Originally Posted by
prathmann
Nobody has claimed that we can somehow eliminate all injury and death. The question is whether we could reduce the number of such events that are the direct result of careless acts while operating a motor vehicle through modification of our laws and punishments associated with such acts.
We have seen a dramatic reduction in the number of deaths and injuries caused by drunk drivers since there was a concerted effort starting a few decades ago to both publicize the dangers of drunk driving and also to greatly increase the penalties. I don't think there's much doubt that the reduction is largely due to the harshness of those penalties and that many people have changed their behavior as a result.
So it's not unreasonable to surmise that similar harsh penalties for careless acts while driving motor vehicles could also affect behavior and the incidence of such acts. But enacting such legislation and having juries return verdicts that support it is likely to be difficult when a high percentage of the population could envision themselves being guilty of such acts at least occasionally.
Bingo. That's certainly a huge obstacle (almost as big as the circular firing squad of cyclists blaming cyclists for every death). Perhaps we would be better off pushing not for increased penalties when things go deadly, but for vastly increased enforcement of our existing laws even with the current paltry penalties. I don't have time to look it up now, but there is evidence that it is perceived probability of being caught and punished that determines the deterrent effect of our laws. If people were getting citations as a matter of course whenever they were speeding or rolling stop signs, they would drive better to avoid those nuisance fines. If they only face sanctions when they run over kids, they won't bother driving carefully since they will perceive the odds of anything bad happening as vanishingly low.
Once a large majority of the population is driving reasonably lawfully as a matter of course, then we could put substantial penalties in place since no one would see themselves as having anything at risk.