Repeat DUI driver kills cyclist, gets 6 years

spinningmagnets

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Dec 21, 2007
Messages
12,952
Location
Ft Riley, NE Kansas
It's the roads. The city simply has no incentive to make the roads safe for drivers or bicycle riders or anyone else. The cars are not the problem.
 
Proper cycling facilities are important for general safety, but nothing can save you from a careless fool.
 
There are all kinds of road/bike path layouts and designs that would partially/mostly/entirely prevent these kinds of tragedies. The bike path could be divided from the road by a concrete barrier. The bike path could be over or under the vehicular path. The bike path could be a separate road 200 feet away.

Governments simply have no incentive or even the ability to determine what solutions are the right mix of cost/safety/travel-time/materials/convenience/land-use to suit the people's desires and needs. Only a free market can genuinely do that.

If anyone disagrees, tell me how many government employees at the road department are going to lose their jobs or have their salary reduced or be tangibly penalized in any way because of this death?
 
Izits said:
There are all kinds of road/bike path layouts and designs that would partially/mostly/entirely prevent these kinds of tragedies. The bike path could be divided from the road by a concrete barrier. The bike path could be over or under the vehicular path. The bike path could be a separate road 200 feet away.

Governments simply have no incentive or even the ability to determine what solutions are the right mix of cost/safety/travel-time/materials/convenience/land-use to suit the people's desires and needs. Only a free market can genuinely do that.

If anyone disagrees, tell me how many government employees at the road department are going to lose their jobs or have their salary reduced or be tangibly penalized in any way because of this death?

It's not the governments job to fix stupid. If that were the case, roads would be low on the list anyway.

The "free market" solution to this is driver-less cars. One day we will look back and be amazed that we waited to long to get the idiot out of the drivers seat.

-Jim
 
Story local to me teenager all legal speeding in his chariot lost control killed 3 youngens he get 2 years the family's are devastated it destroys more than just the person they kill life is not enough in my eyes.
 
spinningmagnets said:
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2017/05/drunk_speeding_corvette_driver.html

A 62-year-old speeding Corvette driver who was trying to pass another driver when he struck and killed a 77-year-old bicyclist was sentenced Monday to more than six years in prison...Portland, Oregon

Willard Earl Tow had previously been found guilty of DUI in Washington County in 2011

My heart goes out to the victim's family. Sad how much damage this drunk fool did.

I know this is emotion talking, but the fact this this guy had a DUI history, got blind drunk, got behind the wheel of a car designed for nothing but thrills and then killed an apparently completely innocent victim... it wasn't "negligent homicide", it was murder.
 
Only 2 morning ago did I see a young lad drug dealer more than likely driving a audi a5 v8 through a 30mph at triple figures absolute stupid why do we need cars with so much power for typical daily driving.

The tesla again has stupid performance figures when there is no place on the road for it even if we use nvidias new tesla cpu in advanced driverless cars I don't think they will be using 0-60mph in 2.4seconds specially amongst human drivers its just jargon that sells cars and kills life's.
 
Last year here: On a bike path that is separated from the street with cement blocks, an upcoming car full of partying drunkyards driving 50 mph up the hill using the full width of the bike path. What can you do ? Jump and crash on the sidewalk, or crash over the cement blocks to the street.

Nearby, on a bike path that is far from the street in a park with big trees each side: 2 Quads were racing side by side, using all the width at 40 mph.

Some people are plain stupid, or just believe that other users lives are not important. Should we build billions of dollars structures and facilities, they will continue to jeopardize other's lives for their fun. The on'y thing effective that can be done is keeping them off the streets, and walking.
 
This one on the Big Island Hawaii particularly disturbing, cyclist killed by on duty police officer speeding on rural road, proceeded to tamper with the crime scene in an attempt to avoid charges:

http://hawaiitribune-herald.com/news/local-news/former-cop-indicted-crash-killed-cyclist
 
kingjamez said:
Izits said:
Governments simply have no incentive or even the ability to determine what solutions are the right mix of cost/safety/travel-time/materials/convenience/land-use to suit the people's desires and needs. Only a free market can genuinely do that.

The "free market" solution to this is driver-less cars. One day we will look back and be amazed that we waited to long to get the idiot out of the drivers seat.
-Jim

This really isn't true, as least not the way you mean it. You're suggesting the government should force people to stop driving their own car for whatever reasons. That isn't remotely a free market solution, that's a violence based solution.

