> The expert, former cop turned criminal justice professor Michael Alcazar, said Giovansanti should face “serious discipline.” But that’s not happening — an NYPD spokesperson shrugged off the suggestion of punishment because Giovansanti’s tickets are “not related to his job or his duties in the department.”
This angers me. Police officers are granted special privileges that ordinary citizens are not, and should be held to higher standards of conduct both on the job and off. In a just world, police officers would be exemplar citizens while wearing the uniform and while not. If they are not, how can we trust them to wield special privileges and authority over us?
The Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program was meant to deal with drivers like this, but it was allowed to expire in 2023 after the NYC DOT failed to actually implement it.
The program allowed the DOT to make drivers with more than 15 speed camera or 5 red light camera tickets in a year to take a safe driving course or have their car siezed. The DOT only took action against a small fraction of eligible offenders however.
Relatively small increases in speed dramatically increase the stopping distance and as such the danger of driving. Especially with a huge truck like that. That's why Amsterdam (with much more food traffic) has recently reduced speed limits a lot.
> At 30km/h, the stopping distance of a car is 13 metres. At 50km/h it’s more than double at 27 metres. That 20km/h reduction is the crucial difference between a pedestrian or cyclist surviving the impact of an accident – at 30km/h it’s estimated that 95 per cent of pedestrians would emerge relatively unscathed.
What you're saying is all true, but typically road design influence driving speed more than anything. Changing speed limits rarely has an impact on that (at least in the US).
Not sure, but I think that in the Netherlands a municipality is not allowed to slap some 30kmh road signs along a roadway and call it a day. If the street does not 'communicate' that it is designed for that velocity, i.e. it is too broad, too many car lanes, then it must be adapted first to slow down traffic. There are a number of interesting design guidelines and manuals on the web, like CROW [0] for bicycle traffic, applied across the Netherlands.
So you’re consistent in your defense of victimless crimes, yes? If he was shooting heroin in his off hours, your ok with that? If he’s smuggling drugs regularly, you’re ok with that? If he’s engaging in prostitution, you’re ok with that?
Just want to be sure you have a logically consistent position here.
You are right. Why drive at a speed where you can merely maim someone when you can drive at a speed that will inevitably explode them like a grape between the fingers instead? After all, no accidents. Yet.
If you can't arrest the human, arrest the vehicle. The vehicle is obviously guilty, and is not protected by the right to confront its accusers, which are also machines.
Of course, with the advent of AI-enhanced surveillance and "smart" cars, we have have to have a separate traffic court for machines.
Then snowflake SJW machine-huggers will demand a machine Bill of Rights ...
I don't understand, doesn't NY have a points system for driving licenses? In most places you could speed at most half a dozen times before you lose your license.
> State law classifies camera-based tickets as mere violations, and they don’t add any points to a driver’s record, even though exceeding the speed limit by 11 miles per hour is worth four points on a license — but only if the offender is caught by a cop instead of a camera. Just three of those tickets suspends a driver’s license, but Giovansanti can keep on driving.
In California cops, family members of cops, and related personnel (e.g. police union officials) can get a special insignia on their license. So when they're pulled over and are asked to present their license....
typically, tickets issued by cameras dont cause demerit points because they are unreliable at knowing who specifically is driving at the time of the ticket.
they want to avoid giving you points on your license just because your kid/spouse/friend/whatever was speeding.
if these tickets were issued via a cop, rather than a camera, they would be 4 points each.
Traffic cameras identify the owner, the person who registered the vehicle, not the driver meaning there's no license to put points on. There is no points system (At least in NY) for registration to my knowledge.
In the UK, the owner is liable for identifying the driver at the time of the incident. This is how it works with e.g. rental cars. If the owner doesn't identify the driver, they get the points
You lie, say it "Bob", then you're guilty of perverting the course of justice. They then write to Bob,
If Bob agrees, then he's also guilty of perverting the course of justice, but most of the time you'll both get away with it.
If Bob disagrees, then they look more into it.
If you refuse to answer then you're guilty of not saying who was driving the car, a completely separate offence to the original speeding one, and one which is typically more serious
In the US you can mow down a child, drive away, and despite people having your plates and giving them to the cops, they can't actually arrest you because it was only your car which was used to kill someone?
