Today's discussion about the news
Comments
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I see now a horrific accident involving a child has hit the news, now suddenly everyone's interested in lifetime driving bans for deaths by dangerous driving.
I can imagine a lot of bereaved family members of dead cyclists are shouting FINNALLY.
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I was surprised that high profile incident of a range rover crashing through a school playground resulted in no case recently.
- Genesis Croix de Fer
- Dolan Tuono0 -
From the little I overheard at the school gate a lot of people (hint SUV drivers) had some sympathy with the driver.
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The one near Wimbledon?
I think the driver had undiagnosed epilepsy and had a seizure at the wheel.
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This guy got 17 years in prison and a further 21 year driving ban. Anyone who sees the sentences handed out normally will already be surprised at the length of the ban.
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And yet will be able to drive the same vehicle again in one year if there is no recurrence.
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With automous cars deaths will eventually be a thing of the passed within reason. I'm trying to think of that bloke who's really pushing this Humanity saving technology forward?
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When I say bloke I mean God of course.
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He collected his Audi Q5 from the airport where a staff member smelled alcohol on him.
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The court also heard he had previous convictions for drink-driving and had been warned about the manner of his driving by police in Sheffield a week before the fatal crash.
From the news report. This guy had clearly been driving incredibly dangerously for years and got away with it - would be interesting to hear what the penalty was for the previous drink driving offense - clearly not enough to put him off.
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Guy across the road from me did exactly that. The next crash killed his wife. Thankfully nobody else was involved.
Sometimes people are not capable of making that decision. They need the option and keys taken away from them.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
I suspect there are technologies available already to an £80,000 vehicle that could have slowed that one down and stopped it being such a tragedy. It's a 20mph limit there.
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Exactly. My car would have come to a sudden stop in that situation, and only cost a fraction of £80k.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
Exactly, in that situation. What about all the other situations/deaths?
No, you both don't care about them do you?
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You'd both let people die to prove your point, awful!
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He was doing 140mph so it wouldn't require a particularly sophisticated technology to reduce that by half for a car being hired in the UK.
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Let's see your automobiles do that.
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Autonomous vehicles are already in use, as taxis in some cities in the US. They are going to be part of the problem, not the solution, to traffic in cities.
In the rest of the world, where they need to be trained for every possible weather condition, road type and scenario, they're not coming any time soon as a usable technology.
But... when they do come, I assume they will be speed limited by GPS for the road speed limit, so that can be introduced for all new vehicles without controversy.
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The courts treat driving as a necessity for earning a living, which I think says a lot about the state of a nation.
TBH if you are found to have cause serious injury or death by dangerous driving, I can't see it being unreasonable to ban them from driving for life. It's a not a right, despite how the judges rule.
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The causing death/injury should only be a minor consideration imo
Driving a car at 140mph, while texting & drunk it is almost inevitable that someone would get hurt - if you are lucky enough not to injure/kill someone, it has nothing to do with you and you should be punished the same.
If the guy had been banned for previous drink driving, this may have been avoided.
Quick fag packet calculation, Q5 weighs around 2 tonnes:
At 20mph = 0.08MJ of energy
At 70mph = 1MJ
At 140mph = 4MJ (about what is released by 1kg of TNT)
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I almost guarantee a big push back against autonomous vehicles beyond our lifetimes. When they first arrived, they will be flawed and those flaws will be seized upon. I predict they will remain research exercises and curiosities for some considerable time.
The applications will be confined to extremely controlled low speed environments, plus limited developments for motorway type applications where the environment is most predictable.
Speed limiting and autonomous emergency braking are already here though.
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I found this interesting on autonomous taxis:
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I think that's part of the reason we see so few prosecutions, the CPS feel that there is a high risk that enough jurors will be empathetic to a driver who has been 'a bit unlucky'. They stand a better chance when the driver is under the influence of drink and / or drugs or has been behaving in a manner that 'normal' drivers find a bit dodgy so for example speeding would have to be massively over the limit.
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It seems like technology is underused in the penalties - young drivers can get black boxes fitted to their cars to reduce premiums, could something similar not be used for people convicted of traffic offences?
Speeding at 100mph - car gets restricted to 70mph on top of the points/fine
Get to 12 points but plead that you need your car to transport your sick grandmother, OK - have a massive fine a black box and a 50mph limiter.
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Last sentence, I can think of at least one person on this forum that would find it controversial and the media would be highlighting it as the latest case of wokeism and war on motorists. I suspect it could be retrofitted through the software of a lot of vehicles already on the road. It would also be very easy to restrict cars sold in any country to be unable to go faster than the maximum speed limit in that country. Why is any manufacturer selling to the UK able to boast that their vehicle can do 150mph?
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If self driving cars are all doing the speed limit, the brrrrm brrrrm drivers will be stuck behind them most of the time anyway.
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Or if you plead you need your vehicle for work you get a curfew to only allow to drive for work.
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Or make them in some way responsible for their actions when they allow dangerous drivers to continue driving - even just a basic risk assesment would be a start and some sort of mitigation such as the black box and restricted speed/driving hours.
According to this, it's 20% of people with 12 points+ who successfully argue 'exceptional hardship' - suggests that the bar is set way too low.
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Is it possible that you are underestimating the practical issues of retrofitting speed limiters to the approx. 33 million cars in the UK? Its probably not quite as simple as chucking a new silicon chip under the bonnet and away you go.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0