A true free market would provide for the needs of everyone at the same time, not just one group like governments do it. There would be roads for drivers and roads for driver-less and some roads would be for both. Bike usage would be allowed on some of these and there would surely be bike paths of various safety levels.

A free market is about letting we the people choose what we want instead of having the political/corporate elites force their whims upon us.
 
Izits said:
You're suggesting the government should force people to stop driving their own car for whatever reasons. That isn't remotely a free market solution, that's a violence based solution.

The violence based solution is the one we have now, where people are encouraged to choose the mode of transportation that kills and maims us the most, just because it's the most profitable in the very short term.

Even a cuckoo libertarian crackpot should be able to acknowledge that my right to not be murdered outranks your right to drive whatever stinking abomination you like.

Once autonomous cars are demonstrated to be much better at not killing us than human idiot drivers, then of course human drivers should be banned from public roads. Future generations will judge us harshly for not doing it sooner.

In the years since WWII, the USA has lost *a lot* more people to murder vehicles than it has to all the wars and acts of terrorism it's ever had.

See for yourself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year

That's just the on-site body count and not the cancer or heart disease or permanent disabilities they caused. Now tell me again with a straight face that requiring a better, safer transportation solution is the violence based way.
 
That is not taking into account the number of death that the simple use of personnal car is responsible for.

Even when they drive themselves, the health, economic and environmental repercussions of personnal cars will continue.
 
Chalo said:
Even a cuckoo libertarian crackpot should be able to acknowledge that my right to not be murdered outranks your right to drive whatever stinking abomination you like.

Chalo, why are you always giving me personal insults? I don't insult you, please don't insult me. Otherwise I welcome and enjoy conversing with you.


You're trying to blame automobiles for the number of traffic fatalities. This is absurd. Cars are just tools like anything else. It's like trying to blame guns for the number of deaths that occur during a war. No, the real blame for all those fatalities can be laid squarely at the feet of the public road network and the transportation departments. Indirectly, we can also blame the people who keep voting for more government power. The road system in the US is abysmal and the data you linked is the evidence. It's no surprise really, the government has no actual incentive to make the roads safer.

The government forces John Doe to pay for public roads and also then prohibits or greatly deters the existence of competing roads. Then John Doe gets killed on the public roads and you want to blame the use of cars? You would have everything taken away from us all in the name of safety. Just take away the government violence forcing us to use unsafe systems and the accident rate will miraculously fall like a rock.

The Liberal solution is always more violence, more government power. Even when the overwhelming evidence shows the government to BE the problem. Driverless cars are just another tool. But having the elites force them on the people is morally wrong and the solution to nothing.


Chalo said:
Izits said:
You're suggesting the government should force people to stop driving their own car for whatever reasons. That isn't remotely a free market solution, that's a violence based solution.

The violence based solution is the one we have now, where people are encouraged to choose the mode of transportation that kills and maims us the most, just because it's the most profitable in the very short term.

Even a cuckoo libertarian crackpot should be able to acknowledge that my right to not be murdered outranks your right to drive whatever stinking abomination you like.

Once autonomous cars are demonstrated to be much better at not killing us than human idiot drivers, then of course human drivers should be banned from public roads. Future generations will judge us harshly for not doing it sooner.

In the years since WWII, the USA has lost *a lot* more people to murder vehicles than it has to all the wars and acts of terrorism it's ever had.

See for yourself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year

That's just the on-site body count and not the cancer or heart disease or permanent disabilities they caused. Now tell me again with a straight face that requiring a better, safer transportation solution is the violence based way.
 
The problem with goverment is they need to look good for the now to get the votes to be sat in power but we need a solution for the long term and these two don't mix really we are told one thing is on our plates and then fed another so it's all bulls hit these days read it feel it smell it make your own assumption.
In my area in uk we have a road that has many deaths but it's to costly for the goverment in power to do much about it so there is a value on our lifes in so many ways the dirty bas***ds it's all about the now for them don't let any political liers tell you any different.
Speeding could be sorted easily with a GPS system issues by insurers that detects a users daily profile and then any fines due are easily give to the owner.
At the same time I've been stung 3 times by local camera traps that police are using with dirty tactics to make money rather than place them in accident hotpot areas or where there's has been alot of road death they are hiding in bushes on parts of the road that has a change in speed or my favourite was a camera traffic light with road salt down the hill in a 50mph zone the light changes to amber and red in near an instant and I slide through the light by 2 foot in my eyes nothing would have stopped it was a clear set up and the court still stung me becuae i had 3 fines in 2 months and payed £400 for the price ive gone 4 years now no tickets and the points are due to be removed if you add my offences up I broke the limit by 4mph then 5mph and went 2 foot over a line in the biggest money stitch up I've seen the dirty hanging witches.
I've never had an accident or made an insurance claim in 10 years covered well over 100'000 miles to have our road go to a thing a don't enjoy driving on no more it's not any safer at all just a manipulation of stats.
 
