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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

The difficulty of enforcing the law is actually a useful part of our overall system because it provides a check-and-balance against the overeager enforcement of bad laws. Imagine a world where ubiquitous automated cameras sent you a ticket every time you jaywalked, or if your car automatically reported you every time you exceeded the speed limit. Yes, it becomes annoying when criminals get away with things they really should not be able to get away with (like the theft in this article) but even in situations like that there are grey areas, like stealing a loaf of bread to feed your family (not the case here, but it does happen). That the law does not get enforced with 100% efficiency can be a feature as long as you don't go too far towards the other extreme.

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Imagine a world where ubiquitous automated cameras sent you a ticket every time you jaywalked, or if your car automatically reported you every time you exceeded the speed limit.

I'm probably being naive, but I think having rules that are universally enforced would be much better than our current approach of selective enforcement. I'd expect that as soon as those with power to change the law are negatively affected by poorly written laws, those laws would soon be changed.

Should jaywalking itself always be illegal? No, it should depend on whether there is an actual danger and the degree to which it impedes traffic. A more sane law would differentiate between calmly crossing at midnight on an empty street and causing an accident by darting into busy traffic.

Should it be illegal to exceed the posted speed limit? I think so, otherwise why not just have "advisory speeds"? Rather than making it illegal to exceed a speed that drivers are expected to exceed and then enforcing selectively, a firmly enforced limit seems much saner. If the goal is fuel efficiency, then legislate that directly. If the goal is safety, then "reasonable and prudent" seems sufficient.

like stealing a loaf of bread to feed your family

I think this is better dealt with at the penalty phase than by selective prosecution. I feel the owner of the lost loaf of bread should have the right to prosecute or not prosecute entirely at their discretion, but once the police are involved I think they should be required enforce the law and leave the discretion to the judge. It it would seem terribly unfair to the property owner for the police on the scene to summarily decide that the theft was justified and the shop owner must absorb the loss.

I'd expect that as soon as those with power to change the law are negatively affected by poorly written laws, those laws would soon be changed.

Most certainly - to exclude those in power from being affected by poorly written laws. See the US Congress, and it's choice to not enforce things like insider trading rules, equal opportunity and ADA compliance on itself.

"I'd expect that as soon as those with power to change the law are negatively affected by poorly written laws, those laws would soon be changed."

1. We have way too many laws now, and they just keep piling up year, after year. I once heard in California, if you add up all new changes, and bylaws, we are enacting/changing 12,000 laws a year. (I don't have a citation. Just something I heard.)

2. I given up arguing over what laws are needed, and what just sound good.

I would like to see the punishment of all laws (criminal, federal, local, etc.) tied to income. Rich guy runs a stop sign, he gets a $5000 ticket. The poor man gets the current $500 ticket.

I heard Switzerland is trying this?

A poor man gets a $500 ticket; it might just be the last straw?

A rich man gets the same ticket; he mentions it over dinner.

In my world, high fees for Revenue, is not the way to tax. In many cases these fees seem unconstitutional, but who even cares about that old document anymore?

  Rich guy runs a stop sign, he gets a $5000 ticket.
  The poor man gets the current $500 ticket.
  I heard Switzerland is trying this?

They've been trying this for a while - someone received a $290,000 speeding fine in 2010 [1].

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8446545.stm

In Sweden many fines are defined in terms of wages instead of fixed amount. So the judge will just fine you (essentially) 45 days wages without having to worry about what that works out to be in in actual money.

You're extremely naive.

The US and its individual states have a litany of laws on the books. There are so many that I can get sure every person breaks at least one law everyday, gay people in particular. It's sad but most laws do not get repealed.

You're extremely naive.

Likely, although my belief is only that selective enforcement of a "litany of laws" is worse than universal enforcement of that same overreach, and I don't disagree that it's practically impossible to live life or run a business 100% legally. I'm not questioning that there is ridiculous overreach, only suggesting that universal enforcement might be a solution.

There are so many that I can get sure every person breaks at least one law everyday

My usual example when the topic comes up is asking people whether they have been properly self-reporting and paying in-state sales tax on their out-of-state purchases as required by law in most states. I was impressed by one friend (a law professor) who was surprised to learn this, and now strives to be legally compliant.

It's sad but most laws do not get repealed.

Yes, but I think this is because we are relying so heavily on selective enforcement. It's certainly true that universal enforcement would be very difficult, and may have significant downsides, but I'd bet that if our legislators start losing their driving licenses for speeding offenses (or as you point out, if they, their gay friends, or family members were jailed for sodomy), the congressional gridlock would be broken and a lot of laws would swiftly be changed or repealed.

