slopes steepening. Although human stupidity will encourage both.
But the slippery slope doesn’t exist if you don’t try to prohibit risky behavior and only punish actual harm.
Sure it does. You just redefine what “harm” means.
Your fast driving added extra contaminants to the air, and therefore harmed me, and others.
Your fast driving created additional friction on the road, thereby causing harm to the roadway and other drivers by causing damage and shortening its longevity.
Your fast driving frightened other drivers, and therefore harmed their psychological state.
Your exhaling CO2 is killing humanity.
“But the slippery slope doesn’t exist if you don’t try to prohibit risky behavior and only punish actual harm.”
“But if you’re shooting in the general direction of my house, I will shoot you in self defense.”
There’s a circle that needs squaring.
If I’m shooting in your general direction, or even at you, but I haven’t hit you, I haven’t caused actual harm. So I can be killed for that, but not arrested?
And why should self-defense even be allowed for potential harm, anyway? I haven’t hurt anybody (yet), so why are you trying to kill me?
There’s a circle that needs squaring.
So, I shouldn’t post when I am in a bad mood and my attention is divided.
It’s actually a legitimate issue. If you allow the use of lethal force to stop some kinds of risky behavior, on what grounds can you oppose laws against some kinds of risky behavior?
Would love to discuss this at a later time.
kinnath’s ideas (foolish or otherwise)
1) don’t try to prohibit risky behavior, punish harmful behavior
2) individuals don’t have to let irresponsible people harm them
Feel free to pounce on this. I need to go back to work.
To oversimply things, there are two potential solutions: 1) prohibit risky behavior to prevent harm or 2) punish harm when it occurs. My general take is that laws should be limited to punishing harmful behavior and not prohibiting risky behavior, because there is no end to trying to prohibiting behavior. That well of subjectivity is bottomless.
no end to trying to prohibit risky behavior
Even proof reading before positing doesn’t catch the all.
Driving: an inattentive driver doing the speed limit is more of a hazard than some unnamed party driving 25 over while actually looking through the windshield and paying attention to what is happening around him.
100%. Fucking cell phones kill.
I’m waiting for a mandatory kill switch from FedGov.
Something that will sense it’s use within an automobile and restrict its usage.
We are already there on the drunk and tired driving detection.
https://www.wired.com/story/us-regulators-cars-drunk-driver-detection/
My phone works fine hands-free in the car. No more demanding than the radio – or are you going to ban those as a distraction as well?
I’m generally good with hands-free, although I was almost pushed into a retaining wall by a woman having an animated conversation with her HF phone, but she also had a cigarette going and something else I didn’t quite make out while my life was flashing before my eyes.
She was talking with her hands. She probably would have been safer without the hands-free.
I’m not. I’m suggesting FedGov will.
For your own good. I would also suggest logical consistency from FedGov is far from the norm.
Who is driving the car? Can a passenger use the phone? Is playing the radio OK? If so, why not the radio in my phone?
When CA passed the law against phone use in cars, police were exempt (but of course!), and I remember many people asking where they could get the training that allowed cops to be able to use one, as it just had to be a training issue. State Highway Patrol chief was not amused by this line of questioning.
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-insurrection-trump-2024-election-397a481d2886b64bba06b24ff3d03f37
Without such congressional legislation, Justice Elena Kagan was among several justices who wanted to know “why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States.”
Eight of the nine justices suggested that they were open to at least some of the arguments made by Jonathan Mitchell, Trump’s lawyer at the Supreme Court. Trump could win his case if the court finds just one of those arguments persuasive.
Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor sounded like she might vote to uphold the Colorado Supreme Court ruling that found that Trump “engaged in insurrection” and is ineligible to be president. The state court ruled Trump should not be on the ballot for the state’s Republican primary on March 5.
Somehow 8-1 in support of Trump will turn into a 5-4 decision against the bad orange man.
From what I listened to, even with some of the poor arguments of office versus officer; the anti-Trump side lawyer was grilled heavily and didn’t seem to have logical answers/explinations to counter from the justices. Also, KJB is absolutely terrible but at one point, nearly destroyed Trump’s lawyer by litigating the from the standpoint he should have been litigating from.