Izits said:
You're trying to blame automobiles for the number of traffic fatalities.

Actually, I'm not. I think that even a horrible implementation of self-driving cars would reduce fatalities by 90% or more, and a good one would reduce fatalities by 99% or more. So it's not cars that are the public safety problem; it's drivers.

Self-driving technology doesn't prevent cars from being resource gluttonous, polluting, space-intensive, ugly, and stupid, but at least it's a start. And it will address the worst single drawback of cars.
 
Chalo said:
So it's not cars that are the public safety problem; it's drivers.
To be more precise, it's *people*. ;)

Even though the pedestrians and bicycle riders I see around here don't have a big heavy thing they can easily crush (without even noticing) others with, they act the same way as the large-vehicle drivers, are just as inattentive and often enough aggressive as the drivers.

They just can't as easily kill others with their transportation. :/


I also see the same attitudes with people pushing shopping carts around stores (who, as one example, bash into other shoppers and their environment without caring), or even just walking around shopping--it's the self-entitled attitude that they are the only one that matters, and that those around them are just in their way and/or are there only to service them.




The same attitude even exists on forums like this one; for example when posters insist on being spoonfed the exact info they want, and complain (sometimes with colorful language) when they are instead linked to lists of places to find the info they are after (because the people trying to help them don't have time to go thru and find the exact tidbit the poster thinks they need but are unwilling to look for on their own). Worse, there are actually people that go into those types of threads just to complain that the help being provided is insufficient, and shouldn't even be attempted if it isn't going to be complete spoonfeeding. Often they don't even have any help of their own to offer, and are there only to complain. :roll:
 
Chalo said:
Izits said:
You're trying to blame automobiles for the number of traffic fatalities.
~Self-driving technology doesn't prevent cars from being resource gluttonous, polluting, space-intensive, ugly, and stupid, but at least it's a start. And it will address the worst single drawback of cars.

Well actually it _does_ prevent them from being stupid; self-driving is intelligence. And if ugly was a legitimate grounds of discrimination, uh, well, you & me bro ...

But resource gluttonous, agreed. And let's work on that. How in 2017 can we convince a voting majority to use less resource gluttonous ways of getting around?

Or are we just going to continue to spew self-righteous vitriolic spittle while self-driving cars become the latest status symbol for the rich and the rest of us are banned from the roads as higher speeds become possible for them?
 
Chalo said:
Self-driving technology doesn't prevent cars from being resource gluttonous, polluting, space-intensive, ugly, and stupid, but at least it's a start. And it will address the worst single drawback of cars.

The self driving bit itself won't, but the supporting parts will. Here is how I see it going down.

1. Phase 1: People buy self driving cars like normal cars. Efficiency marginally improves as computers are more efficient drivers.

2. Phase 2: People realise that they don't need their car 24 x 7, and becoming willing to let them be used as a taxi when they don't need it. Other users realise there is always a cheap self driving car available, and don't buy one. Fewer cars are sold, being less space intensive and resource glutinous.

3. Phase 3: Ownership of cars become a "rich person" thing and a critical mass is achieved. Companies will sell "transport as a service". You book your requirement even just minutes before you need it. To maximise profitability, it calculates whether another person can share a route with you and allows an existing rider to agree to share their car with you for a discount. At this time, instead of 1 car per person, almost every car will be full, reducing energy consumption per person by nearly 80%.

I'd say phase 1 is within 5 years, stage 2 with 10, and stage 3 within 15. The future's so bright, we'll have to wear augmented reality, IoT, connected, cyber, insert cliche here smart shades.
 
Sunder said:
Chalo said:
Self-driving technology doesn't prevent cars from being resource gluttonous, polluting, space-intensive, ugly, and stupid, but at least it's a start. And it will address the worst single drawback of cars.

