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Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

You do realize if everyone drove giant vehicles, we'd be back to square 1 right? Then what, put children in semis?

A Suburban vs Suburban is still safer than Kia vs Kia.

And what about Kia vs Semi? Or Kia vs delivery truck? Or Kia vs city bus?

If we really cared about fatalities, then banning alcohol should be on the table, statistically speaking. 30% of all traffic deaths involve alcohol.

Alternatively we also all drive at 40km/h or less in cities and urban areas, accidents much less likely to be fatal.

I haven't been able to find any data by Google or Wikipedia - what portion of traffic deaths were caused by someone else drinking and driving?

Banning alcohol may be a good idea, but it seems infeasible. Last time the US tried it, it didn't go well.

The way the US went about it is just one data point. In Islam, we have successfully minimized drinking to an extremely large extent.

That is true. Islam has had many more centuries of practice (and quite a few Muslims drink depending on how strict they are ).

Yes, but you can also read about how when the prohibition was revealed, people obeyed without delay. It has been documented that people immediately broke their wine containers and poured them in the streets of Madinah, such that it flowed through them.

The way US goes about banning alcohol on the road is simply not working. There are really hard punishments for driving while drunk, but it is really loosely enforced. So you are very unlikely to be caught, but if you are, your life is gonna suck.

There is also hardly any accommodations for people to go out drinking outside of walking distance from you home (especially in rural areas; it might actually be safer for you to drive in a protected vehicle then risk being hit by a drunk driver on your bicycle). And to top it off, the police it self is really dangerous, so it is hard for friends or bartenders to justify calling the police on a drunk driver.

All this makes a perfect environment for people to rather “risk” drunk driving, which as we know is a disaster. I think banning alcohol is a terrible idea, providing accommodations, better enforcement, friendlier law environment, etc. will go a long way.

Yeah I realize that, but its optimal for me right now, and thats how capitalism works

That's how capitalism fails us all.

It's also how selfishness works.

It’s selfish to want to protect yourself? I guess it literally is selfish. But I’m not increasing my actual risk for some hypothetical reduction of everyone else’s risk. Semis, buses, industrial vehicles all share the same road I’m on, so why would I shrink my vehicle?

And isn’t it selfish for people to insist on riding their bicycles on the roads? Why is their willingness to increase their own risk my problem? I’m not asking them to ride bikes. They make that choice.

By the way, there is about 12k drunk driving deaths each year about about 850 cycling-auto deaths each year. Let ban alcohol if we really cared about safety.

Drinking and driving is banned.

Wow, as others said I can’t tell if you are serious or not. By this line of reasoning there is also the following. It’s optimal for me right now to : - answer that phone call in the subway. - Steal that item. - Play loud music at 2am. - fart in the elevator. And so on

It’s called antisocial behaviour.

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