That would run afoul of the right against self-incrimination in the US[1]. The government can't compel someone to admit they were driving, and can't punish people for refusing. The government has to provide proof they were driving.
In the US, you have the right to face your accuser. Since that's not possible with a camera, photo-based enforcement becomes a non-moving violation.
You can still point the finger at someone else when you get the ticket in the mail. Or just put a bunch of question marks in reply as it is on the State to prove their case, not for you to snitch on your own bad driving habits.
At least that is how it works in the state I live in.
Seems like the solution should be that after a certain number of violations the registration is revoked. And it can only be re-registered under special registration that allows use by a single driver.
Fine should be scaled to your income and have an escalating multiplier for reoffense within the same category of offense with a cool down period of a few years if they don't break the law.
I've brought this up many times online and people usually reply with something like "lots of people who have no income on paper but are wealthy speed" and a recent solution that I've seen posted is to scale the fine to the value of the vehicle.
Quite often fines are a pretty limp and ineffective way of modulating an individual's behaviour which is ultimately a choice by society.
We can make a better choice there to induce the behaviour that we want from antisocial people.
> escalating multiplier for reoffense within the same category of offense with a cool down period of a few years if they don't break the law.
My country - Poland - implemented this part a couple of years ago. Specifically a reoffense in the same category within two years results in a higher tier fine - about twice the usual amount. Fines were also adjusted for inflation after over 20 years of being nominally the same.
The rate of cars passing me doing 180km/h+, so 40km/h+ above the local 140km/h limit, fell drastically.
Particularly speeding cars in poor condition (like dangling linkages etc.) vanished. Nobody wants a ticket that's worth more than the car.
Setting aside any concerns about cops being examples, public servants, etc, I'm shocked the NYPD's insurance doesn't have a problem with it.
My wife worked for a County government agency in Ohio. Her job duties included driving. She was required to report all traffic citations or crashes, regardless of when they occurred (during or outside of work hours), to the County and sign an affidavit annually attesting to such reporting.
If she exceeded a threshold of violations in a year the County's insurer would refuse to cover her. Because her job duties included driving this was considered grounds for termination.
Life as a cop is extremely different than the typical citizen, at least in most countries where I've spoken to cops, which doesn't include the US though, but I'm sure the same applies there because points everywhere.
Because he shouldn't be allowed to do that? Because police officers should be held to a higher standard than others? Because being immune to consequences isn't a thing anyone should be? Those are just the reasons I could think of in ten seconds, I'm sure others could come up with more.
> Among the questions he would not answer was: “While driving the RAM 1500, have you been involved in a collision with a car, pedestrian or cyclist?” (We can’t independently find that out because license plates are not in the city database of crashes for some reason.)
When I go faster than usual, I always slow down around other traffic. So if the law accounted for that, that would be nice. It seems silly to be pulled over if you're the only one on the road.
However I can understand that slower speeds can reduce catastrophic results if a tire blows.
I suppose it's akin to wearing seatbelts: As long as you're driving reasonably around other traffic and only speeding when you're by yourself, then the law primarily is there to protect the one person.
I would say you are rationalizing as is the parent of your reply, whose own reply is now invisible as it's been dv into oblivion.
Statistically if you speed the chances of a mishap increase. It's just a fact of observation. You are making a rationalization that statistics don't apply to you, and HN has judged you accordingly.
> If he hasn't, then why would he refuse to say so?
Because he doesn't need to nor should he respond to a blogger? We continually point out that no one should ever talk to the police, the same absolutely goes for the media, particularly when you're a civil servant.
It's not so much whether someone has hit anyone - speeding laws exist for a good reason to protect other drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, etc. There's a good reason that school zones are 25 mph for survivability in the case of a car hitting a pedestrian (especially for small children).
There's certainly issues with speeding laws and enforcement, but at the end of the day the US is so car-centric that removing someone's license for dangerous driving can severely impact their ability to get to work, etc.
