Beric

The government isn't actually after your money. It's after power, at the cost of your own. It may take away your money however, when that gives you power.

There have been some excellent posts in this thread. I especially like this one:

+rep

Guswut

So long as a judge sets precedence that while the crying in the trunk of a car is not loud enough to distract a person from the act of driving, it is still considered in the car. Heheheh.

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carl25

and if they kill someone, what does the victim's family get ?
time machine ?

i think bad drivers will be bad drivers regardless of distractions, gps on screen or whatever would still be distracting, hell it would be more of a distraction. I think sound in most gps stuff is more than enough, says right take a right unless you are michael scott

Beric

Reckless driving could actually be counted as homicide if someone is killed. Then the offender could be given the death penalty, which would act as a deterrent to future reckless driving.

Stop banning items, such as GPS, and instead ban the harmful results. After all, we might as well just ban humans.

Blameless

You are thinking ideallisically, not pragmatically.

Pragmatically, if laws aren't enforced, they aren't obeyed. And it's quite obvious that if you aren't caught, you won't be punished.

I fail to see how this is an argument against my position.

Slap-on-the-wrist laws do not have penalties harsh enough to be an effective detterent. If they did, they would probably fall under crule and unusual punishment. They also unfairly assume that everyone has the same level of concentration and ability to multi-task, when nothing could be further from the truth.

I'll never support laws that have too many degrees of separation between cause and effect. You decide what you don't want happening, and you make laws that are an effective detterent to that act. Not the act that might have led to the act that might have led to your mother beating you that might have led to you beating your wife that might have led her to leave you that might have lead you to depression which may have lead you to drink which may have impared your ability to drive which may have caused you to hit those kids on the sidewalk. Natural selection will take care of the rest.

Yes, innocent people may get hurt before those who deserve concequences see them. So what? They are going to get hurt anyway. Personally, I have a lot easier time justifing pentalties for people who have caused some significant harm, or removing rights/privleges of those who have proven they can't handle them, than doing the same to those who might, possibly, do so in the future.

Choggs396

Couldn't have said it better, myself.

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- René Descartes

Freedom gives people the ability to either succeed or to fail.
Ensuring success at the expense of freedom is nothing short of tyranny.

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Glacialis

I just realized that as a sign of my turning 31 recently, I find that this is the most absolutely hilarious thing I've heard in the last month or so.

Choggs396

Wow, I can't believe I missed that one.

__________________
Je pense, donc je suis
- René Descartes

Freedom gives people the ability to either succeed or to fail.
Ensuring success at the expense of freedom is nothing short of tyranny.

Overclock.net Professionalism Initiative

Dave510

Do you have statistics to back up your claim that slap-on-the-wrist punishments are ineffective against minor violations such as traffic crimes? The fact of the matter is this. A traffic violation would, at the very LEAST, cost you a hundred dollar for the traffic ticket. That alone offsets the benefit you derive from violating the law almost all of the time, not to mention increasing penalty with repeated violations. The point is it's NEVER worth it to commit a violation if you think you'll get caught, and hence people only do it when they believe they won't get caught.

I don't see how programming GPS while driving -> distraction -> inceased chance of accident is "too many degrees of separation". If 1 degree of separation is too much, then no one can even commit murders. After all, chances are the knife/bullet/lack of oxygen and etc. that caused organ failure/shock and etc. in the victim that caused them to die, and not the murderer.

And your last paragraph is questionable both logically and morally. You assume "people who deserve consequences" is a static set, when it's more likely to be a dynamic set. Better regulation means less "people who deserve consequences", because the point of better laws is to decrease crime. Morally it's questionable because most of society would rather let a few criminals loose, than to have a few innocent people die. In fact, that's why we require proving beyond reasonable doubt.

Blameless

Easily available traffic statistics speak for themselves.

So does personal experience. Both I and the majority of drivers I know have been pulled over for speeding more than once, many more than twice.

I doubt your facts (I've both paid less than 100 dollars for a traffic violation, and commited crimes that I was caught doing and punished for, that I would not hesitate to commit again, in the same situation) and your assesment of the thought processes of the "typical" person.

Anyway, that's all completely beside the point. Making new laws usually doesn't change how laws are enforced, and won't increase the percieved risk of breaking the new laws.

It's too many because it stacks irrelevancies on top of an otherwise clear situation. If the GPS user above harms someone or damages property, you dont need to know the source of the distraction. You might not even need to know that they were distracted. All you need to know is who was at fault.

Obviously not what I was talking about (and if you want to get technical, you can still kill people with your bare hands).

I'm not really sure what you are saying here.

Any word like deserve is going to be used in a subjective sense.

From what I've seen, the point of most laws is to give police, lawyers, and judges something to do, and generate revenue from fines.

Anyway, laws don't enforce themselves. The consequences of breaking them (when they are well thought out and well enforced), as I said before, either act as a detterent, or remove the opportunity to commit further offenses.

Subjective morals aside, where did I ever advocate allowing innocents to die over allowing a few criminals to slip through the cracks?

I though my views were pretty clearly the opposite; letting the little things slide and not punishing people for what they haven't done. Unless something is quite clearly against common good, an not protected by an idividuals rights, making laws against it should be a crime. In some cases (far too few, IMO), it is.

Basically I'm saying that innocent people should be protected from stupid, arbitrary, and redundant laws.

There are already laws against driving recklessly. I see no need for a laws that states glacing at my GPS while driving is more reckless than changing my pants. You can't distill these things into some universally applicable formula. There needs to be room for interpretation and judgement.