Who came up with this stupid idea?! Just seize the car.
Is this even that big of a problem?
If so, take away their license and plates. Bus pass or bike from now on.
That’s big-brothery. Like OP said just take away their license and make the penalties for driving without a license so astronomical that the problem will fix itself?
How is the device going to detect what the speed limit is to be able to limit it? A speed limit isn’t the same everywhere.
That’s a great question but I imagine it will be similar to my Honda- its lane sensing camera “reads” speed limit signs and displays the current speed limit on my speedometer. Flashes it if I’m doing a certain amount over the limit, which I can customize up to 10 over.
GPS Data. Most dedicated navigation systems have the speed limit data in their maps for the last decade or so. They’re probably also going to add the Road sign information systems that newer cars have.
You can’t take people’s cars away or they will have no way to make money and live in America
Just the truth sorry
And speed is highly correlated to the lethality of car wrecks. Also, it sounds like the devices wosuld be installed in the cars of people who… speed frequently.
So, it is directly addressing the problem without asset seizure or jail time. Sounds like an ideal solution, actually.
Revoking drivers licenses would probably be more appropriate than seizing vehicles. The upside to that is revoking licenses, I’d wager, is a whole lot cheaper than installing and monitoring speed trackers. So long as the person with the speeding problem is paying for that I guess it’s acceptable. But then we have yet another example of people without much money getting a raw deal. Means testing? Everything gets complicated when it gets to the implementation details.
Plus a lot of people with revoked licenses just continue to drive anyway with a vehicle insured under someone else’s name.
Both options are potentially bad for low-income earners. If you force them to pay for a speed limiter they lost the money for that, which they might not able to afford. If you take away their license they will have difficulty getting around and might lose their job.
So from that perspective the speed limiter might be the less dangerous choice.
Pattern of excessive speeding and low income doesn’t seem like it’s going to have a lot of overlap.
Those tickets add up and insurance rates spike so if they are a low income driver they’re already wasting far more money on their bad driving havens than what this device is going to cost.
I feel like the better option is to have local government foot the bill - but the driver owes the value of the device if it’s lost or damaged. In theory, insurance would have to cover at least some of this and they can still use their car. AND if they drive safely, they should owe nothing long-term.
That’s idealistic though. I’m sure the “tough on crime” crowd would want the individual to foot the bill.
Or you could go for a tiered scheme where the device is free if the owner’s income is below a certain level. There’s always options; whether or not they’re taken is another question.
That’s a really good point. Sliding scale payment maybe (with no cap on income - if you make a million bucks a year and are always speeding, you’re going to be paying a hefty fine)
People on a budget can just slow the fuck down. Speeding tickets are not cheap.
Flip that on its head.
Rich people can speed however much they want because who cares about a little fine?
That’s why this model sucks.
Yep. Need tickets proportional to income to solve that, and photo radar to solve acab interactions.
Yup the rich will get around it by hiring a driver and paying them to speed. Or just swapping to one of their other cars that is not limited.
In the UK, you can get your license revoked for speeding. You can lose your license if you’re going a lot over the speed limit. If you’re going a bit slower you can get 3 or 6 points and if you get more than 12 points you also lose your license.
It doesn’t seem to do a huge amount to discourage speeding in my experience.
It used to be exactly that way here in the US as well… unless it varies from state to state? I’ve lived in a few and they all seem to have this sorted with the point system.
I suppose the older I get the more I can get behind this, similar to interlock devices for people that can’t control their drinking, I would imagine the offender would have to pay for it or lose their license. I know it seems crazy to force people to stay within the speed limit, but fining and tickets don’t work for some people.
Sure would be a shame if they ended up homeless, then in prison as free labor for any number of companies!
Especially in New York City! How would you ever get anywhere on time without a car in New York City?!
Yeah but in the suburbs of Buffalo and Albany? Or in the New York portion of the Appalachians or whatever their other mountains are called? New York is a geographically large state by northeast standards
Catskill Mountains
This would apply to the whole state. New York is more than just one city
Only if it’s successful.