I am of two minds about it. On one hand, speeding alone when done by a mature highly-attentive driver isn't really dangerous no matter the limit, because the driver has enough expertise to know what his personal limit ought to be. The residual risk is more from immature drivers, the mistakes of other cars, cyclists, and pedestrians.
I have been on both sides of it. I have been the speeder who can drive very safely, and much earlier than that I have been the one to get hit by a car on a street. If the car had been going faster, or if it had been an SUV or a truck, I could have been less than lucky.
I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets, with heavy mandated use of automated collision avoidance systems. Moreover, I think that all pedestrian collisions, no matter how small, must be investigated thoroughly, with a hard action taken to minimize such an incident. School zones and other low-speed zones are a complete moneygrubbing racket because we already use schoolbuses which have protections.
Bicyclists must be mandated to wear light-colored high-visibility clothing, reflective gear, and a helmet, otherwise their bicycle should be confiscated.
What you are describing is a legislation of the attitude of the average careless driver in the United States. I should be able to drive however I want until or unless I kill someone, the car should be the thing that keeps me from killing people, and anyone who doesn't use the roadway like me should be responsible for preventing me from killing them.
Spot on, well said. Personally I think inattentive driving is a bigger problem than speeding, but by the time someone is justifying it for themselves by saying they're safer than everyone else, they've lost the plot.
In my experience, the only thing that really feels too fast in a car is going faster than you've become used to driving.
And yeah, how someone talks about cyclists is always a tell.
> On one hand, speeding alone when done by a mature highly-attentive driver isn't really dangerous no matter the limit, because the driver has enough expertise to know what his personal limit ought to be. The residual risk is more from immature drivers, the mistakes of other cars, cyclists, and pedestrians.
The problem is the vast majority of drivers overestimate their skills and underestimate the risks. Many people are also emotional drivers and will drive faster when angry or stressed. A great combo.
> I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets, with heavy mandated use of automated collision avoidance systems.
So what are you going to do about all the millions of existing cars out there without collision avoidance systems?
Given all this, the easiest solution is for people to drive the speed limit, especially in urban areas with pedestrians and bicyclists.
If you really want to gas it, go to a racetrack or buy a motorcycle and donate your brain.
> I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets, with heavy mandated use of automated collision avoidance system.
Why does it need to be so contrived when there's empirical evidence from many other countries in the world about measures which do make traffic safer for everyone involved? Why can't the USA look at that and implement what has worked? It doesn't even need to do the heavy lifting, it's been done, just improve measures which have already saved countless lives in other countries...
Or don't and keep killing 30-50k people every year in traffic.
I live near a middle school in the suburbs and it may come as a surprise but kids are frequently crossing a busy street using a regular, unprotected crosswalk.
Is your underlying assumption that cars should be have the highest priority as a method of transportation, everywhere? Do you live in a rural area or something?
> School zones and other low-speed zones are a complete moneygrubbing racket because we already use schoolbuses which have protections.
What does this even mean? Does every kid ride a bus where you are? Do your school buses have seat belts and crumple zones?
> Bicyclists must be mandated to wear light-colored high-visibility clothing, reflective gear, and a helmet, otherwise their bicycle should be confiscated.
The leading cause of death for car occupants is head injuries, I assume you believe that all car occupants must wear a helmet.
They went to the guy's house, workplace? Followed him and took pictures?
This article reads like a Kiwi Farms thread. Just saying. I'm not a fan of what they do, but that's what came to mind. And when people do undesirable things, documenting them for public awareness is important. But how deep is too deep when it comes to freelance investigative journalism of this type?
e: critically I'm _agreeing_ that the reporting is important, and I'm not passing judgement either way here, only making a comparison and posing a question
His workplace is a public governmental building, so that seems like standard journalistic practice. It is also normal and appropriate to visit his house to seek a comment when he didn't respond through other channels. It would have been irresponsible and unethical to not put in an effort to speak with him before publishing this article. And taking a photo of a government official in public is again very normal, and it's good that they confirmed the vehicle is actually used by the guy they're naming.
For investigative journalism, if it even qualifies as that, this is pretty shallow. It's good work but it's just some public data and a couple hours of work, not a deep invasive investigation. It also is not freelance, this is a staff reporter for a decades-old publication.
