The massive reduction in drink driving hasn't happened because people were worried about getting caught. It happened because it became socially unacceptable to go out drinking and then drive. If driving while using a phone is a problem on a similar scale, then it needs the same treatment.
Kim, you are very bad!
Quote from: DuncanM on 04 February, 2019, 11:32:43 amAlso, while in some cities (London, Manchester? Oxford?) you can operate perfectly well without a car, almost everywhere else has such paucity of public transport that living without a car is a challenge. I bet there are a lot of people on YACF who manage it it, but for much of the country it's somewhere between awkward and impossible (maybe unless you are a dedicated cyclist). You can't remove car dependence without addressing this head-on. That's a different discussion though.I commute by cycling between two fairly large cities... 12 miles apart. There is only one bus per hour and the last is around 6PM. The question is whether the service is so infrequent because there is no demand (buses are always half empty) or there is no demand because the service is too infrequent.I suspect operators will tell you that it's the former and customers will tell you that it's the latter... chicken and egg situation. The only way to get out of it would be to subsidise a more frequent service for one year and see if that changes anything.I will continue to cycle regardless, but I would use the bus in case of bad weather, whereas now I drive when it's icy or it's just too wet to bother
Also, while in some cities (London, Manchester? Oxford?) you can operate perfectly well without a car, almost everywhere else has such paucity of public transport that living without a car is a challenge. I bet there are a lot of people on YACF who manage it it, but for much of the country it's somewhere between awkward and impossible (maybe unless you are a dedicated cyclist). You can't remove car dependence without addressing this head-on. That's a different discussion though.
You have to do something to tackle the "Getting caught won't happen to me" crowd. It doesn't matter if the penalty for getting caught is massive, if the liklihood of getting caught is low then people will do it.The massive reduction in drink driving hasn't happened because people were worried about getting caught. It happened because it became socially unacceptable to go out drinking and then drive. If driving while using a phone is a problem on a similar scale, then it needs the same treatment.
But rather than wait until someone is dead, perhaps it's time now to think how we stop mobile phone and bad driving. That frankly requires better enforcement and more significant punishments for minor stuff.
The 'funny' at the end of the news earlier – man so pissed he crashed his car because he thought he saw an octopus. Ha ha.
Some people might be able to 'afford' 10 weeks in prison. They might be able to keep their job, house, relationship.30 weeks is different. I suspect that few employers would wait for 30 weeks for an employee, and a lot of people would struggle to keep up mortgage payments without an income for 30 weeks. 30 weeks is also (I imagine) harder on a relationship than 10.Without going too far off topic, we (as a people) still don't agree on the point of our criminal justice system. At the very least, I think we have to separate it from the process of electing our politicians. And then we need to get more imaginative with how we deal with offenders - and I don't necessarily mean we should cut anything off.But I don't know what would stop someone doing something they know could kill another. In a sophisticated society, that alone should be a deterrent. If it isn't (and it isn't), tinkering with sentences is largely pointless.