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Comment by caditinpiscinam | Hacker News Reader

I used to take a peter pan bus in and out of Boston frequently. Riding on those buses you get a good view of other cars. Any given day at rush-hour, on the highway, at least 25% of drivers had a phone in their hand, glancing back and forth between it and the road.

I wonder how many of those drivers are the same people I hear decrying the unvaccinated as selfish?

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What do driving practices have to do with vaccinations? Do you actually have any reason to think that the pro-vax population is more prone to unsafe driving practices? Or is your point that "in a large population, I bet I can find many people whose actions don't perfectly align with the principles they identify with"? Such a statement would be inane--it's been known for thousands of years that virtually nobody passes the test of totally consistent principled behavior (see Diogenes, who was "looking for a [truly principled / reasoning] man", and could find none).

> What do driving practices have to do with vaccinations?

Mandatory rules. Yours is a good question, but the parent’s suggestion might be totally fair. People in the US, and in other countries too, clearly have a problem with mandatory things, a lot of people are so determined to defy rules imposed on them, they will break the rules even when it’s in their interest to abide.

I have family members who, to this day, won't wear their seatbelt in their car because "the government has no business tellin' me what to do!" They know it is safer but won't do it out of petty spite. Orthodox Individualism is America's national religion.

While I'm driving on the freeway, my spouse sometimes counts to see how many other drivers are on their phone. It's crazy what a large fraction of people (probably about 25%, I'd agree) are splitting their attention when moving at 75mph. Like what are so many people doing on their phone while driving? Surely they can't all be texting someone that often...?

Push notifications. Phone goes ping, brain must have tiny chemical boost rewarded upon consuming whatever came in.

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