This is also yet another failure in the justice system as well. Much like catch and releasing violent criminals has led to increasing murder rates and violent crimes.... letting people like this out to be a menace is going to cost all of us something in return.
My dad and I have had this conversation a few times over the decades and we always come back to the theory that if speeding is so dangerous - if speed really does kill - then why are the penalties for speeding so light and so inconsistently applied? And why would we allow the manufacture and sale of devices - radar/laser detectors - that are designed for the purpose of breaking the law? If speeding is truly a serious thing about which "something must be done!", then before we go around punishing the whole population, perhaps we should first consider harsher penalties for those that are already breaking the law.
In reply to wae :
And in this case it wasn't just speeding. Being under the influence of multiple illegal substances has more to do with the crash. But hey.... lets punish all of society because of one useless pile of human trash.
I left a company because I had a boss like that. We had one repeat offender that was constantly f-n off and causing issues. So instead of dealing with that problem, she would send department wide "nasty-grams" addressing it and making everyone responsible. That didn't work in a smaller environment, and it won't work on a larger one. Hold the offenders responsible, leave everyone else alone.... and that goes for so many things.
In reply to bobzilla :
I cringe whenever a legislature brings a victim of some terrible occurrence to testify in support of whatever new "if it saves just one life" law they're cooking up. Or whenever they want to come up with a new law that's named after someone. What's the old saying? Hard cases make for bad law?
re: insurance purposes, they've mandated rear view cameras, why not one in the front that records the last 10 minutes so everyone can see what the driver was doing before a crash?
That would have done nothing in this particular case where the driver should have been stopped before getting behind the wheel.
I think that the future is pretty predictable.
We are moving into an era of self driving cars; that genie is not going back in the bottle.
In order for self driving cars to work, we need to remove the human element as a variable.
Insurance companies and those spearheading the arrival of the self driving infrastructure need horror stories like this to move sentiment in their direction
It is already feasible to force cars to obey the speed limit. Most of you with new cars have a dash icon that displays the posted speed limit and goes red if you are over that limit. It would take all of two seconds for the programmers to not let the car exceed that limit. It would be equally simple to have the car rat you out to your insurance company and the ticket issuers if you did go over the limit.
This boils down to meaningless bureaucracy for its own sake.
The IIHS, NHTSA, OSHA, EPA and any other regulatory agency were all established in the name of safety. But "safety"is nebulous - safety on its own is subjective and cannot be measured outright. You can measure deaths over time, or injuries per cycle or whatever, but safety cannot be measured objectively like mass or distance can be. And who determines the limit - if 26 deaths per year is the number, who decides if that is an acceptable rate? I dont trust the government to estimate my tax burden correctly or to estimate the value of my home. I certainly dont trust them to establish the standards by which something is deemed safe or dangerous.
And these agencies exist to solve problems that, should they succeed, would mean the end of their usefulness. That incentivizes them to never actually do the thing they're established to do. An excess of solution will incentivize the creation of the problem.
Lastly, I dare you to try and convince me that the power to disable the car of a someone thought to be a chronic speeder or of someone an AI deems to potentially be intoxicated would never be used to impact someone of an inconvenient political persuasion. (hint, you never will)
In reply to j_tso :
Most cars built after 2012 have something like that already. The 'black box' is constantly keeping the last five seconds of information (usually in tenth of a second increments) should a significant event occur.
I was on a jury where I got to see this info (Dodge truck, 1/10th increments, and a Hyundai, half second increments). Wheel speeds, turn signals, brake applied or not, steering angle, seat belts on or not, throttle plate percentage, even torque converter lockup, it was a huge amount of info.
In reply to 4cylndrfury :
Just want to point out that the IIHS is NOT an regulatory body. Very much not NTSHA, EPA, or OSHA. They are a representative of the insurance industry. Meaning things that come from them are there to make money for the insurance companies. They may sound that they are there to save people's lives, but we have to be realistic here.
In reply to alfadriver :
They ARE there to save peoples lives
from having to be paid for by the insurance industry that funds them.
Related question. Are the cars that have speed control and lane change capability able to exceed the speed limit? Woud this make the auto manufacturer liable for an accident due to speeding?
I spent a long time in the automotive industry. I drive older cars for reasons like this.
I hate 99% of new cars and all the stupid nannies (outside of butt chillers)
In reply to alfadriver :
IMHO, this is more the IIHS pushing this than anyone else. Especially the insurance company of the moron who has to pay out millions to the victims. The insurance companies have been pushing a lot more safety items on people than anyone else in recent years- to save they paying out money.
If you compare the IIHS vs the NTSHA ratings, NTSHA only looks at all of the crashes, IIHS adds in all of the prevention tech to their ratings. Which this would be.
Which is kind of ironic for this- if one of their customers ignore the warnings, they are more on the hook to pay out.
The insurance company won't be paying out any millions. They only have to pay what the policy covers. Nevada minimum would be $50k for the deaths and $20k property damage. If the minivan owner has uninsured/underinsured coverage, the victim's insurance would likely be paying out to the max of that coverage too. But it won't be millions.
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