Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mountain_Skies | Hacker News Reader

It's a good thought experiment but assumes that everyone has the same ability to assess risk, which isn't true. Not only does the ability to correctly assess risk vary greatly between individuals, it varies greatly over the lifetime of an individual and sometimes even over the course of a day for the same individual.

View on HN

>but assumes that everyone has the same ability to assess risk

It does not make, nor need, that assumption. If only a few people drove better from understanding increased risk, then that may be enough to lower bad outcome rates.

Why did you claim Tullock "assumes that everyone has the same ability to assess risk"? I can find no such reference or claim online - except yours. Have some info about it?

It has the effect of stopping the driving of those with poor risk assessment and judgement too though.

So the takeaway here is that some people should not be issued drivers licenses.

Well now we go down a rabbit hole of a complex social problem. People don't drive just to joyride. They so because many areas are zoned into car dependency. When faced with no legal way to drive:

(1) Keep driving anyway without a license or with a suspended license.

(2) Use public transit that takes two or three hours one way. When the bus is late again one day they get fired possibly setting off a downward spiral and that's another person on public assistance.

(3) Vote for politicians who allow ridiculous policies like Arizona's lifetime driver licenses.

(4) Zoning would change for less car dependency, and more demand would allow better transit (lines served more frequently and a wider selection of lines leading to less changes)

That's my wish too. People will not use low quality public transit. It will remain low quality as long as it's starved of funding relative to the free* roads, free* parking, and restrictive zoning iron triangle. Funding will remain a trickle until a critical mass of voters demand it. People think because it's low quality now it's not worth spending more taxes on.

*Free to motorists, not the taxpayers and real estate consumers.

Arizona stopped doing the lifetime thing. You have to renew your license in 10yrs now.

As far as I know, we do lifetime licenses in the UK, aside from photo licenses where the photo has to be renewed every 10 years (which can be done online). However, our driving tests are quite different from those in the US, in that they actually test your driving. (When my aunt and uncle moved from London to LA, they did their driving tests while severely jetlagged and still passed...)

That's certainly the case for people with eyesight problems and conditions such as epilepsy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com