[afcool83]

I live in one of the areas they are actively testing/training in. Their cars consistently behave better and more safely than most human drivers that I’m forced to share the road with.

As semi-autonomous and autonomous cars become the norm, I would adore to see obtaining a drivers license ratchet up in difficulty in order to remove dangerous human drivers from the road.

[throwaway0123_5]

> I would adore to see obtaining a drivers license ratchet up in difficulty in order to remove dangerous human drivers from the road.

I think it would be far more effective to make it easier to lose your license than it would be to make getting the license more challenging.

The absolute most dangerous drivers I see on the road aren't bad drivers in the sense that they're unskilled at controlling their car. I can't weave between cars at 120 mph or cross three lanes of traffic to make an exit I didn't see until the last second without killing myself, but I routinely see people do that. Sure they don't care about driving safely and/or following the law, but they're probably sane enough to pull it together for a brief driving test.

The other big category of dangerous drivers is drunk/distracted (texting) drivers. Again, most of the people engaging in these behaviors are probably smart enough not to do them during a driving test.

[dbg31415]

> I think it would be far more effective to make it easier to lose your license than it would be to make getting the license more challenging.

For your system to work, there would actually need to be cops watching traffic.

Since the pandemic, some cities just don't have as many police watching the streets as they used to.

For example, there is virtually no traffic enforcement in Austin now. You see the results with how much people speed now, and how awful some drivers behave on the road.

* Traffic enforcement capacity in Austin dropped significantly -- traffic citations fell about 55% between 2018–2022.

https://www.austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/files/Audito...

* As a result, speeding tickets, which once averaged 100 per day in 2017, dropped to about 10 per day by 2021 -- a 90% decrease.

https://www.kut.org/transportation/2022-02-24/austin-police-...

[Retric]

Currently people will just ignore a revoked license the same way they ignore other traffic laws.

So I think ~level 5 self driving cars becoming common + a modification to prevent people using their cars just like we install breathalyzers for habitual DUI drivers is needed before revoking people’s licenses is really a meaningful punishment.

[nipponese]

Don't you think it would be easier and cheaper to gatekeep than to build up an enforcement and judgement workforce.

[ilamont]

Traffic enforcement, which used to correct some bad driving, has basically evaporated in many parts of the U.S. This has been a long-term trend.

A friend who's a cop told me that only when their department got specific state grants would they set up stings of drivers driving in a pedestrian walkway while someone was crossing the street. Here's an example of one such grant program, which is actually funded by the federal government: https://www.mass.gov/doc/ffy26-municipal-road-safety-grant-a...

Crosswalk Decoy Operations: These operations may involve a plainclothes officer acting as a civilian pedestrian and a uniformed officer making stops OR involve a uniformed officer serving as a spotter to observe and relay violations to an officer making stops. ... All Pedestrian and Bicyclist enforcement must be conducted during overtime shifts, meaning grant-funded activity occurs during hours over and above any regular full-time/part-time schedule.

At other times, he said he would only pull someone over if they were doing something batshit crazy and they happened to be behind the vehicle where it was easy to pull them over. Minor stuff and speeding they would rarely ticket.

The U.S. and other countries need to use automated methods of detecting and applying penalties. Some busy intersections have cameras for this, but it seems to be very limited, maybe because of cost.

Years ago New York used to calculate if you were speeding the NY State Thruway based on the time between toll booths. They cancelled this program for some reason.

Although more recently, the New York State Police have speed cameras set up in a few highway work zones, which is effective (double fines applicable, see https://wnyt.com/top-stories/where-are-automated-speed-camer...) but it still requires a person driving a car to set up the gear.

[hombre_fatal]

I grew up in a Texas city, lived abroad for over a decade, and recently moved back to the same city because my girlfriend randomly got a job here.

The number of people who run red lights is giving me culture shock. You have to sit and wait at your own green light because 1-3 vehicles are still running their red light, and it's every time.

As a teen, I saw cops everywhere camping out for traffic violations. I got a few tickets myself for tiny infractions that don't compare to running a red light.

Of course, the icing on the cake is that Texas outlawed red light cameras in court.

[jonahx]

In Miami, there is very little enforcement and reckless driving flourishes. I used to regularly see cars doing 90, weaving, pass cops who did nothing. I've also talked to multiple cops who confirmed that they rarely enforce unless specifically doing traffic duty. Which never made sense to me, since it's a revenue stream. But however the incentives are set up, they motivate cops to do nothing, and drivers know it.

[lenerdenator]

> The U.S. and other countries need to use automated methods of detecting and applying penalties. Some busy intersections have cameras for this, but it seems to be very limited, maybe because of cost.

Ultimately, someone still has to send in a check, and if they don't, you go back to the same problem, which is having police officers interact with random drivers, this time with a no-show warrant.

