Posted on 02/01/2011 9:50:28 PM PST by speciallybland
>> Ya might want to pop out of your cocoon for a breather... this happens every single day
Why the hell would I raise a point that doesn’t exist. Of course it happens - that’s essential to the question of what method is used to track unlawful conduct.
If you run a red light, how is that violation recorded? How does the insurer account for the risk?
You’re talking about sentencing. I’m talking about tracking violations. My use of ‘controls’ was ambiguous.
I thought sentencing was how you “tracked” violations. If one is not caught and sentenced for the crime, one is not a criminal.
I may or may not agree with you, but that sentiment is the source of the loss of pretty much every liberty that is taken away. (And the following is not a rant at you, it’s something I’ve been thinking about for the last couple of days, and your comment triggered a hopefully coherent gelling of that idea):
“I don’t want to walk down the street sharing the sidewalk with God knows what imbecile carrying a gun who may not have any sense”
“I don’t want to go driving down the street knowing that some 20-year-old could have been drinking and now driving”
“I don’t want to be sitting in my living room next door to some imbecile who thinks burning leaves on a windy day is a good idea, and ends up catching my house on fire”
“I don’t want to be living in a neighborhood and have some imbicile neighbor paint his house chartruese with purple shingles, lowering my property values”
“I don’t want to have my kid go to school and be confronted by some imbecile who tries to tell her that scientology is a real religion”
Well, there is a line, a place that it is rational for the government “of the people” to restrict people in the defense of others. But where is that line? Is it really driving? Is that the thing, do we believe that non-licensed drivers increase the probability of accidents by enough of a percentage to make it OK?
Should we instead go after the stupid rules that require barbers to have a license to cut hair? What’s the big danger to society there — a bad hair cut? How about lawyers? medical doctors? gun dealers? we have a lot of licencing requirements.
My daughter just got her learner’s permit. She’s almost 18, but in my state, you can’t just get a licence by taking the test until you are 19. So when she turns 18, she will still be required to only drive when a supervisor is in the car. She’ll go to college, be able to vote, but still have to wait another 2 months before she can drive on her own.
Of course, she’ll have to wait 3 more years before she can legally take a drink of alcohol. She’ll be able to join the military, be executed if she commits murder, be able to get married and have children — but the STATE believes it’s just too much of a risk to the rest of us if she has wine with her husband at their anniversary dinner.
Simple fact — our freedoms will NEVER be as great as they were on the day our country was founded. Governments, people in authority, almost NEVER grant MORE liberty. They only take it away, chipping bit by bit, always for the BEST reasons, with the BEST intentions, and mostly with the consent of the fearful governed, willing to give up freedom for security.
So no, I certainly don’t want your daughter to be killed by a driver who doesn’t know what they are doing. In that regard, there are what, 50,000 deaths and 2.5 million injuries a year with our current licensing rules. Isn’t that way too many? We should make the tests much harder, include twice-yearly driving tests which are serious, not the jokes we do now, and ban from driving anybody who has already CAUSED an accident.
And if you disagree, what are you, somebody who WANTS people to get killed on the road just so you can drive if you already had an accident? My point being — we lose our liberties because the argument to restrict something is always more intense, more emotional, and more driven by fear than any generalist argument that our liberty is slowly slipping away.
It is a rare day when the people wake up, and suddenly as one voice realise — “Hey, they took our freedom, and we want it back”. Obamacare is the closest thing we’ve had to such a “what happened” moment. But if they had done Obamacare in little pieces over 30 years, it would just be another Medicare, in other words a program that everybody simply accepted as fact, and defended against all comers.
If you made licenses optional, most insurance companies would probably require them in order to get a reasonable-cost policy.
The bigger problem would be that even those who might agree with this idea would probably also agree that, on causing an accident, one’s right to drive should be curtailed — and how would we do that if there wasn’t a license to take away.
Just hope they don’t start licensing cell phones, since they cause more accidents than most anything else, because people don’t apparently know how to use them (like NOT texting while driving, or not talking while walking across a street and getting run over). OK, I’m parodying the argument here.
Do you think the average person is so stupid that they need the government to make them get a license in order for them to learn what they need to know to drive?
I would say that raising a child is something that needs a lot more education and skill than driving, AND is a lot more important to have that skill; and somehow, we manage to survive without the government forcing all mothers to have a license before they give birth to a child.
Knowing how to cook, how to wash clothes, how to make a bed -- these are all also pretty important things. How to clean a wound, how to call for help, how to fix a toilet, how to change a lightbulb without getting electrocuted.
Point is, people learn what they need to know to do what they want to do. My son wanted to play Halo, he learned how to play Halo. My daughter was scared to drive, so she didn't get a permit -- she knows it's dangerous, and that she needs to learn how to do it.
Watch kids go to the go-cart tracks. On their first try, they will ask questions, the guy tells them the rules, tells them how to make the car go, how to stop, how to turn -- and off they go, learning quickly.