The self driving bit itself won't, but the supporting parts will. Here is how I see it going down.

1. Phase 1: People buy self driving cars like normal cars. Efficiency marginally improves as computers are more efficient drivers.

2. Phase 2: People realise that they don't need their car 24 x 7, and becoming willing to let them be used as a taxi when they don't need it. Other users realise there is always a cheap self driving car available, and don't buy one. Fewer cars are sold, being less space intensive and resource glutinous.

3. Phase 3: Ownership of cars become a "rich person" thing and a critical mass is achieved. Companies will sell "transport as a service". You book your requirement even just minutes before you need it. To maximise profitability, it calculates whether another person can share a route with you and allows an existing rider to agree to share their car with you for a discount. At this time, instead of 1 car per person, almost every car will be full, reducing energy consumption per person by nearly 80%.

I'd say phase 1 is within 5 years, stage 2 with 10, and stage 3 within 15. The future's so bright, we'll have to wear augmented reality, IoT, connected, cyber, insert cliche here smart shades.

This fleet of cars is nonsense have you ever been in a taxi they are junked due to no downtime, My car sits idol 99% of the time and still goes wrong quite often and needs to be maintained so to run a car at the levels talked about would wear suspension components fast and tyres, brakes can be worked around but it would still need to be an unbelievable rugged design too expensive to buy outright it would have to be shared, id rather ride a push bike if it comes to that still have a full level of control and if that freedom is eroded then I'm grabbing my pitch fork.
I hate the idea of it myself and so does many others its alot of bulls hit talk with facts and figures normally presented in a presentation by some guy that leaves in his company car pumping diesel up and down the motorway so this ain't a walk in the park phase 1 2 etc the public will not respond as you think we all want safety but I believe super enhance the human like robocop not make it erelivant at the end of the day no computer can emulate us so we are still vital like it or not.

It have to be a shared taxi with one off payment because I would never invest in such a scheme to share a car that in a peak day and time everyone fights to use it like a bank holiday etc it's just nonsense I like green ideas but car sharing is stupid when we have public transport ?
 
Lots of places don't have public transport, or don't have public transport that works for regular point-to-point needs. The USA got sodomized in the 1920s and 1930s when General Motors bought up many of the streetcar lines in major cities and shut them down. Later in the '50s and '60s, infrastructure investment that should have been spent largely on public transit went to freeways instead. And from WWII to the present day, city street layout has tended almost entirely towards dendritic, bike/ped/transit-unfriendly design.

Now we have scores of millions of city dwellers who should by all rights have access to functional, convenient transit, but don't. And we have scores of millions who live in suburbia because it's just as convenient to them as living in a city, when it shouldn't be.

The reality in the USA is that there are not only institutional incentives to drive cars, but contrived situational barriers to using any other form of regular transport. But if the USA can transition to a model that doesn't require heavy infrastructure improvements to work, then it will become the pattern for the parts of the world that don't yet have much transportation infrastructure at all.
 
Sunder said:
1. Phase 1: People buy self driving cars like normal cars. Efficiency marginally improves as computers are more efficient drivers.

2. Phase 2: People realise that they don't need their car 24 x 7, and becoming willing to let them be used as a taxi when they don't need it. Other users realise there is always a cheap self driving car available, and don't buy one. Fewer cars are sold, being less space intensive and resource glutinous.

3. Phase 3: Ownership of cars become a "rich person" thing and a critical mass is achieved. Companies will sell "transport as a service". You book your requirement even just minutes before you need it. To maximise profitability, it calculates whether another person can share a route with you and allows an existing rider to agree to share their car with you for a discount. At this time, instead of 1 car per person, almost every car will be full, reducing energy consumption per person by nearly 80%.

You've got this completely backward. We don't want people to share cars, we want everyone to own a car or several cars. In the general case, having to share assets is a sign of people being poor. It means the wealth of our society is declining and we can no longer afford the things we used to. (which is what happens when government grows) Everyone being able to afford their own things is an indicator of prosperity and a strong economy and a wealthy nation. When government is small and the economy is strong, everyone lives in big houses with lots of TV's and cars and everything else that they bought with cash instead of leasing.

For example, in poor African nations very few homes have a television set and so they share. That's not a good thing, it's a bad thing. In America, the average home has more televisions than people. That's a sign of wealth.
We want everyone to own their own home.
We want everyone to own computers.
We want everyone to own cars.
 
