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cucumber3732842yesterday at 8:24 PM2 repliesview on HN

You're likely falling for a red herring.

Criminality is basically just a checkbox for this stuff. Most of the time people wouldn't be going to jail for these sorts of crimes, it'd just be big fines and penalties. There's almost always administrative/civil infractions of the same or similar name that has the same or greater punishment but are far more efficient for the state to prosecute because the accused has fewer rights.

It makes for good appeal to emotion headlines to say these people aren't getting charged with crimes, but that's only half the story. They're likely lawyering up and pleading to a civil infraction that has approx the same penalties.

And this is true not just for this issue but for many subject areas of administrative law. Taxes, SEC, environmental, etc, etc, all operate mostly like this.

It's easy for a writer to pander to certain demographics and get people whipped into a frenzy by writing an easy article about prosecuting rates using public data. Actually contacting these agencies and figuring out what they actually did is hard and in the modern media economy doesn't offer much upside for the work.


Replies

theendisneyyesterday at 9:20 PM

Someone (i forget who) wrote that if someone invented a technology equally beneficial and equally harmful it wouldnt even be considered today but 100 years ago they wouldnt even question it. It was labor as usual.

Personally i would like to see a more granual permission to drive based on performance, need and demography.

wredcollyesterday at 9:50 PM

Ok, so give an actual example.