Trump doesn’t exactly have the best judgment in lawyers. I wonder if we will ever find out who the job of selecting his judicial nominees was farmed out to?
FedSoc, IIRC.
Not to that entire body. Someone was given the job, and generally speaking did a pretty good job of it; some exceptions? Sure, but no worse than average. You know it couldn’t have been Trump because of who he has as personal and corporate attorneys.
Affirmative Action Jacksons whole line of questioning was so utterly stupid the fact that the lawyer was able to come up something other than “Jumaji, you ignorant slut” was amazing in and of itself. Dude deserves props.
Did they mention when a “mostly peaceful protest” turns into an “insurrection?”
Something to do with an orange version of (R).
Orange was only good in Ukraine.
No, Trump won’t lose this one. Should be 9-0 in his favor, but at least one “unbiased” justice won’t be able to read the clear words of the 14th amendment which leaves the “can he serve” decision up to Congress.
Posting for Chafed, as he is not here. Seems appropriate for the conversation:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=09CXtsWXWeQ
NSFW
Well… if we’re going to music.
Or.
When it comes to risk, just Wing It!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZoNGg-2wLE
Sounds like you may need some insurance.
/seriously waiting for this to be used for some insurance company’s ad
Risk-takers’ theme
It doesn’t matter if your phone is hands free or not, if your attention is focused on the conversation instead of on the road. Same with driving along thinking about what you coulda shoulda woulda done or said to your mom or boss or girlfriend/boyfriend.
This falls back on my objection to the cars a rolling living room and entertainment center. It’s a goddam car. Drive it like you mean it.
Working a factory installed modern radio / entertainment center compared to a car radio from the 1950s to about the early 2000s is crazy.
All kinds of button presses, knob twirling, or even worse swiping with no feedback on glass.
The old stuff was fine once your learned by touch where all the major functions were.
This – the wife has actually commented that I don’t seem to pay attention to anything but my driving when I drive. Phone conversations require more concentration not because of what your hands are doing, but because the mind interprets a conversation with someone who is not if front of you differently than if they were in front of you. It’s referred to as an abstract conversation. Different people process these conversations differently. I was watching someone really struggle on the phone the other day. You could tell it didn’t matter that he had a bluetooth in his ear or not, he was just having trouble processing the conversation and could have probably walked into a lake while having it (thankfully, he wasn’t driving).
Ok, but I still want air conditioning and heat.
Roads are just another example of how government sucks at everything.
Speed limits artificially correct for the problems in the design of roads and streets. Would speed limits be necessary if streets were designed to a standard that makes people feel uncomfortable when they’re driving too fast?
An effective way to slow down traffic is to narrow road lanes. This is also relatively inexpensive to implement and saves on maintenance costs. Narrower lanes require drivers to pay more attention and go slower, because if their car starts to stray it quickly runs into neighboring cars. I’ll even throw environmentalists a bone and say planting trees helps as well.
Would speed limits be necessary if streets were designed to a standard that makes people feel uncomfortable when they’re driving too fast?
Yes. It’s not like a smaller more curvy road makes 85 IQ 20 year old guys go extinct.
Ok yes, but the idea still being fewer people are speeding at the posted limit when the design is not encouraging speed.
There’s narrow, curvy, hilly roads here (that go through forested areas) that have speed limits of 40-55 MPH.
“Traffic Calming,” when done right, is an exceptional way to control speeds on streets. It can be terrible when done wrong.
I would kill for traffic calming on my street (around corner from hospital)
That might be one of the worst locations for traffic calming, if it is done in a way that slows down ambulances. 30 seconds makes a difference for strokes and etc.
I saw a study from 20+ years ago showing that residential speed bumps kill far more people than they save. Most pedestrians killed by cars are on busier streets, not slower moving residential streets, so the speed bumps have pretty negligible effect on safety. But they do delay ambulances, which adds up to a lot of fractional deaths.
Agreed on both points.
Bump outs on city intersections to shorten crossing distance and to prevent high speed right turns is a good example. Residential speed bumps (see below) fit under terrible.
“Narrower lanes require drivers to pay more attention and go slower”
They don’t require anything. They just make accidents much more likely if you’re not paying attention or driving too fast.