Yeah, if he wasn't a public servant, and he wasn't a police who is supposed to enforce the laws, then I'd agree with you. But he is (hopefully "was" at one point) a public servant, and supposed to enforce the law, so if he flagrantly breaks the law almost every single day, then it's in public interest to know who is he and what he does.
> The expert, former cop turned criminal justice professor Michael Alcazar, said Giovansanti should face “serious discipline.” But that’s not happening — an NYPD spokesperson shrugged off the suggestion of punishment because Giovansanti’s tickets are “not related to his job or his duties in the department.”
This angers me. Police officers are granted special privileges that ordinary citizens are not, and should be held to higher standards of conduct both on the job and off. In a just world, police officers would be exemplar citizens while wearing the uniform and while not. If they are not, how can we trust them to wield special privileges and authority over us?
The Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program was meant to deal with drivers like this, but it was allowed to expire in 2023 after the NYC DOT failed to actually implement it.
The program allowed the DOT to make drivers with more than 15 speed camera or 5 red light camera tickets in a year to take a safe driving course or have their car siezed. The DOT only took action against a small fraction of eligible offenders however.
More: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2023/09/22/analysis-dangerous-ve...
That's absolutely horrifying...
Relatively small increases in speed dramatically increase the stopping distance and as such the danger of driving. Especially with a huge truck like that. That's why Amsterdam (with much more food traffic) has recently reduced speed limits a lot.
> At 30km/h, the stopping distance of a car is 13 metres. At 50km/h it’s more than double at 27 metres. That 20km/h reduction is the crucial difference between a pedestrian or cyclist surviving the impact of an accident – at 30km/h it’s estimated that 95 per cent of pedestrians would emerge relatively unscathed.
https://www.intertraffic.com/news/road-safety/amsterdam-30-s...
What you're saying is all true, but typically road design influence driving speed more than anything. Changing speed limits rarely has an impact on that (at least in the US).
Not sure, but I think that in the Netherlands a municipality is not allowed to slap some 30kmh road signs along a roadway and call it a day. If the street does not 'communicate' that it is designed for that velocity, i.e. it is too broad, too many car lanes, then it must be adapted first to slow down traffic. There are a number of interesting design guidelines and manuals on the web, like CROW [0] for bicycle traffic, applied across the Netherlands.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CROW_Design_Manual_for_Bicycle...
Did he cause any accidents? Nope. Next.
So you’re consistent in your defense of victimless crimes, yes? If he was shooting heroin in his off hours, your ok with that? If he’s smuggling drugs regularly, you’re ok with that? If he’s engaging in prostitution, you’re ok with that?
Just want to be sure you have a logically consistent position here.
You are right. Why drive at a speed where you can merely maim someone when you can drive at a speed that will inevitably explode them like a grape between the fingers instead? After all, no accidents. Yet.
If you can't arrest the human, arrest the vehicle. The vehicle is obviously guilty, and is not protected by the right to confront its accusers, which are also machines.
Of course, with the advent of AI-enhanced surveillance and "smart" cars, we have have to have a separate traffic court for machines.
Then snowflake SJW machine-huggers will demand a machine Bill of Rights ...
Nevermind. ;-)
I guess I'm most surprised that there are any NYC cops who don't deface their plates: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/17/nyregion/license-plate-vi...
Looks like they found the one cop on the force who doesn't obscure the license plate of their private vehicle.
I don't understand, doesn't NY have a points system for driving licenses? In most places you could speed at most half a dozen times before you lose your license.
From the article:
> State law classifies camera-based tickets as mere violations, and they don’t add any points to a driver’s record, even though exceeding the speed limit by 11 miles per hour is worth four points on a license — but only if the offender is caught by a cop instead of a camera. Just three of those tickets suspends a driver’s license, but Giovansanti can keep on driving.
Can't he be considered as the arresting cop, after all he has witnessed all the speeding offenses? Sounds like dereliction of duty at best 8)
Ah. Well that sounds like the perfect system for a cop to exploit.
There's a reason why ACAB was coined.
