For example… Speeding
Going down the highway doing 10 oven the limit and you get pulled over an dgive a hefty ticket… But Nothing bad happened.
Another example… Letting a Tesla do full self driving but you aren’t paying attention. The car is driving itself quite well but you are ticketed for undue care and attention… But there was no accident or anything… Nothing happened.
The act itself is unsafe and could kill you or another person so the punishment is supposed to act as both a deterrent from doing those things and a response to irresponsibility that put others in danger.
There are acts that we’ve determined are unsafe enough that we don’t want to allow them so even in a “successful” execution of that act you still violate a law.
Nothing bad happened yet. Keep doing it, and something bad’s going to happen. An ounce of prevention is better than a truckload of cure. Some things can’t be cured. You can’t punish someone hard enough to undo road deaths. The victims are still going to be dead. They don’t come back to life once the killer goes to jail. There is no other reasonable way to handle road deaths than by stopping them before they happen. Drive at a reasonable and appropriate speed, or someone’s going to die. Those are your options.
No it’s not a perfect solution, people still die on the roads, and they probably always will, but we’ve chosen the speed limits at a point that prevents some deaths, you cannot realistically argue that, and that is all you have to know to understand that they are justified, and they do have an appropriate punishment.
Does that help you understand?
But at the same time you can’t hold people responsible for something that might happen but hasn’t yet
I absolutely can and do.
I go around waving a gun around that’s loaded and safety off at the range. Nothing bad happens, but I took a risk that put not just myself but EVERYONE ELSE in danger.
Because rational thinking isn’t common and some people have to be told or discouraged to not do something dangerous or reckless. Your example is oddly specific, sounds like you got a ticket for putting your Tesla in self driving mode and starting making tik toks and got a ticket.
Not me…but it did just happen in Vancouver… Got me thinking
I mean the person was allegedly sleeping but the car was driving along just fine and nothing happened…
Imagine someone points a gun into a crowd, closes their eyes, and pulls the trigger, but the gun jams so no bullet is fired and everyone is fine. Do you think that person should be let off scot-free just because nothing bad happened?
Because the whole idea is to discourage people from behavior that is likely to cause bad things to happen. Obviously when bad things happen we go “I wish someone had stopped the person before people died”.
Risk is high even if nothing happens. It’s all about probability.
- Cars are generally made to take impacts at certain, reasonable speeds. Going too fast and the safety features may fail. Add in your response time goes DOWN significantly as well. So you’re going 40 in a thirty and a kid runs out in front of your car. That’s more energy needed to stop from turning the kid into a road statistic. When you’re speeding, you’re gambling or taking a mathematical risk. And I’m here to tell you, luck runs out or a lot of people are really bad at math.
- This goes with the end of number 1. You’re taking a risk, you’re significantly increasing the chance something WILL happen. The Tesla cars are not “self driving” as it’s been showed to be a load of bunk. They can assist heavily but they will make wrong maneuvers given enough time to do so. There’s been at least a dozen articles I’ve seen of a Tesla driver getting into a collision because they were asleep. Most of them end up badly for SOMEONE in the collision.