That’s why I said “would”
Could always live in a city. Rural areas (I include american type suburbs here too) are for fat and dumb people.
All cities have fantastic public transit at all times, this is known. /s
Also what’s with the rural hate outta nowhere?
What happened to “don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time,” or, “shoulda thought of that before breaking the law”?
You tell me. How do you feel about those rules?
Food is even more fundamental to survival than our four-wheeled toys, but if you habitually go to the grocery store and eat without paying, you’ll end up in jail. Shelter is more important, too, but that doesn’t mean that I can just take up residence in any house or apartment that I please. I’d go to jail for trying.
So, I really have no sympathy for the claim, “we can’t take away cars!” Take them away from people who can’t be bothered to follow the laws that let us live together in society, even though they knew the consequences. Maybe sell them off and use the funds to provide food and shelter to the homeless.
And if you were smart enough to use critical thinking and follow your logic to its inevitable conclusion, you’d see how that would just send people into cycles perpetually keeping them in prison and never being able to reform or reintigrate into society all over a speeding ticket. But since you aren’t, let me walk you through it.
John gets a in trouble for speeding. Maybe they give him a ticket he cant afford or maybe they just take his car away. Either way it doesnt matter, it just speeds up the cycle so lets go fast and say he loses the car. He now lacks a car so I hope his town has good public transportation! Oops it doesn’t, guess he loses his job because he cant get there on time. Now John is houseless. We all know how the houseless are treated so lets just skip to John going to prison. Lets say a year or so later he gets out. Now he will have an even harder time finding a job because he has a criminal record AND is houseless. On and on.
Now since we both understand the cycle I imagine you still think his car should be taken away but simply because youre a hateful and vengeful person who doesnt care about actually stopping crime, but just want to see people who do something wrong get punished (whether or not the punishment will have unintended consequences that cause the punishment to be way more severe than the crime).
John could just follow the law. I love these discussions, because drivers get so angry when I call out their criminal behavior.
Coulda woulda shoulda whatever, thats not reality. People break rules and punishments aren’t effective at stopping them. So come up with an effective way of stopping it without ruining people’s lives or shut the fuck up. No one deserves their life ruined over speeding, and if you think they do then I hope you get to experience the other end of the stick.
Also L+ratio
Hahaha, that’s what I love the most! The downvotes come flying fast 'n furious on driving-related posts. It’s so consistent, across any social media or forum site. I can only speculate, but I think it’s the cognitive dissonance, because know from extensive real-life observation that driving makes people miserable and angry, even while they claim to enjoy it. Thus, it’s really easy to make observations that puncture the illusion.
Our criminal “justice” system sucks, period. It’s about vengeance, and racism, not about rehabilitation. We should reform it from top to bottom for every crime, not simply exempt one in particular because folks wanna zoom-zoom.
I think “the time” should fit “the crime” though. Taking away someone’s vehicle could negatively impact their ability to earn money for things like food and shelter. Also getting the food to the shelter becomes more difficult too, especially if public transit is poor or not an option. Stuff like this has a greater impact on lower income individuals too, and they already have it bad enough.
To me, revoking a license or seizing vehicles is a consequence where punishment is the goal. A speed limiting device has more room for rehabilitation I think. Whenever it comes to punishment vs rehabilitation I’m always on the rehab side.
Agreed. The best solution, as always, is to design streets and roads so that driving unsafely feels unsafe, so that everybody naturally slows down. Until that happens, this is a good program.
… make money to pay taxes and buy products…
And pay rent for a home and to buy food and clothes
But sure make it sound dumb and silly 🥳
I’m out of silly.
Because a seized car does not generate speeding ticket fines.
And a car that cannot speed can? You might not have thought that one through.
When you can just buy a new one why bother! They’ll find a way around this too, there is always a loop hole to exploit if rich
The way around is to ignore the speeding detection, you are rich, the law doesn’t apply to you. Just pay the fine with 0.001% of the itrest from yesterday.
Is the plan to store these cars they’re seizing in your plan somewhere? To sell them?
