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.

Skin in the Game

Picking just one quote for this post was not easy!

The post hoc rationalizations accompanying the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq got me thinking about ways to discourage conflict except in the most serious instances. Given the necessary (for classified source reasons) information gulf between our leaders and the general public, any such disincentive must occur at that level. I propose the following: a chance of death. Once the conflict is over, those in our government that voted for war should have to go through a lottery in which they may be picked for execution. The likelihood should be linked to the costs of the war (both human and financial) and perhaps any disparity on that score from what the public was told to anticipate. Obviously, such metrics would need to be very careful considered, and the exact details are beyond the scope of this post, which assumes for the sake of discussion that such a formula is possible. This measure would have a chilling effect on entering into war lightly and discourage optimistic portrayals of the sacrifice being considered. It seems entirely reasonable to expect those asking others to potentially lay down down their lives to risk their own.