This isn't as much of a problem in NYC, but here in KC, unfortunately, neither the traffic stop nor the warrant are trivially safe tasks.

[kotaKat]

> Years ago New York used to calculate if you were speeding the NY State Thruway based on the time between toll booths. They cancelled this program for some reason.

Did they? The only thing I knew they nailed people for was speeding through the EZPass lanes too fast.

[lokar]

Have certification (required) for sensor/video recording systems in self driving cars. Make the data admissible in traffic court.

[AngryData]

That's because US cops and courts only care about making a profit, and cops issuing speeding tickets and minor traffic infractions don't earn money.

But something like an operating while intoxicated is big bucks, which is why some places have drivers on the road with 12 DUI convictions (tens of thousands in state profit), and now we got cops and courts from legal cannabis states arresting people for smoking 8 hours beforehand because the criteria for guilt is ill-defined but the punishments are massive because they just copied all of the harshest (read expensive) drunk driving laws.

US cops and courts don't care about guilt, they don't care about safety; over and over and over again they have shown themselves to be a profit-seeking racket. Anyone who has ever been in or had access to the the details of someone's criminal case and seen the mountains of ridiculous extra fines and fees and ways to waste money for no gain knows how ridiculous it is.

[gibolt]

The real issue is all the current bad drivers. A requirement to start re-testing normal people in addition to the elderly would be a large benefit to society.

[simonw]

I'm from the UK, took driving lessons in the UK but then passed my driving test in the USA (in California).

The USA driving test is so much easier than the UK one!

UK: Varied junctions and roundabouts, traffic lights, independent driving (≈20 minutes via sat nav or signs), one reversing manoeuvre (parallel park, bay park, or pull up on the right and reverse), normal stops and move-offs (including from behind a parked car), hill start, emergency stop.

California: Cross three intersections, three right turns, three left turns, lane change, backing up, park in a bay, obey stop signs and traffic lights.

My understanding is that the USA test is so much easier because it's hard to get by in most of the USA without a car, so if the test was harder people would likely just drive without a license instead.

[rs186]

Complete unrelated, I just wish every driver on the road re-learn that cyclists have the same rights of being on city roads like cars.

[bsder]

> A requirement to start re-testing normal people in addition to the elderly would be a large benefit to society.

1) Are you going to fund that? Because it means a significant increase in testing examiners.

2) The data say over and over and over that the single best traffic safety enhancement would be to ban drivers until they are 21. People have to be in their 80s(!) before they are as bad as drivers in their teens and early 20s.

[dddddaviddddd]

I would support re-testing on some interval like every 5 years. That said, so much could be done to make the environment safer. Lower speeds, more traffic calming, safer intersections, safer alternatives (public transit, walking, bicycle).

[thinkingtoilet]

Everyone agrees to this, the problem is there needs to be a way for this to be done efficiently so it's not another regressive tax on poor people's time and money.

[tialaramex]

I think the US at least does sight tests periodically? The UK still doesn't do that, you're required to have decent vision to drive, but the license renewals are just paperwork, pay the money and click a web form.

There is talk in the UK of requiring sight tests for the elderly. Historically UK licenses required frequent renewal, when they were centralised for convenience they ceased to have a renewal step, and it was kinda-sorta reintroduced much later once they had photographs because of course a 40 year photo is unrecognisable. But because of the focus on photographs the renewal step is integrated to passports, and is a chain-of-likeness documentation process. If I look a big greyer than last time in the photo I upload, pay, wait a few days, OK, some mix of humans and machines says that's the same guy as the other photo except older, replace image, print new ID.

Since it's aligned with passports (which also care about image similarity) there's no room in that step for like "Do your eyes still work?" let alone "Do you know what this fucking sign means?" or anything resembling mandatory continuing education.

[HiroshiSan]

Yeah the mindset is essentially drive to spec in the test and then skirting the law from then on.

[orangea]

Don't you think that the vast majority of dangerous human drivers would be perfectly capable of changing their behavior during a driving test? Even without any malicious intent most people would be more careful during a test.

[pb7]

No, I don't actually. Can't turn off stupid.

[overfeed]

I want a camera on every traffic light and stop light - or better, cameras on a random 20% subset of intersections. The system would automatically flag infractions for human review. Combined with docking points off people's licenses and/or fines based on income/wealth percentage, this would be a decent deterrent.

[jacinda]

What I would love to see happen from a safety perspective and which I think might happen (but zero timeline on when) is that a human driving a car will be relegated to something people do purely for enjoyment and only in areas designated for human drivers, similar to how you don't see horseback riding anymore except in designated areas or for specific use cases.