How much is the cost of seizing and storing a vehicle? How much is the cost of building a place to house these seized vehicles?
Who pays that cost?
Where is such a facility going to be built?
Even if you did sell the vehicles, who gets the proceeds? What stops the person from suing the state or municipality for selling items that don’t belong to them?
That’s even before we think about the economic impact of these people living in a very car dependant place where that vehicle makes the difference between being able to have access to food and transportation to get to work.
Is the state going to provide shuttles to get these people groceries and to and from work? Who pays for that?
I have a lot of questions about why you’d want it to be okay to seize the property of a person just because they broke the law.
Police can and do already seize and sell assets whether you have committed a crime or not. Usually people want to end such overreach but now you’re all the sudden siding with the gestapo in order to seize people’s assets because you feel self righteous?
The math doesn’t math on this.
I don’t necessarily disagree with your point. But:
Is the state going to provide shuttles to get these people groceries and to and from work? Who pays for that?
Typically most places call these buses.
I think that most of your point could be alleviated with more and better public transport. Then removal can be a realistic punishment without preventing people from living.
Buses cost money to run, and rural upstate New York (just like a lot of rural areas that are car dependant) do not necessarily have the infrastructure to implement them. Which is exactly why I said shuttles, not buses.
Public transit isn’t going to pop out of the ether to fix the problem so that we can just take away people’s personal property because they broke the law as if they no longer own it. Civil forfeiture is already a broken law without us making it worse for poor people while rich people continue to get a pass.
They’ll buy new vehicles. You can legally purchase a car without a driver’s license in most states. You just have to have someone who can legally drive it off the lot of deliver it. Which is simple for a rich person, but not for a poor person.
Like it could be if we were willing to spend the amount of money it would cost to build and upkeep that infrastructure. But that would also likely mean civil forfeiture of land. Because bus stops and side walks and depots don’t just show up because you want to take people’s cars away.
The cost of all that, plus the cost of implementing the ability to store or sell these vehicles is going to be problematic and more costly than the proposal, which is more fair than the alternative because it treats people regardless of the economic situation the same.
I don’t like the proposal, but I can certainly understand why it’s being proposed as a better way to fix the problem.
Down here in Straya, sometimes they crush the car and make em watch it being done
That’s wonderful. Would not that cost be better spent designing roads that deter speeding by design?
The only answer I can come up with is, if you take their license than they just drive with no license.
That’s a very serious crime though. If you get pulled over without a license, it’s a several thousand dollar fine.
Cool so how are they supposed to ever get a job a home and live?
Should we just jail them for life to make it simple?
This is why the governor’s policy will work well. It let’s drivers stay on the road until they’ve been caught with many infractions. It’s a very different story when you take someone’s license away after a few speeding tickets versus taking their license away after a few speeding tickets, then several months of well-documented continued speeding incidents every time they drove. Losing your license has serious consequences in modern society, but my sympathy for dangerous drivers has a limit.
how are they supposed to ever get a job
By respecting the speed limits? Wow, my idea is so novel, disruptive, and revolutionary!
So if they don’t respect speed limits they should be effectively exiled from society into poverty or jail?
Tell me you are a child incapable of governance without telling me
Is this post in fuckcars? No? Well it should be. We should be investing more in public transit and building cities people can live in without necessarily owning a car. Your participation in society should not hinge on a multi-thousand dollar purchase of a car along with the yearly insurance and other maintenance costs.
Yes we should and you are 100% right but that isn’t the society we live in
We live in one where you cannot live in a true survival sense in 99% of all locations without a car
Until the public transit and walkable cities exist the wrong people are being punished
Wow! What a slamn
Tell me you’re an embryo incapable of understanding consequences, etc.
Zing!
Give them the guillotine like the people breaking laws you agree with!
Take the bus moron. You can read on the bus.
You must not live in America if you think most people have access to a bus
Have you never been to New York City where this story takes place?
If they are incapable of driving, and being a part of the statistics of people who kill others on the road, they must not drive. That’s easy. It’s not a death sentence. We prevent pedophiles from working with children, same thing.
