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Comment by kalleboo | Hacker News Reader

Part of me has also been thinking "let people drive their imported huge trucks but with the understanding that if they kill someone in an accident its not just an accident, its a murder charge for willingly driving such a dangerous vehicle on public roads".

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I'm not sure the type of person who imports such a vehicle would have the appropriate amount of foresight to let such a law affect their behaviour.

You'd be surprised to see people can't be classified meaningfully based on how much their car weighs.

That’s putting unnecessary burden on the victim.

If you want a silly huge car you should pay silly huge fees for it. You must compensate the public for your nuisance vehicle.

You could argue this for any car as moving such a heavy object at such speeds close to people is inherently high risk.

Yeah there are always levels of risk we as a society have chosen to allow. My thinking was along the lines of how to self-regulate these imports of cars that do not follow the common safety standards our society has chosen if they are forced upon us by trade agreements or well-intentioned loopholes.

("murder" is a bit an extreme reaction but the more realistic idea may be to make harsher judgements the more pointlessly large and dangerous the vehicle is)

Presumably there's some level at which this can be solved in a purely monetary way.

If the average Dodge Ram causes X millimorts of deaths per year (per km? per km on suburban roads?) and every dollar spent on public healthcare (drug interventions? road safety? Fire departments?) saves Y lives, you can increase the tax by X/Y, trust the government to spend the extra revenue in the most effective way, and everyone comes out better off.

A skilled surgeon can generate millions of negative micromorts per year. Should they get a pass if once a year they push a child off the roof of the hospital? What of the classic example of killing a healthy patient and saving several lives with their organs?

It sounds so enlightened to shuffle micromorts around. What good is it to the parents of a child killed by an unsafe vehicle that increased taxes going to healthcare will ensure that 320 elderly people can live 3 months longer?

Easier might be to just not give exemptions when public safety is the tradeoff?

You can get charged for murder in Germany when killing someone with a car.

How is this relevant? Is there any object which you can use to kill someone that will make sure you can not be charged with murder in Germany?

A suicide vest will do the trick.

Manslaughter would be more relevant than murder, but it's very rarely used as juries are very forgiving of drivers. Personally, I'd like any careless/dangerous driving charge to make use of a driving test examiner as an expert opinion and to declare whether the driving would be an instant fail on a driving test. Rather than the driving test being used as the minimum required competence for drivers, it often seems to be used as the pinnacle of most drivers' expertise.

Also, it's very rarely an "accident" with a road traffic collision - that implies that there was no fault involved with the collision and "just one of those things that happens". (I would consider an accident more like a tree suddenly falling or an undiagnosed medical condition).

Do you wonder why the world is drifting toward populism?

Because I read comments like that and I don't.

A murder charge for a crime without intent? In the rich west? There just isn't the political will for that. A policy like that is about as serious as luxury space communism.

Of course such laws are ridiculous, but it does lead to an interesting thought experiment.

One of the principles of Libertarianism is equivalent compensation for damages. What is a fair compensation if someone causes death? A life for a life? Code of Hammurabi? Such laws have existed before, but there is indeed no apatite for that in modern times.

So if the government is going to be arbiter of fair compensation, the best it can do is to prevent harm from happening as much as possible. Claim that as a society we did our best to prevent the death, and assign victims and token amount of money. But this also means that not doing everything you can to prevent deaths goes against Liberatarian principles, because you allow for more unfair compensation.

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