Turn Signal Enforcement

If we only had hand signals there'd be an actual excuse.

Failure of drivers to signal is one of my pet peeves (the ratio of personal to public benefit being so small) so I was reflecting on what it would take to actually discourage since it is widespread and considered minor enough that human based methods are impractical. Of course this is purely a hypothetical exercise as such a universal system would be difficult to implement and likely meet with widespread condemnation (a combination of properties which seem to be the unofficial theme of my blog).

While it is certainly possible in theory to have a GPS based system that would attempt to catch every infraction, this not only would create all sorts of problems and be needlessly expensive, but is also unnecessary. All that's required is to ensure that drivers are not failing to signal chronically. To that end, a system that detects whether or not a signal was used before a maneuver was taken and keeps track of the overall ratio would be adequate. The difference between a hard turn and a lane shift would need to be accounted for and very low speed failures likely excluded but such hardware should not be difficult (and is something we've had the capability to implement for decades). Of course the device would need to be tamper resistant to the extent it discourages most drivers from attempting it.

What would be done with such information? While the obvious use would be as a penalty, a carrot and stick approach would likely be more effective. Given the coarse nature of the data, perhaps a three tiered system: chronic offenders get a punishment, reasonable signalers are left alone, and fastidious ones rewarded with a reduction in insurance rates. The magnitude of those two extremes should be informed by research into the relationship between signaling and accident rates.

Not only will this never happen but I suspect it's too late in the car's life cycle for it to make sense now even were the political will there. With luck, in the next few decades self-driving cars will largely end the signaling problem.

Well Regulated Militia

Flawed though the test may be, the takeaway is valid.

I have previously blogged about crowd shootings and even touched on the topic of this post, but feel it warrants expansion. While I am choosing for the purposes of brevity to ignore increased regulation of access and storage of firearms and also improving our mental health system, I wish to make it clear that this is not because I discount them. When tackling complex issues, one should consider all the available tools. What I am choosing to focus upon is the frequently mentioned notion that having more armed individuals will somehow reduce deaths from gun violence overall. This concept is usually accepted uncritically by gun advocates and rejected as unrealistic (based on statistics showing a small number of justifiable shootings relative to accidental ones) by proponents of greater gun control; what I wish to consider is what it would take for this to actually be a credible notion.

What seems to be frequently absent from such conversations is proper emphasis on the need for training; just carrying a weapon will not make you a competent combatant. The ability to keep calm and accurately engage an armed opponent, let alone several, is extremely demanding, necessitating a high degree of training. That is true even in a home defense scenario, and if one considers the context of public defense, the difficulty is magnified many times. Your opponent may well have superior firepower (and other equipment) to what you can reasonably have with you all the time and the safety of bystanders is vital. Indeed, there will be some situations where no responsible armed option by a lone individual is possible for fear of injuring others. Gun owners who seriously intend to act in such a capacity need to have training on a par with police and it needs to be ongoing since such skills are perishable. This would be a significant commitment, which would seem at odds with the number of individuals required so that their presence would significantly add response capacity; if they can’t respond appreciably quicker than the police, it makes little difference. So we'd need a large number of highly trained, certified, armed citizens for it to make much of an impact. This sounds very much like the "well regulated militia" the second amendment references (save for the for the fact that they would usually be acting alone) and would represent a great departure from the status quo of often casual gun ownership. One could argue that dedicated security guards might fulfill this role, but that gets away from the idea of armed citizenry and thus is beyond the scope of this post.

It would be easy to interpret my observations as an outright dismissal of the entire prospect, but that is not the case: while all options should be considered, there is no value in unrealistic schemes. The ratio of good actors to bad would have to be very high for it to be a significant net positive, which makes improvements in the other areas I mentioned in my introduction vital for any such possibility, as it takes virtually no training to attack unarmed civilians and accidents do happen. Human lives are not like a Wikipedia article: you cannot simply undo the damage of a malicious few with a well intentioned many (especially if they’re not qualified), and even Wikipedia must impose barriers to access from time to time.