Or we remove all the speed limits and seat belts being mandatory, but we know from 60 years of statistics that the numbers of people killed on the road will be multiplied by 100.
You don’t prevent pedophiles from working you prevent them from working with kids
Under your own obscene pedophile analogy it’s actually much more appropriate to put speed limiters on cars than remove their cars entirely
You don’t prevent them from driving you prevent them from driving too fast
And the rich will just pay it and continue, it’s the poors that will suffer. But yeah it would be their fault because this would only be used after a number of offences that they could have just slowed down.
You can’t pay to not lose your license, that’s not how it works at all.
You should go sit in criminal court for a day.
The reality is many jurisdictions just don’t enforce such things very well - there are many cases around the country of people getting their 3rd, 4th, 5th DUI and not losing their license or worse as the law us defined.
And those are often as not, not “rich people”.
Frankly judges see so much worse crime in their courts constantly that I think they’re hesistant to jail someone who is a mostly functional member of society compared to 90% of everyone else coming through their court.
Then there’s also the plea-bargaining process: prosecuting attorneys are directed to plea-bargain pretty much all cases to expedite the case load - courts are largely overwhelmed. I’ve seen guys in chains accused of multiple violent assault felonies (like assaulted multiple people in one go) plea bargain down to a fucking misdemeanor.
Again, go sit in criminal court for a day and you’ll see what I mean - it’s eye opening.
This is the dumbest thing I’ve seen in a while. Criminal court is for poor people. Rich people don’t go to court for traffic tickets. They hire a lawyer who’s the son in law of a judge and work out a fine and never see the inside of a court room. How naive are you?
They already do this with people who keep getting caught driving hammered. Just slow the fuck down, Andretti. Would be a non-issue. You take the car, they can’t go to work like good little indentured servants. 🤣
Because ticketing is a revenue stream.
What, you thought police ticket people to… protect the general public?
This will be another revenue stream, where the serial speeders have to pay for the install of the device, and likely an ongoing monthly fee for its continued operation.
I knew someone who ran a similar program for DUIs.
It probably wouldn’t be a revenue stream for the government.
A private company would buy the equipment and charge the government AND the speeder for the costs, maintenance and monitoring.
Usually when there is a big push for these kinds of enforcement systems, the person pushing for it already has a friend of family member who just happens to do exactly that.
Oh.
Wonderful.
Even better.
This scheme would reduce ticket revenue, though. And if criminal scofflaws have to pay, good, fuck 'em. The New York taxpayers shouldn’t take on the burden. The scumbags could avoid the cost trivially.
But it would be offset by the massive and recurring income from installing and maintaining the devices by a third party.
Let’s see who the companies providing these services are owned by.
Like when ticket cameras in vans became a thing 25 years ago: 80% of the “ticket” went to the camera van company. I say “ticket” because in many US jurisdictions only a police officer can issue a ticket, so these were unenforceable as tickets.
States had to update their laws to add “civil fees” as a thing just for such cameras.
Oh, my heavens, a THIRD PARTY! /s
Yes, these devices cost money to produce, install, and operate. Don’t want to pay for one? Stop breaking the law.
they’ll charge folks for the usage of this too. profit will be had.
also if the normal fine is affordable by rich folk, something like this is worthy of consideration except that rich folk typically have lawyers.
I would say that this directly targets the people that can already clearly afford the fines easily enough that they keep speeding enough to get caught. Someone that is severely hurt by the fines are already likely to be deterred from speeding by the fines. This addresses the people that eat the fines and keep speeding again and again.
BINGO
The fines aren’t even the expensive part, it’s the increase in insurance.
As a former… assertive driver as a young adult, my insurance increased to insane levels. That got me to re-think my driving and turned me into the person everyone cusses for driving like grandpa.
This doesn’t seem unreasonable, it’s like interlock devices for repeat drunk drivers.
How about just installing speed limiter devices by default? Never having to worry about being caught accidentally speeding sounds like an absolute win for me.