It does, but according to the article it doesn’t apply to tickets issued by camera.
Well, that, and cops.
Cops don't give tickets to other cops.
In NYC, cops' friends are also exempt.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/nyregion/mathew-bianchi-n...
In California cops, family members of cops, and related personnel (e.g. police union officials) can get a special insignia on their license. So when they're pulled over and are asked to present their license....
> James Giovansanti lives and works on Staten Island.
ya don't say
(sincerely, ex-resident)
> 527 since January 2022
That's more than two a week, every week!
> Since 2022, traffic cameras have caught his pickup truck blasting through school zones or running red lights more than 547 times in that one borough
In the UK speeding tickets get you 3 points (or more if you're really over like 50+ in a 30).
Get 12 points in a 3 year period and you are banned from driving.
I thought that the US had something similar for "moving violations" (rather than say parking).
Is the penalty for ignoring the law seriously just a fine (i.e. if you're rich you aren't affected)?
typically, tickets issued by cameras dont cause demerit points because they are unreliable at knowing who specifically is driving at the time of the ticket.
they want to avoid giving you points on your license just because your kid/spouse/friend/whatever was speeding.
if these tickets were issued via a cop, rather than a camera, they would be 4 points each.
Traffic cameras identify the owner, the person who registered the vehicle, not the driver meaning there's no license to put points on. There is no points system (At least in NY) for registration to my knowledge.
In the UK, the owner is liable for identifying the driver at the time of the incident. This is how it works with e.g. rental cars. If the owner doesn't identify the driver, they get the points
That sounds like guilty until proven innocent.
Not really, you are asked who was driving.
If you are driving:
You say "Me", then they give you the points
You lie, say it "Bob", then you're guilty of perverting the course of justice. They then write to Bob,
If Bob agrees, then he's also guilty of perverting the course of justice, but most of the time you'll both get away with it.
If Bob disagrees, then they look more into it.
If you refuse to answer then you're guilty of not saying who was driving the car, a completely separate offence to the original speeding one, and one which is typically more serious
In the US you can mow down a child, drive away, and despite people having your plates and giving them to the cops, they can't actually arrest you because it was only your car which was used to kill someone?
That would run afoul of the right against self-incrimination in the US[1]. The government can't compel someone to admit they were driving, and can't punish people for refusing. The government has to provide proof they were driving.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/self-incrimination
In the US, you have the right to face your accuser. Since that's not possible with a camera, photo-based enforcement becomes a non-moving violation.
You can still point the finger at someone else when you get the ticket in the mail. Or just put a bunch of question marks in reply as it is on the State to prove their case, not for you to snitch on your own bad driving habits.
At least that is how it works in the state I live in.
Seems like the solution should be that after a certain number of violations the registration is revoked. And it can only be re-registered under special registration that allows use by a single driver.
Worth noting that speeding past a school is also an aggravating factor in the UK for sentencing if you're required to go to court over speeding.
The solution is pretty straight forward.
Fine should be scaled to your income and have an escalating multiplier for reoffense within the same category of offense with a cool down period of a few years if they don't break the law.
I've brought this up many times online and people usually reply with something like "lots of people who have no income on paper but are wealthy speed" and a recent solution that I've seen posted is to scale the fine to the value of the vehicle.
Quite often fines are a pretty limp and ineffective way of modulating an individual's behaviour which is ultimately a choice by society.
We can make a better choice there to induce the behaviour that we want from antisocial people.
> escalating multiplier for reoffense within the same category of offense with a cool down period of a few years if they don't break the law.
My country - Poland - implemented this part a couple of years ago. Specifically a reoffense in the same category within two years results in a higher tier fine - about twice the usual amount. Fines were also adjusted for inflation after over 20 years of being nominally the same.
The rate of cars passing me doing 180km/h+, so 40km/h+ above the local 140km/h limit, fell drastically.
Particularly speeding cars in poor condition (like dangling linkages etc.) vanished. Nobody wants a ticket that's worth more than the car.
> a recent solution that I've seen posted is to scale the fine to the value of the vehicle.
Sweet. My vanagon has a license to speed... not on highways though, it can barely hit the speedlimit.
