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Comment by max76 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why people see the possibility of a drivers license suspension as being worse than the increased risk of vehicular manslaughter.

One is a few months of decreased mobility. The other is an entire life.

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They're not convinced that it impairs their driving.

Consider that a plurality, if not a majority of the population is convinced that they're efficient at multi-tasking, and specifically that they can perform each task as well as in isolation. But we know that almost nobody multitasks well, period, and absolutely not with equivalent performance.

Don't forget that a vast majority of the population thinks that they are above average at $TASK, no matter what it is

If I had to hazard a guess: because that option is so extremely negative, that cognitive dissonance protects our brains from seriously entertaining the thought that we could ever be involved in such an accident.

I'm unsure. Mindless anxious mind wandering (worry) often causes people to imagine worse situations and exaggerate their probably.

For many, many people in the US, a suspended license means loss of your job, which in turn will lead to loss of all other assets you may tentatively possess, possible dissolution of your family, etc. In terms of personal impact weighted by probability of occurrence, the penalty for loss of license may not be so far off from that of vehicular manslaughter.

A vehicular manslaughter charge often leads to jail time. That's more likely to cause someone to lose their job.

Sure. But let’s say the chance of losing your license is a hundred times more likely than that of committing vehicular homicide, and the effective penalty for a homicide is 10 times worse than that for losing your license, you should be 10x more worried about losing your license.

Most people do not think like that logically.

In addition, I believe the effective penalty for vehicular manslaughter is probably ten thousand times worse because of the psychological cost of being responsible for someone's death.

Indeed. Somehow this doesn’t occur to people though when they get behind the wheel of a 3000lb death machine and decide to start looking at their phone. I personally find the prospect terrifying.

People assume they can handle driving while texting.

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