Like it or not, we live in communities, and a community must have a set of shared beliefs about how to approach the world and each other.
Bigot! Colonialist! White supremacist!
In seriousness, I do believe what you said. However it’s important to identify what that shared worldview is and determine whether we individually share in that worldview. What is it today? What was it in 1970? 1940? 1910? 1840? 1790? 1620?
Here’s my theory. We haven’t operated under a shared worldview for over a century. That doesn’t directly impact things like speed limits, but it does impact other aspects of risk and liberty like how we handle pollution and how we deal with criminals after they have served their sentence and how the regulatory state approaches safety. The ascendant worldview is a humanist, collectivist, utilitarian one. One that values technocratic value judgment with the air of scienciness over any deeper moral principle.
Is that approach shared with the commoner? Somewhat, to varying degrees, but probably more so than we’d like to admit around here. For example, you reject utilitarianism, but speak of balancing the risk with the benefit, which is utilitarianism by another name.
Why do I get the feeling this was written after one of my recent comments regarding my travel habits?
An effective way to slow down traffic is to narrow road lanes.
Go back to paving with bricks, or cobblestones, or dirt.
/shudders in memories about turning down a street that turned into a brick paved road while riding a bicycle
I am going off topic for two items—–
First
The Late P Brooks on February 8, 2024 at 10:36 am
I posted a few days ago that congress members and senators take an Oath to support the Constitution, but the president does not.
Oh?
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:— “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
The plain text of the 14th says “to support the Constitution”. I don’t see the word support in that oath. Maybe a minor quibble, but I am sure the authors of the 14th were aware of the presidential oath.
2D
Repost from dead thread—re: my favorite Glib
Cunctator on February 8, 2024 at 11:37 am
Man, that little throw off comment has sure touched a nerve I guess. I agree with Southen regarding everybody having something to contribute, and I don’t have anything against any commenters, I can learn things from anybody that has something to offer.
Re: Yusef—I interacted with him on TDS years ago and followed his story while lurking. If Neph or OBE or Derpy (or any other Glib) had posted the comment that Yusef that posted I would be concerned. Expressing my concern was trying to find out if there was any help available. I should hope that most Glibs share concern about other Glibs.
Did it touch a nerve? I was just having fun.
My favorite commenter by the way is *redacted*.
We absolutely share concern over other Glibs. The problem is in finding them when they disconnect. I worry about Penguin all the time, for instance. I do also worry about Yusef. And many, many others. Those Glibs who do have contact numbers use them when these things happen. It just might not turn into a comment thread.
He mentioned me! /giddily runs away
Yeah. But I was mentioned first.
/brushes lint off shirt
On a more serious note, I do have concern about the Glibs, especially those who dropped off with no warning (Groovus Maximus as an example). Hell, I know this group better than I do my real life extended family.
*pours out a bag a crickets in memory of Mr. Lizard*
After meeting a few Glibs in real life I find that they are the same people I’d like for neighbors. I’ve met some of the families as well and they are always welcome here. Glibs are always welcome and as Neph said those that I have met and dropped off a real concern.
Don’t really see the distinction. As a verb, “support” means to hold up or give assistance to. The presidential oath to “preserve, protect and defend” certainly falls within that definition. Impeachment of the president is the remedy, should Congress so desire, especially if a president knowingly fails and the country is harmed by his failure (“This bill I’m signing is clearly unconstitutional and will cause additional expenses for many Americans, but let’s leave it up to the SCOTUS to rule.”)
has sure touched a nerve
I read it as nothing of the sort. When in question, check for tongues planted in cheeks.
I’m sure more than one of us reached out to Yusef based on the concern. I didn’t even see his comment, but I sent him a message anyway. Partially because it had been a while since I last talked to him and partially because of the concern being voiced here.
I wasn’t put off. I giggle-snorted.
I don’t see the word support in that oath.
Okay. And the President is not an “officer”?
That’s a mighty fragile nail to hang one’s hat on.
—“Okay. And the President is not an “officer”?