What is the point of this article?
> Like all drivers in New York State, Giovansanti is immune to consequences as long as he pays the $50 tickets
So he's allowed to do this. Why are we talking about it?
Setting aside any concerns about cops being examples, public servants, etc, I'm shocked the NYPD's insurance doesn't have a problem with it.
My wife worked for a County government agency in Ohio. Her job duties included driving. She was required to report all traffic citations or crashes, regardless of when they occurred (during or outside of work hours), to the County and sign an affidavit annually attesting to such reporting.
If she exceeded a threshold of violations in a year the County's insurer would refuse to cover her. Because her job duties included driving this was considered grounds for termination.
Life as a cop is extremely different than the typical citizen, at least in most countries where I've spoken to cops, which doesn't include the US though, but I'm sure the same applies there because points everywhere.
Because he shouldn't be allowed to do that? Because police officers should be held to a higher standard than others? Because being immune to consequences isn't a thing anyone should be? Those are just the reasons I could think of in ten seconds, I'm sure others could come up with more.
We are talking about this because part of the job of a journalist is to expose broken policies.
NYPD policy should probably consider repeated reckless disregard for the law to be a discipline issue.
If he paid the fine, I don't know that it's disregard for the law.
The laws says if you do this, you owe a fine. If you pay the fine, it's following the law.
The law says if you murder someone you go to jail. Therefore, it’s following the law to murder someone as long as you take the punishment.
Of course not, the punishment is actually what happens because you disregarded and didn’t follow the law.
Universal surveillance at its most terrifying
No doubt police should not be above the law and we should call that out.
However this article reads more like hyperbolic slander.
which part is hyperbolic, and which part is slander?
(remember that a statement has to be false to be slander)
It also can’t be written, or the defamation would be libel, not slander.
Has he ever hit something or someone? If the answer is no, then speeding laws are too strict and must change.
Reminds me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqYyxvM85zU
> Among the questions he would not answer was: “While driving the RAM 1500, have you been involved in a collision with a car, pedestrian or cyclist?” (We can’t independently find that out because license plates are not in the city database of crashes for some reason.)
Would you apply the same reason to drunk driving? If not, why?
When I go faster than usual, I always slow down around other traffic. So if the law accounted for that, that would be nice. It seems silly to be pulled over if you're the only one on the road.
However I can understand that slower speeds can reduce catastrophic results if a tire blows.
I suppose it's akin to wearing seatbelts: As long as you're driving reasonably around other traffic and only speeding when you're by yourself, then the law primarily is there to protect the one person.
Edit: is there something wrong with my comment?
I would say you are rationalizing as is the parent of your reply, whose own reply is now invisible as it's been dv into oblivion.
Statistically if you speed the chances of a mishap increase. It's just a fact of observation. You are making a rationalization that statistics don't apply to you, and HN has judged you accordingly.
Nobody knows. He was driving too fast to get his plate.
If he hasn't, then why would he refuse to say so?
> If he hasn't, then why would he refuse to say so?
Because he doesn't need to nor should he respond to a blogger? We continually point out that no one should ever talk to the police, the same absolutely goes for the media, particularly when you're a civil servant.
It's not so much whether someone has hit anyone - speeding laws exist for a good reason to protect other drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, etc. There's a good reason that school zones are 25 mph for survivability in the case of a car hitting a pedestrian (especially for small children).
There's certainly issues with speeding laws and enforcement, but at the end of the day the US is so car-centric that removing someone's license for dangerous driving can severely impact their ability to get to work, etc.
I am of two minds about it. On one hand, speeding alone when done by a mature highly-attentive driver isn't really dangerous no matter the limit, because the driver has enough expertise to know what his personal limit ought to be. The residual risk is more from immature drivers, the mistakes of other cars, cyclists, and pedestrians.
I have been on both sides of it. I have been the speeder who can drive very safely, and much earlier than that I have been the one to get hit by a car on a street. If the car had been going faster, or if it had been an SUV or a truck, I could have been less than lucky.