If every law were properly enforced, then this situation would likely change. In the current situation with selective enforcement you're generally okay until someone in power has a problem with you. Then you're fucked. This is worse than enforcing the laws as they are written in the books, imho.

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

Cardinal Richelieu

> I'm probably being naive,

You certainly are.

I'd be more comfortable with automated prosecutions if automated defense were already one generation more sophisticated.

So a camera catches you crossing a street outside of the designated times at a marked crosswalk. Ticketbot 1.0 automatically enters the complaint and mails you your summons, and you are immediately taxed some time or money to defend yourself.

Would it not be more fair for Publicdefenderbot 2.0 to review the video footage, and inform Ticketbot 2.0 that you did not create a hazard to traffic by crossing at that time? Ticketbot could concede the point, and dismiss its complaint before even mailing the summons. Hurrah for technology that does not produce a gratuitous waste of human effort! The human lawyers only have to take over in situations where the obvious defenses don't overwhelm the obvious evidence.

Or perhaps Speedcambot clocks your car going 60 mph in a 55 mph zone, transmits, "J'accuse! I gotcha, you bastard!", and your car replies, "Deepest apologies for the infraction, your majesty, but it's daytime, the pavement is dry, traffic is light, my tires and brakes are fine, and I can react in 15 ms." So Speedcambot says, "Fine. I'll allow it." and miraculously refrains from bothering the human.

When a victim gets involved, you just have to add an Accountantbot to the mix. If the baker has a loaf stolen, Accountantbot asks, "How much would it cost to buy your right to press charges?" So baker says, "10 bucks?" Accountantbot quickly crunches the numbers, determines that $10 is less than the cost of a prosecution multiplied by the likelihood of going to trial, pays off the victim, and now Prosecutorbot and Publicdefenderbot work out a non-prosecution agreement wherein the bread thief has to attend a paid job training program for 40 hours, at $10/hour, then spend a minimum of 80 hours servicing the air conditioning units in the county datacenter, at $25/hour. The human lawyers go play golf, or racquetball, or something else that is so uselessly human.

I don't totally agree with that.

A law should either be enforced close to 100% of the time (with exceptions at the discretion of a court), or 0% of the time (ie. the law should not exist).

If jay walking, pot smoking, or anti-sodemy laws are not really enforced, to me that's a sign that they should be taken off the books. In an over-legislated society, we should focus on having strong core legislations that everyone agrees with.

Crimes like murder and rape, on the other hand, should be enforced as close to 100% of the time as possible.

In a perfect world I would agree with you. But we do not live in a perfect world. We live in a world where laws are made by fallible humans, and sometimes they get it wrong. Inefficiency is a useful mechanism to protect us from legislative foibles.

What about something like speeding?

Let's say we get rid of speeding laws since they're not 100% enforced. Should we have unregulated driving? Move towards a law that simply says "no driving unsafely"?

IMO those are both poor ideas—they're either unsafe or vague and subjective. I don't see a way around having well-defined speeding laws, yet there are plenty of situations where it's silly to ticket an individual who's going 5+ MPH over the posted limit.

I just don't see a win-win scenario.

I'm fine with no speeding laws. It's not the speeding part that hurts people and causes damage, it's the crashing part. We, as a culture, love to make these second order laws that outlaw not the harmful action but the risky "derivative" of the harmful action. Because some people might crash when they speed, we outlaw speeding. Because some people might hijack planes, we confiscate nail cutters and toothpaste. Because some people might commit mass-murder we outlaw scary looking guns.

I'd be totally down to remove speed limits in some places (I drive cross-state every weekend, so I'd love it :-) but, in my opinion, speed limits can be useful in certain areas.

Off the top of my head:

- Residential areas (like actual suburbs or cities) would benefit from speed limits. I'm a bit of a libertarian, but I'd prefer we have intentionally slow things down in highly populated areas, particularly where there's dumb little kids running about and chasing balls into the road.

- Parts of unincorporated county where I live have no shoulder, so crashing takes you into somebody's house. (Actually, a local house at the end of a road that comes to a "T" had to install a concrete barrier after a couple cars plowed through their front door.) I can't speak to the math behind it, but IMO it'd be reasonable to limit cars to a speed that prevents them from skipping the little ditch and ending up in my living room.

- School zones. (See first bullet.)

- Hilly areas and curvy roads (or just roads with limited sight distance).

- "Kill zones" (you know, places where elk and deer play chicken with cars).

- Frequently icy/wet/slick areas. (A friend of mine managed to slide his truck off the side of a hill he'd lived near his entire life somehow after forgetting it usually ices over.)