That’s a mighty fragile nail to hang one’s hat on.”—
Disclaimer—I did not vote for Trump.
the 14th says “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress or elector for President (etc)…”. If the President, by your definition, is an Officer of the United States, then so are Senators and Congress Members. The authors of the amendment were specific in referring to the two elected offices, so did they just forget that there was a President and Vice President. I don’t believe they forgot to include the two most powerful elected offices. The left the Pres & VP out intentionally. Had they intended a blanket ban on elected offices, they may have said “No person shall hold any elected office…” There are very arguable positions that “officers” refers to appointed officials.
—“Don’t really see the distinction. As a verb, “support” means to hold up or give assistance to. The presidential oath to “preserve, protect and defend” certainly falls within that definition.”—
When there are perfectly good and applicable words in the main text, we don’t have to try to make other words apply. The senatorial oath and the congressional oath both use the word “support”. The presidential oath does not. The authors were aware of both oaths. If as a verb, support means hold up or give assistance, even those two terms are not included in the Presidential Oath
I believe in the rule of law, and if the law doesn’t say what we want it to say, we can’t just say “Oh well, I’m sure they meant this”, when they said something else.
—“Okay. And the President is not an “officer”?”—
Who Are “Officers of the United States”? – Stanford Law Review
stanford.edu
https://review.law.stanford.edu › 70-Stan.-L.-Rev.-443.
—“For decades courts have believed that only officials with “significant authority” are “Officers of the United States” subject to the Constitution’s Article II Appointments Clause requirements”—
Is the President subject to Art. II appointments clause?
Where does the Interstate Highway System rank on the list of terrible government ideas?
Not ideas, projects is a better word.
Way near the bottom. That’s something that has actual value and increased the country’s wealth. Rare for a government project.
What was not built/created instead of thousands of miles of roads that need constant upgrades and maintenance? What would people be buying instead of cycling through cars all the time, which also require maintenance and upgrades? The constant need for fuel. It also wasn’t good for your wealth if the government bull dozed your neighborhood.
I don’t know if it is too spicy to say the worst project ever, but maybe top 5.
Worse than the TSA (or DHS as a whole?) Corporation for Public Broadcasting? Department of Education?
If the question is, what would we do for transport without (paved) roads and cars, the answer from history is – walk, draft animals, carts and wagons, and trains. I guess you could also add airplanes to that.
I didn’t say ban cars.
I am with Fatty on this, one of the better ideas by the gov’t. To show it was worse, one would need to show the actual projects that were set aside, not merely the idea that great things could have been built.
Way below NASA.
Both inspired by Nazis.
Well we gave them most of their eugenics bullshit.
My completely non-lawyerly take on the 14th Amendment and prohibited persons:
In the context of the Civil War, those who fought in uniform for the Confederacy, or those who served in an official capacity in the government of the Confederacy, whether or not they were convicted of insurgency. Civilians who were tried and convicted.
Currently, as there is no formally established outlaw shadow government, I see no justification for the summary exclusion of any citizen who has not been tried and convicted. Convicting a sitting President of attempting to overthrow the government is going to be a tough slog.
Convicting a sitting President of attempting to overthrow the government is going to be a tough slog.
Particularly when he offered the military in support of the govt he was supposedly overthrowing.
And that speaks directly to the idiocy of a certain justices line of questioning; just because someone says it is so, does not make it so. This is a version of the IS/OUGHT problem, in that we have to go with what is a fact, rather than what ought to be a fact.
The fact is Orange Man is bad, ipso facto do-si-do.
Many Confederates would point out they weren’t trying to overthrow the Federal government and take it over. They were merely trying to withdraw peacefully until attacked by said Federal government . Then again, maybe they should have just tolerated Ft. Sumter being in Federal hands until it was starved out.
Still rebellion against the federal govt. There was no exit clause in the AoC and none was added to the new Constitution.
Plus States were expressly forbidden to enter into any treaty, alliance or confederation.
“There was no exit clause in the AoC and none was added to the new Constitution.”
There is also no express prohibition against seceding from the jurisdiction of the federal government, which leaves us with:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Let me back up – the AoC allowed no exit, expressly. The Union was perpetual. The Constitution was silent on it – save for the things the States were forbidden, such as entering into a treaty, alliance or confederation. If the argument is they couldn’t do the latter, there isn’t much to say they could withdraw.
Couldn’t a state just secede first, then treaty, ally, and/or confed to their heart’s content?