I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets, with heavy mandated use of automated collision avoidance systems. Moreover, I think that all pedestrian collisions, no matter how small, must be investigated thoroughly, with a hard action taken to minimize such an incident. School zones and other low-speed zones are a complete moneygrubbing racket because we already use schoolbuses which have protections.
Bicyclists must be mandated to wear light-colored high-visibility clothing, reflective gear, and a helmet, otherwise their bicycle should be confiscated.
What you are describing is a legislation of the attitude of the average careless driver in the United States. I should be able to drive however I want until or unless I kill someone, the car should be the thing that keeps me from killing people, and anyone who doesn't use the roadway like me should be responsible for preventing me from killing them.
Spot on, well said. Personally I think inattentive driving is a bigger problem than speeding, but by the time someone is justifying it for themselves by saying they're safer than everyone else, they've lost the plot.
In my experience, the only thing that really feels too fast in a car is going faster than you've become used to driving.
And yeah, how someone talks about cyclists is always a tell.
> On one hand, speeding alone when done by a mature highly-attentive driver isn't really dangerous no matter the limit, because the driver has enough expertise to know what his personal limit ought to be. The residual risk is more from immature drivers, the mistakes of other cars, cyclists, and pedestrians.
The problem is the vast majority of drivers overestimate their skills and underestimate the risks. Many people are also emotional drivers and will drive faster when angry or stressed. A great combo.
> I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets, with heavy mandated use of automated collision avoidance systems.
So what are you going to do about all the millions of existing cars out there without collision avoidance systems?
Given all this, the easiest solution is for people to drive the speed limit, especially in urban areas with pedestrians and bicyclists.
If you really want to gas it, go to a racetrack or buy a motorcycle and donate your brain.
> I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets, with heavy mandated use of automated collision avoidance system.
Why does it need to be so contrived when there's empirical evidence from many other countries in the world about measures which do make traffic safer for everyone involved? Why can't the USA look at that and implement what has worked? It doesn't even need to do the heavy lifting, it's been done, just improve measures which have already saved countless lives in other countries...
Or don't and keep killing 30-50k people every year in traffic.
I live near a middle school in the suburbs and it may come as a surprise but kids are frequently crossing a busy street using a regular, unprotected crosswalk.
Is your underlying assumption that cars should be have the highest priority as a method of transportation, everywhere? Do you live in a rural area or something?
> School zones and other low-speed zones are a complete moneygrubbing racket because we already use schoolbuses which have protections.
What does this even mean? Does every kid ride a bus where you are? Do your school buses have seat belts and crumple zones?
> Bicyclists must be mandated to wear light-colored high-visibility clothing, reflective gear, and a helmet, otherwise their bicycle should be confiscated.
The leading cause of death for car occupants is head injuries, I assume you believe that all car occupants must wear a helmet.
All cars needless to say need to be bright orange
Any infringement should have the car crushed.
They went to the guy's house, workplace? Followed him and took pictures?
This article reads like a Kiwi Farms thread. Just saying. I'm not a fan of what they do, but that's what came to mind. And when people do undesirable things, documenting them for public awareness is important. But how deep is too deep when it comes to freelance investigative journalism of this type?
e: critically I'm _agreeing_ that the reporting is important, and I'm not passing judgement either way here, only making a comparison and posing a question
His workplace is a public governmental building, so that seems like standard journalistic practice. It is also normal and appropriate to visit his house to seek a comment when he didn't respond through other channels. It would have been irresponsible and unethical to not put in an effort to speak with him before publishing this article. And taking a photo of a government official in public is again very normal, and it's good that they confirmed the vehicle is actually used by the guy they're naming.
For investigative journalism, if it even qualifies as that, this is pretty shallow. It's good work but it's just some public data and a couple hours of work, not a deep invasive investigation. It also is not freelance, this is a staff reporter for a decades-old publication.
Yeah, if he wasn't a public servant, and he wasn't a police who is supposed to enforce the laws, then I'd agree with you. But he is (hopefully "was" at one point) a public servant, and supposed to enforce the law, so if he flagrantly breaks the law almost every single day, then it's in public interest to know who is he and what he does.
>But how deep is too deep when it comes to freelance investigative journalism of this type?
when the subject is a cop? no such thing.