For example, in poor Africa nations very few homes have a television set and so they share. That's not a good thing, it's a bad thing. In America, the average home has more televisions than people. That's a sign of wealth.

What, with the size of those big screens increasing all the time, one needs to be on in every room in the house because you can't carry them from room to room during a commercial break or you might miss something. :lol:
 
Izits said:
You've got this completely backward. We don't want people to share cars, we want everyone to own a car or several cars.

No, you've got it completely backwards. You're talking about an asset that sits idle 95% of the time, and is a burden on society 100% of the time. The fewer of them there are, the less the generalized burden. The more they stay busy, the fewer it takes to do the same work.

It's like you have no understanding or acknowledgement of the concepts of negative externalities or the tragedy of the commons. I guess that's a typical intellectual failing among libertarians. So feel free to read up.

Wealth doesn't occur in a vacuum. Consumption doesn't occur in a vacuum. What you advocate for is a system where it doesn't matter what the burden is to everybody else, as long as the one spending his own money gets what he thinks he wants. It's not cool. Cars destroy other people's health and property, diminish everyone's quality of life, pollute, and take up space that belongs to the public. It's not any kind of public benefit to have more of them.
 
24dom6w.jpg


I'm sorry Chalo, but every one of your claims here can be dis-proven logically. You're so blinded by your hatred of automobiles you never get around to separating the different concepts and so you gripe about the wrong things. I know because I actually used to be just like you.

>You're talking about an asset that sits idle 95% of the time
Completely irrelevant. How much or little I choose to use my dishwasher or my car or my tennis racket are none of your concern and have no effect on you at all.

>and is a burden on society 100% of the time.
Totally false. Anyone can see at a glance that my car in my garage has no effect on your whatsoever.

>The more they stay busy, the fewer it takes to do the same work.
Completely irrelevant. The same could be said for my bicycle and my pencil but why should we all share things when we can all own our own? It's none of your business how many bicycles or cars people choose to own.

>Wealth doesn't occur in a vacuum.
What does this even mean? It sounds like you're saying wealth can only be taken from others and can not be created, but that would be completely false.

>What you advocate for is a system where it doesn't matter what the burden is to everybody else
Owning things is not a burden to anyone, it is a sign of a healthy economy and a wealthy nation. You want us to not own things, which is a sign of poverty. How do you not understand that?

>Cars destroy other people's health and property
They can. So can guns, so can industry, antifreeze, paint, wooden tables, boats and everything else. These are just things, they are not inherently good or bad.
You can not eliminate war or suicide by taking away guns.
You can not eliminate pollution by taking away gasoline.
You can not eliminate violence by taking away anything.


Your complaint that we should share cars just so that we can make fewer of them or use them less often is absurd. Should we share can openers just so we can make fewer of those? What about vacuum cleaners, surely we should share those so they don't sit idle all the time? It's just a ridiculous idea.

All things should be used responsibly. Your real complaint is that you think cars are being used irresponsibly. But instead of supporting a framework that allows us to differentiate responsible from irresponsible, your solution is to have the government use their guns to ban everything you personally don't like.

The high accident rate is caused by the government forcing us to use their terrible road network, and the pollution does not get addressed because the government has weakened our property rights and the pollution originates from the government road network to begin with.

There are solutions to each of these problems but you can't begin to look for them because like all Democrats you have been taught to never blame the government for anything so you can't even identify the source of the problem. As I have shown, the government's use of force and economic meddling is the cause of the problem in both cases.


Chalo said:
Izits said:
You've got this completely backward. We don't want people to share cars, we want everyone to own a car or several cars.

No, you've got it completely backwards. You're talking about an asset that sits idle 95% of the time, and is a burden on society 100% of the time. The fewer of them there are, the less the generalized burden. The more they stay busy, the fewer it takes to do the same work.

It's like you have no understanding or acknowledgement of the concepts of negative externalities or the tragedy of the commons. I guess that's a typical intellectual failing among libertarians. So feel free to read up.

Wealth doesn't occur in a vacuum. Consumption doesn't occur in a vacuum. What you advocate for is a system where it doesn't matter what the burden is to everybody else, as long as the one spending his own money gets what he thinks he wants. It's not cool. Cars destroy other people's health and property, diminish everyone's quality of life, pollute, and take up space that belongs to the public. It's not any kind of public benefit to have more of them.
 
Back
Top