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[...] It is clear that a significant minority of British drivers put their time and their 'needs' above the safety of other road users and pedestrians. In a few decades, the driverless car will be perfected and the driven car must be made obsolete, preferably by law.
Until then the Government and the insurance industry should take radical steps to help residents of rural and urban communities reclaim their neighbourhoods from the lorries, the lunatics - and those Great British Motorists who like toddlers think they can do what they like, and explode with rage and indignation when questioned about it.
Black boxes compulsory in every vehicle, with improved technology that detects speed limit breaking and careless or aggressive driving.
Insurance companies encouraged to hike premiums immediately and punitively as bad driving is revealed.
Insurance companies obliged to hand over to DVLA and / or police all data that reveals traffic offences and dangerous driving.
Legal framework to allow prosecution and driving bans relating to offences revealed by black boxes.
Legal changes to encourage use of dashcam / helmet-cam / CCTV evidence to prosecute motorists.
Comprehensive review of 30mph speed limits, with local consultations on which should be lowered to 20mph.
Limit revs to 3,000rpm on all vehicles - as condition of passing MOT - to cut noise and dangerous acceleration.
Funding for technology that will limit all vehicles automatically to the local speed limit (and in the case of national speed limits, a safe speed for the road conditions); and will prevent heavy goods vehicles from using inappropriate rural and urban roads.
Source: This is Money
(Score: 3, Insightful) by stretch611 on Sunday August 21 2016, @06:37PM
The second something like this stops being laughable and even has a remote chance of being debated in congress, is the second that the American Automobile Association becomes a more vocal and more powerful lobbying group than the NRA.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by snufu on Sunday August 21 2016, @06:54PM
The right to bear arms is in the U.S. constitution. There is no equivalent right to drive. Consequently there is nothing stopping like-minded communities, states, and even the federal government from banning humans from driving in public spaces.
Don't like it? Amend the constitution.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @07:12PM
There is no right to breath in the constitution either. Nor the right to take a shit.
Amended the constitution there as well?
(Score: 1) by stretch611 on Sunday August 21 2016, @07:29PM
you are right, there is no constitutional right to drive in the US... but that is not a reason not to lobby to let people drive.
Americans have a love affair with cars... Many people equate an open road with the freedom to go anywhere.
If this ever come close to happening, there will be more people screaming about it then there are people with guns in this country... far more.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 3, Informative) by snufu on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:25PM
Americans are trapped in an abusive relationship with their cars. People don't own their cars, their cars own them. Want to leave your car? Not possible because oil and car companies either dismantled or strangled mass transit alternatives and encouraged housing and city development that REQUIRES a car to function.
As far as equating driving a car with freedom, you freedom ends where public safety begins. Vehicle related fatalities are the leading cause of preventable deaths. So it will probably go down something like smoking. You are free to smoke in your home, but you have no constitutional right to smoke in public and the number of public spaces where you can smoke are gradually decreasing to zero. Municipalities will follow a similar pattern with driverless cars.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:42PM
That's why I ride a motorcycle. We rarely get snow or ice here, but the hills make biking unrealistic. Excluding maintenance it's roughly $500 a year. Which is about half of the cost of tidying the bus.
Plus, I can come and go on my schedule without having to waste a lot of time waiting for transfers.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @12:33AM
you freedom ends where public safety begins.
No, it doesn't. That's the same logic that is used to justify mass surveillance. Oftentimes freedom is more important than safety, and requiring everyone who wants to drive a car use cars filled with freedom-denying software and/or submit to surveillance is simply intolerable.
(Score: 1) by Demena on Monday August 22 2016, @01:05AM
Don't need to. If you drive "badly" enough then you can be charged with assault with a deadly weapon to whit, a motor car. So a car is "arms". (Joke, Joyce)
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday August 22 2016, @04:29AM
Well besides those pesky 9th and 10th amendments, a car or better, a truck is an ideal arm. Load it up with the right type of fertilizer and diesel and you're armed with a car bomb. And as all people have the right to bear arms, everyone has the right to drive.
(Score: 2) by snufu on Monday August 22 2016, @04:48AM
If driverless cars are ubiquitous, prohibiting the public at large from driving cars no more inhibits freedom of movement than does prohibiting the public at large from piloting jumbo jets.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday August 23 2016, @02:33AM
That's a pretty big if. Currently most any member of the public are free to get a pilots license, buy a jumbo jet and pilot it. Not much different then cars besides the licensing being more vigorous and the expanse of buying and operating a jumbo jet.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday August 22 2016, @06:08PM
I've seen enough movies to know that ANY car can blow up 20 feet in the air just from its own gas tank. Save the fertilizer.
Electric car batteries also have impressive energy densities. It's a testament to good engineering that Teslas burn, rather than blow.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:44PM
AAA is in bed with and a tool of the insurance companies who would love to put Big Brother in your car.
In fact, they ARE an insurance company.