If you can substantiate a right to secede. It isn’t plainly there, and the context from the AoC is negative, negative, negative.
See RCD below.
Sure, while a state is a member of the union, it can’t enter treaties, etc. However, withdrawing from the union requires no treaties, etc. And once a state is out of the union, any Constitutional restrictions no longer apply.
Secession is not prohibited by the Constitution to the States, and so the power to secede is reserved to the States. A pretty plain reading of the 10th Amendment, IMO.
Only if you ignore the context of the AoC. And no, it does not actually state that THAT power is reserved to the states – you are implying so.
Well, someone recently mentioned that the Constitution superceded the AoC.
Yep, and did so without the unanimity the AoC demanded. Talk about a coup!
Shorter JI: “#NotMyConstitution” 😉
To get that line of reason to stick, they probably need to win the war.
Much like we only got to write that Constitution to supercede the AoC – because we had won the war.
https://www.phillyburbs.com/story/news/nation/2024/02/08/sharks-in-mammoth-cave/72520627007/
Neat.
Paragraph by paragraph, cold without reading other comments –
1. People like driving fast because they dont believe it. They think it is only something on TV or on the News. They cannot grasp their own fragility or mortality.
I have put enough body parts in buckets and bags to tell you that it is VERY FUCKING REAL, and it can happen to you. You can become a believer in the blink of an eye. One second it is a regular, boring day and a millisecond later the worst day of your life. My advice: Only drive fast or aggressively if you are in a hurry to get to a funeral…your own that is.
2 and 3. No one has the right to endanger others without their consent. In a world with perfect police and honest courts doing so would be actionable.
4. Indirect harm is a moral issue, not a legal one. Sadly, there is not much overlap in the two.
5. All actions are for one’s own benefit. Directly or…EX. “I stand between you and the Devil.” Her: “Why would y ou do that? What do you get out of it?”
“Scars mostly, but it is my job.” Last quote is a lie. That person gets the satisfaction of knowing they did the right thing, making them see themselves as a good person. That is important to non-sociopaths. Yeah, yeah, I know…doesnt he look handsome hanging up there on that cross.
6. In your example the exception is getting squeezed out because there are people who dont want you to be able to defend yourself. They are evil people.
We are in the middle of the slope here…one can slip the other way as well and the exceptions become wider and more numerous. Not an easy line to walk.
7. Fun? I find that boring is highly underrated. No tears, no empty wallets. Driving 60mph instead of 50mph saves a negligible amount of time. I timed driving from Alexandra to Shreveport at 75mph vs driving back at 65mph. There was less than a 10 minute difference and the gasoline difference was nearly a half of a tank.
*As speed increases it takes exponentially more energy to advance…a diminishing returns effect. Easy to see in cars and cartridges. Look at ballistics tables…shoot a 1000fps load. To get another 200-300 feet per second takes a shit ton increase in powder.
8. Some broken things cannot be fixed. Some things taken cannot be replaced or restored. It is a poor substitute but monetary penalties/awards are all we have. Life just aint fair.
9. Ok.
10. Thus the slippery word ‘reasonable’ enters the room. Most states are subjective speed limit states. Some are absolute speed limit states (lookin’ at you Wisconsin)
Clear weather, little to no traffic, straight unimpeded road. In a subjective state you can argue that and win.
Speed limits are determined by the quality of the road (rated at some given speed) and the percentage of drivers that travel within a certain speed range they are comfortable with. Weighting those two factors gies us pretty good speed limits. Yes, we should enforce them but without a financial incentive for jurisdictions. Here in Louisiana the state was riddled with speed traps in every little town in the state. It was nearly impossible to drive significant distances without getting a ticket. So, now it is illegal for local jurisdictions to keep traffic money beyond $2. The rest goes to the state. Funny, all those speed traps evaporated. Woodsworth, Washington and Ferriday mayors and chiefs of police have done time for keeping money they were supposed to give to the state.
11 to 17: Longhouses. I was puzzled by Minnesota’s highly lefty (in your business) politics. They are mostly of Scandinavian and German decent. Their culture was strongly shaped by living in longhouses for the last 10K years. They ate, slept, shit, fucked, openly and close proximity to others. They raised their children communally. This gave them a survival advantage but also made for a very highly regulated life for individuals.