Meanwhile, as another freeper pointed out, giving out licenses hasn't stopped us from drivers who have no clue how to merge onto a crowded freeway, how to signal when changing lanes, how to drive a safe distance from each other. We can parallel park!!! We can avoid traffic cones!!!! and we know what the signs mean on the road. Speed Limit - Check. Railroad Xing -- check. Oh, and we can't drive through red lights -- something I think we could figure out pretty quickly.
Why? Studies show that people not wearing seat belts cause more damage to other people on the road, mostly because when an accident starts, they lose control easier. Plus, if passengers don't wear seat belts, they get killed by drivers. I would argue that the seat belt law saves more lives than the drivers license law (without evidence, it's just my feeling).
If the state has the authority to tell me I can't be driving a car on their roads without a license, they certainly have the authority to tell me I can't be driving a car on their roads without seat belts, or holding a cell phone, or eating and drinking, or listening to the radio, or having a conversation with someone in my car, or with my child sitting in the front seat, or in a car without an air bag, or whatever other stupid rule they think protects me from my own apparently stupid self.
If there were some other sufficiently onerous enforceable consequence to driving while stupid, then the license system wouldn’t be seen as needed. I’m not sure we who drive some kind of motor vehicle on public roads, at least those large enough to cause serious damage to other occupants of those roads, would want the necessarily draconian side of that sort of system. (It used to be in a lot of places that motorcycles didn’t need any license.)
A private set of competing organizations like the IEEE would be much better able to provide insurance, training, and licensing across a broad spectrum of transportation vehicles for the general public. Not just cars, but boats, snowmobiles, aircraft, etc...
My Dad taught me how to drive when I was 14. By the time I had my actual license, I was already a good driver. This isn't rocket surgery...
I take it then, that we can sign you up for firearms licenses as well?
That could be a problem, but why not have a list of “no-drive”, just like we have a list of “no-gun” people? Since a drivers licenses is not prominently displayed when cars are on the road, they have to pull you over anyway to find out you don’t have one — so they can check the list of people who were judged by law to have lost their right to drive.
Think about how much money states would save if they didn’t have to do all that work to license drivers.
I don't recognize that part of the process.
LOL, from what I’ve seen of GA drivers I think anyone who has a pulse is given a license. Just saying...I have to drive around them everyday. In all fairness TN is the same way. So, until the state can be responsible lets just dispense w/ licensing charade. Right now its just a money machine for the state.
I’m trying to find a friend with an older car I can borrow to teach my daughter that stuff. My Prius has too many automated systems — anti-lock breaks, traction control, and “vehicle stability control” (some rudimentary auto-correction on oversteer). It’s pretty good for keeping control on snow (I have to work to wipe out), but makes it hard to train for jack-rabbit starts, emergency braking, and steering into the skid.
I also need to find a stick-shif to train her on. Or maybe I’ll spend a couple hundred bucks on an old clunker to do this with, oh wait, Obama took all them off the road and had them crushed.
It’s craziness. Definately overkill.
The judge wouldn’t give the license to the drivers. They gave the licenses to the parents who then gave the licenses to the drivers. The judge complained that he was required by law to give a one-hour briefing to new drivers but they never told him what he was suppose to say. I got the distinct impression that he thought it was a waste of time which it was.
Definition of a tax:
Any direct tax, fee, license, permit or any other payment to any type of governmental entity is a TAX, no matter what the name or whether forced or not.
When we are forced to pay for infrastructure (roads)whether we use them or not (which is highly unlikely) we have the absolute RIGHT to travel them in any manner that is safe to ourselves and others.
The only reason for a driver’s license is to feed a huge state bureaucracy along with a means of income to support both it and the state coffers. A license does nothing to insure a licensed driver is actually safe. One can pass a test but once on the road, the “real world” sets in and a driver is what they become.
I got my driver’s license back when I was 14 by taking driver’s education in Texas. I am now 64. During all of that time of driving I have only had one instance where I was checked at a driver’s license check point for my license.
Now, with that in mind, how many check points do you see daily to insure people have their licenses? That’s right! NONE! Here in South Texas I would estimate that over 35% of all drivers do not have a license. And...that may be too low of an estimate.
Another point is that since I obtained my “training” and license 50 years ago I have never had to take any type of training or tests to maintain my license.
Now, with these facts in mind, someone please tell me precisely how having a driver’s license insures a safe driver? The answer is: It doesn’t, it simply creates a means of income for the state through fees, licenses, permits, fines and traffic tickets to support the bureaucratic system...nothing else.
Amen!
God I’m tired .of pretend conservatives who only want to use the power of government to force others into their own ends.
Indeed. It's depressing at times.
You don't really want me to answer that.
Somebody (I forget who) once said that the lack of skid pads (so that drivers could practice skidding and recovering from skids) in this country was criminal.
I know from my experiences that it would be useful to get them to “muscle memory” stage...
“Driving is not a right and we need licenses because of the harm someone can do with a motor vehicle.”
go back and re-examine that sentence with ‘motor vehicle” replaced with “firearm” or “pen” or “printing press” or “computer” or any of a number of things.
Personally, I think the guy is DEAD-ON RIGHT!
Doesn’t mean I don’t think people shouldn’t have insurance, though.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.