[smallpoxgirl]

Just so to get you to go on the record here, do you advocate a free for all on the streets where anybody tall enough to reach the pedals can drive, and drive in any reckless manner they wish?

No I don't. I don't advocate murder either, but neither to I advocate putting a video camera on every street corner just in case someone might try to murder someone else. Clearly some level of vehicular law and law enforcement is necessary. I think we passed that level of reasonable vehicular laws and law enforcement about 50 years ago. We've long since wandered off into the realm of people trying to obtain safety through total government surveillance and control.

I do not support:
-red light cameras
-speeding cameras
-road blocks
-cell phone laws
-allocating over 10% of any law enforcement organization to traffic enforcement
-or financing structures where any law enforcement organization receives the proceeds of the tickets it writes or receives proceeds from property it seizes.

[KevO]

I wish there were an island you could go to where there were no rules..

There is. It's called Somalia

[3rensho]

I wish there were an island you could go to where there were no rules..

There is. It's called Somalia

Somalia's an island now?

[Byron100]

I think the whole crux of this argument is whether or not we desire a "punishment" society. Here, let us sell you a 125 mph car for just a few month's salary, but you will be PUNISHED if you go astray of any one of 5000 traffic laws. Let's make obtaining a driver's license doable for almost everyone in society, and let the sizable minority of drivers who really *shouldn't be driving* make costly mistakes and suffer "punishment" in the way of exorbitant insurance premiums, costly traffic tickets and unaffordable car repair bills due to the lack of education of car maintenance.

I think we need to look at this from a whole different angle - starting with providing *alternatives* to the automobile, in both urban and rural settings. Stuff like inter-city and intra-urban rail. Commuter busway lines which have worked so well elsewhere. A publicly funded rural bus system. Better land-use planning to get people, jobs and shopping/entertainment in close proximity. Then perhaps we can set about reducing the dependence on these fossil-fuel guzzlers and reduce the overall risk to society.

It's far better to lead people with the carrot instead of beating them over with a stick. Take my childhood, for example, I learned quite well to be sneaky, lie low and whatever you do, DON'T GET CAUGHT, lest I receive the dreaded hand on the rear end. Too bad there was no reward for doing "good" around the house...as all I learned was how to avoid being "bad".

Now apply this to the car-driving populace, and give it some thought. I say let's change the paradigm, and do things from a wholesome point of view, instead of wielding the stick of authority in a vain, misguided effort to control people's behavior.

[smallpoxgirl]

That's part of it. IMHO, it's about a broader agenda of control based on fear. Government's are composed of power hungry people, and their overall agenda is to increase their power over people. The broad picture of how you do that is that you pass so many laws that people can't possibly ever comply with them all. This causes people to: A: fear the government and B: feel ashamed of themselves for their transgressions. When people feel ashamed of themselves, the number one way they will seek to cope with that emotion is by finding someone else to look down on. So people who feel bad about breaking the law themselves will clamor for greater enforcement against "worse" lawbreakers. Combine this with a government and media that promote the idea that any time anything bad happens, it could have been prevented through greater government surveillance and control. Now you have a recipe for creeping fascism, and that's what we have in this country. Creeping fascism. We are moving one step at a time to a world where the government will monitor every action of every citizen all day long, and everyone will live in continuous mortal fear of punishment for their numerous legal infractions.

[vision-master]

Gost Rider

500 hp Hayabusa

[mos6507]

We are moving one step at a time to a world where the government will monitor every action of every citizen all day long, and everyone will live in continuous mortal fear of punishment for their numerous legal infractions.

Wake me when you feel like we've reached that point. Sounds to me like your personal anxieties are exaggerating things out of proportion.

[eastbay]

Gost Rider

500 hp Hayabusa

Thanks VM. As a former sport bike rider who occasionally went Very Crazy Fast, I really dig watching those crazy video's once in awhile.

[mos6507]

Now apply this to the car-driving populace, and give it some thought. I say let's change the paradigm, and do things from a wholesome point of view, instead of wielding the stick of authority in a vain, misguided effort to control people's behavior.

So do you want to get rid of the stick entirely? You really think that won't have negative consequences of their own?

[ReverseEngineer]

We are moving one step at a time to a world where the government will monitor every action of every citizen all day long, and everyone will live in continuous mortal fear of punishment for their numerous legal infractions.

Wake me when you feel like we've reached that point. Sounds to me like your personal anxieties are exaggerating things out of proportion.

Wake me when you stop naysaying everybody and acknowledge reality. Smallpox is dead on with her analysis, endlessly evolving laws like putting 10 YO children into child safety seats and endless further montoring of every last thing you do like putting GPS trackers into rental cars makes it about impossible for ANYONE short of Jesus Christ to lead a perfectly LEGAL life and not live in terror of being caught for some transgression. "OMG, what if my boss finds out I went to a Strip Club because the vehicle log of my rental car in Houston get sent back with the bill?"

The society has become ridiculously restrictive, and if you don't buy the Party line of what you should or should not smoke, what you should or should not drink, how much Insurance you MUST buy from AIG to drive your car then unless you are EXTREMELY lucky you will eventually find yourself in some sort of trouble with the *laws* of this society.

Its an endless trap that makes Goobermint ever more invasive in everyone's life, and you really cannot exit this nonsense as long as the society exists as it does. You either buy the nonsense as necessary to insure your safety from terrorists or you do not. You either buy Insurance schemes and pay the premiums to live in such a society or else you take a one way ticket to the Great Beyond, because society at this stage has become so invasive there is NO EXIT in the real world.