The same is seen here in the different outlooks that urban people have vs. rural America. The old “never defer to anyone who has nothing to lose by being wrong” saying is more apt for rural Americans than Urban ones. For the urban dweller externalities seem more important.
Conclusion: For some reason I can never remember the attribute for this quote – In a nutshell, “This government will only work for a moral people”
Yes, having deep cultural ties to others in society is important and adds to the possibility of liberty.
Having a highly balkanized, chaotic society, which the Democrats are currently aggressively striving for, creates a greater need for govt to intrude into people’s private and public behavior. That, of course, is the biggest and slipperiest slope of them all.
I hope I did the article justice but I doubt I added anything not already said. I will go have a look and see.
For some reason I can never remember the attribute for this quote – In a nutshell, “This government will only work for a moral people”
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams
Maybe those old guys really did know a thing or two.
That’s just your privilege talking.
People like driving fast – on Drugs While Getting their Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill their Drink
No one has the right to endanger others without their consent- Ban gunz
PJ O’Rourke’s reach is indeed long.
Many Confederates would point out they weren’t trying to overthrow the Federal government and take it over.
True enough. But… winners’ rules.
This is not something I have any great emotional or philosophical stake in. But I do find both the gambit against Trump and the amount of energy invested in it to be risible.
WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN YOU MONSTER
I’m still working to protect our white women. I’ll get to the children eventually.
So where the white women at?
that points to the perennial issue of what the rules will be and who will write them. – many pre-modern societies had customary law that probably no one could point as to who made it. it evolved over time as people soled problems. you could say it slowly congealed out of the collective experience
I remember hearing about an old guy that only had 10 rules but they were etched in stone. Whatever happened to him?
There’s some questions about some of those rules.
Hammer-rabbi?
As a Romanian I am culturally incapable of respecting speed limits. If I ever visit the US of A and rent a car I hope your police is culturally sensitive and do not microaggress me via a fine.
In PA, local cops don’t get radar guns. Only the state police have them.
Laser as well?
Local cops have to pace you?
I think they’re (PSP) authorized for laser, but I don’t know how prevalent it is. And they have to be stationary to gun you.
I don’t recall the last time i heard of any locals even pacing people.
Doesn’t PA also allow aircraft to catch speeders as well? Not that I ever saw them doing it frequently, but I recall hearing about it. I know there’s a couple of areas in Ohio that do it.
NJ as well.
They may be allowed, but I don’t think they do it anymore. When I moved here 25+ years ago, they may have, but I don’t think they have done it in a long time.
*Googles*
https://www.wtae.com/article/some-states-trim-use-of-planes-in-speed-traps/7457279
Ah. There we go.
*laughs in 100 mph*
Scofflaws beware
Is there a Spider on My Bed?
Also obligatory posts like this is why people hate lawyers
That war boner isn’t going to stroke itself. The Senate is more concerned about Ukraine then the United States.
No reasonable prosecutor (WSJ via RCP – so probably paywalled)…
Ole gropey is just a loveable grandpa.
Unless your mom is a stripper from Arkansas.
Yep, the law on classified material says very clearly: if you are a lovable, dopey grandpa – you are exempt from all of those requirement about keeping secrets.
Competent to be President (and CiC of the military) but not competent enough to be expected to abide by the law. AKA having your pudding and eating it too.
Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory
That’s Mr. Biden, not President.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/joe-biden-classified-documents-case-special-counsel-81df1bac?st=p9rqligg2ofibbd&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
https://www.justice.gov/storage/report-from-special-counsel-robert-k-hur-february-2024.pdf
He’s a harmless old guy who’s out to lunch and past his prime. And should totally be president again.
“there were some innocent explanations for Biden hanging on to the material that jurors might find convincing”
Well, that’s that, then. And here I thought it didn’t matter why you had the stuff.
“elderly man with a poor memory”
Ouch.
Okay, got some of my old Glibs posts scheduled to post on my personal blog. *scratches off to-do list* *orgasms*
*scratches off to-do list*
[blushes] I did not know that was a euphemism.
We haven’t done phrasing in years.