Topic: Right to endanger? - page 3. (Read 6727 times)

Driving drunk is a preventable increased risk of killing someone, just as is you driving at all. As you point out, just about anything you do increases my risk. If it is morally right to reduce my risk from you by force, then I can do so whether you are driving drunk, or simply driving near me. Pressing the button that might kill someone is not morally the same as driving drunk, or driving at all, because you are not increasing the risk that someone will die, you are introducing that risk. If you don't push any button, there is a 0% chance they will die. A person driving alone on an empty road still has some risk of accident and death.

If the subject matter were lighter, I'd be chuckling.

Perhaps it qualifies as defense. I'd argue that it's moral to force someone to not push any of the buttons we mentioned earlier.

As was said by someone earlier, there must be a line. Just about anything I do increases your risk by some amount, especially if we live near each other. Pressing the button is immoral, building a house is moral, pressing one button out of 3 is immoral, driving on the same road as you is moral, driving drunk is...?

Because driving drunk is a preventable cause of other people's deaths, and the risk to other people is rather high, I believe it's immoral. Driving drunk is not an essential part of your livelihood, while driving sober may well be.

Interestingly, when drunk drivers get into an accident, they very rarely are killed by it. It happens, to be sure, but it's actually less likely than if they were sober, at the same speeds. The reason is pretty obvious, if you think about it: being drunk, they're very "loose" when they get into the crash, and thus suffer less damage. Sort of a perverse benefit.

What this boils down to is a question of whether or not it is morally to force someone not to increase another's risk.

You getting in the car and driving at all increases my risk, if I'm out on the road. Is it morally correct to prevent you from driving while I'm out on the road?

Regardless of myrkul's anecdotal grandfather, driving drunk does in fact increase the risk of a collision.

When you drive while intoxicated, you put other people's lives at an increased risk. Is this scenario morally different? Is it only immoral if someone gets hurt?
Punishment for killing another driver is out of the question when you're both dead.

As predicted, you don't see how disgusting it is either.

This is far too rational a sysrem for use by government, especially when local ones get so much revenue from speeding tickets. It's in their interest to keep those arbitrary numbers on the signs.

It might get used on a private road system, though, since it requires far less expenditure to enforce than a speed iimit.

Do you not see how disgusting this is?

The thing is you can sufficiently disincentivize these sorts of behavior with out controlling the specific behavior. i.e. if you speed and get in no accident than you are not reprimanded but if you do happen to get into a collision and you were being much more careless and driving much faster than the other car that the liability will be on you. This will both incentivize people to drive at a reasonable speed while simultaneously pretecting the rights of the individual who has technically caused no harm.

Similarly if a person drives drunk and collides with no one than there is no need to punish him so long as the law stipulates that should a drunk person kill another person while driving that he will be charged with first degree murder instead of manslaughter. This way the drunks right to drive while intoxicated can be preserved while by-standards are simultaneously afforded a measure of protection against drunk drivers (since such a legal system makes it in the interest of people to not drive while intoxicated).

Nevada, California

You don't want to make me think you're threatening the safety of my well-being or the well-being of my family with your actions cause things would get pretty ugly if you did and didn't stop upon my warning, no matter how you did it.

Also you assume the road would have no owners and therefor no one making rules and enforcing those rules which I never conceded making your OP a fallacy of begging the question.

Do you know what Vne is? Go ahead and breach it, I dare you.

The problem with speed limits is that the State is involved in roads and driving at all. It should all be completely privatized. It would save about 40,000 lives per year in the United States alone. This massive human sacrifice is a great tragedy of having the State.

Technology makes the government obsolete again.

Maybe. People have been prophesying self-driving cars for decades. If it happens, it will make pretty much all traffic laws obsolete. Considering how much of local government's revenue comes in through these sorts of violations, I expect heavy resistance.

True. And I look forward to that day. Hopefully the daily commute will be obsolete for many also. I find it hard to believe all the fuss being made about the green agenda when no one seems to be pushing for the most obvious energy saving measure of all - removing the need to use a ton of steel to move a couple of hundred pounds of flesh around (let alone the human cost of it all).

Why is everyone arguing about speed limits?  They will be obsolete in 10-20 years.  With self driving cars the car's computer will only allow the car to go at a set speed, which will be determined by the safe road speed, the weather conditions, and by the other cars around.  Good bye revenue for speed trap towns.

My grandfather's truck drove him home for nearly 20 years (It couldn't have been him, you see, he was stone drunk.), and he never even got a ticket. Never even parked bad, for that matter.

If you were to have an accident while intoxicated, I'd say that is certainly strong evidence that said accident was your fault. Is it a certainty that driving drunk causes accidents? I'd say my grandfather is evidence to the contrary. I'm not recommending it. It's not a good idea. But if there's no accident as a result, where's the harm? And if there's no harm, where's the crime?

What about driving drunk, myrkul?

This is a little tangental but interesting.

http://www.brake.org.uk/facts/naked-roads.htm

The essence is that by tightly regulating the roads, a false sense of security is engendered. When responsibility is put back of the driver, speeds drop in dangerous areas and safety is improved. Certainly I know of a couple of places where it would be possible to get in trouble from over-confidence in signs and markings.

To the question originally asked, I think the subject is somewhat muddied and is getting conflated with other issues. I think myrkul touches on this when he refers to threatening behavior but I don't think that's the whole story. Certainly it's possible to deliberately endanger people in ways that would not be considered breaking the law if there was no adverse outcome.

And if road conditions require that to drive safely, you break the lower limit?

I flip a coin. If it lands tails, I shoot you. If it lands heads, I don't. Which is the immoral decision, to pull the trigger, or to flip the coin?

If you're deadly serious about pulling the trigger if the coin lands tails, then I would argue flipping the coin is. Just like pressing either of those buttons.

But you can't compare either of these situations to anything in the real world (well, unless your name is Harvey Dent). Driving fast (even over the posted speed limit) isn't the same as pushing a button which has a 50% chance of killing someone. If you know what you're doing, you can drive safely at much greater speeds than allowed on any US roadway. As vehicular technology has improved, that speed, and the speed at which you can survive an accident, has increased.

Every sane person knows that driving is risky. Even if you follow all the traffic laws, and drive carefully, some drunk might plow into you while you're stopped at a light. Or you might lose control due to mechanical failure or road conditions. Shit happens. The question is how to reduce the likelihood of shit happening. Do we do it by setting an arbitrary speed that you "should" drive, or do we hold accountable those who cause shit to happen, encouraging them to drive carefully?

I don't think making money on the price differences between two exchanges will help here. Anyway, determining "fault" in an accident is a well established science.

But a twist... That person is Adolf Hitler

But he's rescuing orphans...

One of whom would grow up to be Stalin

Another one, Einstein...

Just what do you do, man???