On the positive side, Society is taking a Nosedive, AIG is Bankrupt and you soon won't have any cars to drive at 55 anyhow. Although by no means will anarchy be pleasant, at least its a quick end to the slow death of repression and exploitation we have grown ourselves into with the overshoot.

Reverse Engineer

[smallpoxgirl]

Yeah. Like RE says, we're basically already there. Your actions are monitored almost everywhere you go in a city by cameras. The FCC mandates that your cell phone have a GPS chip in it that they can use to track your movements. We spend something like a third of our GDP on government. 1/3 of all the productive output of our society gets spent on bureaucrats following us around and fining us if we don't follow all the rules. If you go to California, it will cost you several hundred dollars just to get a copy of all the laws you're expected to follow. In paper form it fills several book cases. You think a moment ever goes by that you're not violating one of those? Highly unlikely. Furthermore theres an awful lot of people, like yourself mos, who have been made so timorous and insecure by the whole process that they actually clamor in support of things like red light cameras because they are actually fearful of someone running a red light at 2 am. They have come to believe that without all these armies of police and bureaucrats constantly surveilling them that they would be in actual physical danger.

[EnergyUnlimited]

We are moving one step at a time to a world where the government will monitor every action of every citizen all day long, and everyone will live in continuous mortal fear of punishment for their numerous legal infractions.

That is unlikely.
At some point massive numbers of rules and regulations will simply end up ignored and no one will give a slightest damn about them.
Increasingly corrupt law enforcement will not help government either and breaking countless silly-willy rules will become to be cool and a sort of sport.

Have seen it during communism collapse in Poland. Works well.

[letitburn84]

dont care for speeding tickets, do care for red light cameras.

Lost my first car to an impatient d-bag I watched drive through the intersection across from and ahead of me (after slowing down to get to our red light, then speeding back up!), get t-boned, landed on my hood.

other than that I got 300 horses, im aero-drag-limited to 154 mph and i need to stretch my legs so watch out!

seriously though, some of the 55 mph roads up here, people like to do 80+ on em, but with the construction that is nearly endless it isnt too safe to do much more than 65 anyway. curves with concrete barriers will kill you if people f up.

[mos6507]

Furthermore theres an awful lot of people, like yourself mos, who have been made so timorous and insecure by the whole process that they actually clamor in support of things like red light cameras because they are actually fearful of someone running a red light at 2 am. They have come to believe that without all these armies of police and bureaucrats constantly surveilling them that they would be in actual physical danger.

I think the reason government is having to intervene is that there has been a loss of community as we turn inward, no longer dependent on mutual cooperation for anything. People seem to care less and less about anything other than their own personal sphere. Late for work? No cop? No stop. Your wife just left you? Rush out to the bar, tank up on tequila, and since you're alone, no designated driver. Get in front of the wheel, kill some kid on the side of the road. Hit and run. Stuck in traffic? Someone cut you off? Road rage time. Pull out the gun from your glove compartment and blow away the guy. Really, coming from Los Angeles, that is the capital of road rage. People spend a large share of their day in their cars. When you are in a car, unless you pull up next to someone and roll down your window, you can't directly communicate with them. Everything easily devolves into a mechanical body language of flashing high beams, tailgating, horn-honking, and passing on the right. No, in this day I do not have a lot of faith that drivers can be trusted with loose traffic laws. I think in large part this is a symptom of larger sociological problems rather than a black and white case of government becoming intrusive just because they are "Evil [tm]".

[Byron100]

Now apply this to the car-driving populace, and give it some thought. I say let's change the paradigm, and do things from a wholesome point of view, instead of wielding the stick of authority in a vain, misguided effort to control people's behavior.

So do you want to get rid of the stick entirely? You really think that won't have negative consequences of their own?

If that's the case, then why is it that the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and yet we suffer high levels of crime? Punishment doesn't work, period. Prisons are there to keep them off the streets, nothing more. When they get out, they become criminals again, as it's all they know.

Same thing with the "small stuff" - people who get caught speeding don't slow down, they buy radar detectors and hire lawyers to fight the tickets in court. They keep an out out for the "fuzz" and rant and rave about those "pigs". And why is it they always ticket people in low traffic, in good weather, when running 10 over is not doing a bit of harm to anyone? Ticket the crazies that cut you off on the inside doing 90 in a 55, or those cretins that blast through school zones at 45 mph even with the lights flashing overhead. It'd be nice if they would focus on actual safety issues, instead of bagging a bunch of easy marks with a cleverly-designed speed trap on an otherwise very safe stretch of road or highway.

No, wielding the stick and making people live in shame and fear never does a society any good. In a different society, the government would learn to fear us, instead of the other way around. As much as I want to government to share some of its extreme wealth with me, myself and mine, I'm still looking forward to the day when the US Fed says, "Oops, looks like we're bankrupt. No more spending for anyone." Then perhaps we'll be able to do things our own way, for once.

[mos6507]

No, wielding the stick and making people live in shame and fear never does a society any good. In a different society, the government would learn to fear us, instead of the other way around.

It's implicit in a comment like this that you think people can just "get along" with eachother in a world with no laws. I think this is a hopelessly naive concept. There is a continuum of law and order between anarchy and a police state. Unfortunately some people look at the world through an exaggerated lens.