[TowerTall]

> I would adore to see obtaining a drivers license ratchet up in difficulty in order to remove dangerous human drivers from the road.

That shift will happen all by itself. At some point, in a distant future, the price of the insurrance for human-driven cars will be so expensive that people because of that will choose a robot-driven car.

It is all about risk (the risk of the insurrance company loosing money) and an error prone and unpreditical human will be a considered high risk in that regard.

[potato3732842]

Will it though? Surely as driverless cars become viable the "I don't wanna do this, I actively don't care about doing it well" crowd will adopt them and insurance rates for everyone else will likely plummet.

[Natsu]

If you actually ride in one, you do notice some off behaviors that I didn't pick up while just driving alongside them. That said, I agree that the bad human drivers have done things far, far worse than any of the cars.

The biggest gripe with riding in one is that they're slow, both because of super cautious driving and because they won't take freeways yet.

[mgens]

A month ago I saw a Waymo turn left into a tiny alley in Palo Alto and continue at full 25mph speed, which was alarming. I guess the alley is marked as a regular road in the software? Highlights how even if it's safer than humans on average, they need to minimize these weird behaviors in order to get socially accepted and avoid $$$ liability when there is an accident.

[mulmen]

I have only taken a couple Waymos but I had the opposite experience. They were much faster and more decisive than I expected. They do apparently learn from surrounding drivers and this was LA so maybe that explains the difference.

[maest]

> I would adore to see obtaining a drivers license ratchet up in difficulty

I have taken driving licence exams in 3 different countries in the world and the NY exams was, by far, the easiest, less stringent one.

For the theory part, you can take the exam from home, on your own laptop and you just have to pinky swear you won't cheat. It's downright silly.

Also, traffic enforcement in NYC feels basically nonexistent. Drivers will run red lights, fail to yield at pedestrian crossings and will park wherever they feel like it. And the police won't do anything - in fact, the police are one of the biggest offenders.

[segmondy]

be careful what you wish for, you are giving up your freedom to movement in the name of security. you might make the argument that you can hail a cab. that's more expensive than owning your own car and with self driving cabs you will lose your privacy when you use them. any movement between 2 points will always be recorded with at least video and as you are moving, someone else other than you can pinpoint your exact location. with your own vehicle, you could unplug your phone and car GPS/tracking device and have some privacy.

[JumpCrisscross]

> you are giving up your freedom to movement in the name of security

Driving in American cities is the opposite of freedom. The necessity of regulating apes piloting heavy machinery in close proximity to each other and society is a major source of our modern police state.

[afcool83]

We do not have a freedom to movement _by motor vehicle_ in the US.

It is a privilege licensed by the State and regularly revoked through due process or expiry.

While your concern about mobility and privacy are valid, I would contend that public safety is what it’s to be weighed against. Some people really are better riders than drivers.

[potato3732842]

Like "real" safety or like "16yo with a driver's ed instructor in the passenger seat ensuring the follow every law but doesn't really 'get it' yet" safely?

[nradov]

Making it more difficult to obtain (or keep) a driver's license is meaningless without tough enforcement. Traffic enforcement in many areas is still way down after the "mostly peaceful" protests in 2020. When police do stop an unlicensed driver they often treat it as a simple citation without even impounding the vehicle.

[JumpCrisscross]

> would adore to see obtaining a drivers license ratchet up in difficulty in order to remove dangerous human drivers from the road

A Manhattan driver’s license addendum might be the way to do it. Keep a low bar for where one might need a car. But to enter Manhattan, you need to be autonomous or specially licensed.

[potato3732842]

That's gonna be great when other states start doing it and it becomes an absurd maze of predatory fees, reciprocity and political footballs.

[RainyDayTmrw]

Human failures have some, but not total, correlation with each other. A big fear of autonomous driving is some severe failure with total correlation - the whole fleet does the same dumb thing at the same time, in the same place, and/or in the same way.

[ethics13]

If only we can get autonomous cycles that also a danger to pedestrians and themselves.

[wnc3141]

My aunt's leg was crushed by an NY Taxi blowing a crosswalk. As hard as her recovery was too the legal battle that followed.

[wnc3141]

^ for context this was about 20 yrs. ago

[toasted-subs]

Hang up man.

Not sure if there’s any real human drivers on the road anymore.

[adonese]

> I would adore to see obtaining a drivers license ratchet up in difficulty in order to remove dangerous human drivers from the road.

I'd like to challenge this part. I don't see the value of increasing the driving license tests. Reckless drivers can be reckless regardless of their initial driving license tests. You just need drivers with sense of responsibilities. they will get to know road norms as they go, which often is far more valuable than the driving license quizzes.

Context: I moved to a new place where acquiring a license can take more than a year. It turns into a game where driving license companies deliberately fail you just to get you to pay more.