IMO a lot of it has to do with preventing new or infrequent drivers (to the area) from driving too fast for conditions. Sometimes having a "chilling effect" (of sorts) can be a good thing.

I also think that speeding laws are good. However I think it would be better if we designed our streets so that drivers don't drive at dangerous speeds. Have frequent speed bumps, narrow lanes, cobblestones, etc on residential streets.

This can have the unintended side-effect of reducing access for emergency vehicles. I lived in a neighborhood once with a traffic circle at the entrance, initially with a tree and shrubbery. That was gone within a year after the ambulances had driven over/through the shrubs a few times. The traffic circle remained, but the physical barrier became, essentially, a 15mph speed bump.

Narrow lanes, frequent speed bumps have to be considered carefully. With regard to speed bumps, they need to be the gradual sort (where you can actually pass over them at 15-25mph depending on the slope) rather than the ones that effectively force a stop (a curb in the road). Narrow lanes only work if streetside parking is illegal. And so on.

Otherwise, I entirely agree with your point. Design roads so that certain speeds are unattainable, then speed limits barely matter anymore.

Posting a "SPEED LIMIT 25 MPH" sign is not nearly as effective for keeping cars out of your living room as a few stout concrete posts extending 4 ft above ground level and 8 ft under it.

The sign does not prevent someone from driving like an ass.

More or less. While I usually speed, the speed limits do regulate my speed since I dislike tickets. So, I'm willing to drive a speed that: I feel is safe and is close enough to the posted limit so I don't get a ticket.

But, yes, for the most part I do agree.

IIRC Montana didn't have speed limits in a lot of places until the national speed limit came around and the federal government threatened to take away federal highway money if they didn't step in line.

IIRC some part of Australia got rid of speed limits and nothing happened. It wasn't the end of the world like the concerned mothers association predicted

If the speed limit is 65 but in practice driving 70 is still safe enough, we should raise the speed limit to 70.

Going further, there is some evidence that getting rid of the speed limit actually reduces accident rates (eg. German autobahns, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#Safety:_international...). You can look at these sort of stats in the context of the broader idea of removing explicit rules in order to increase personal responsibility and encourage safer behavior (eg. replacing stop signs and traffic lights with roundabouts, https://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Safety/roundabouts/benefits.htm).

Sure, in theory. But I see two problems with that--although they're probably the same idea.

Judicial, executive, and legislative are decent abstractions. They're fairly slow to change. Executive is probably the easiest to react to public opinion--which isn't necessarily something you'd want in the other two branches. It can repurpose old laws for new problems and can focus on immediate, concerning issues--thankfully, with oversight.

Breaking a law is binary, but public opinion can move gradually (I know I just said it can move quickly, but it can also move very slowly). Anti-sodomy laws were enacted (I imagine) when there was a lot of support. There was a very long time between that and the public accepting homosexuality. Yes, in the interim we can have judicial leniency--but that clogs up the courts and we do have mandatory minimums in many laws.

There's also weird in between laws, like a Ft Lauderdale law saying horses need lights and a horn after sundown. Makes total sense because it's dangerous. At some point it likely was a huge problem and it was happening often. But it's nice to give officers leniency if I got lost on a trail or my horse got out without having to go to court.

> But it's nice to give officers leniency if I got lost on a trail or my horse got out without having to go to court.

I think the point [made elsewhere] is that it should not be up to the officer to give leniency for any law breaking. The court can do that (via a jury of your peers) but separation of powers means that the officer is not the judge.

This transparency is good because if the officer and you on a dark little back lane come to some private agreement about prosecuting you for a law you have broken, that does not serve the society that wanted the law in place. The court record is a public record for a reason?

True, as things currently stand, but this is a misfeature of the system rather than an advantage. The combination of unreasonable nuisance laws with the lack of enforcement means the nuisance caused by the laws is largely mitigated, but it still leaves them open to abuse through selective enforcement.

If "laws that everybody breaks" were ubiquitously enforced then their true detriment would be brought to light and they'd have to be properly fixed.

> then their true detriment would be brought to light and they'd have to be properly fixed.

I wish that were so. But even if it were there will be immense misery before it happens. In Victorian England one could be transported to Australia for trivial offences; eventually juries refused to convict and the law was changed. A lot of people suffered immense hardship and many died because of strict enforcement of the rules before they were fixed.

If they always caught people speeding, they could lower the fine so it became more like a tax. The penalties for some crimes could be lowered as well if perpetrators were usually caught.

Why not just make it a tax directly and let those that drive faster than normal buy a plate to let them use the left most normal lane of travel? (Implicitly, restricting everyone NOT using that plate).

In fact, lets make robot drivers that go as fast and close as conditions safely allow... I think we're already on track for this actually.

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