Normally I eschew outright political posts, though to be honest the other one I had planned for today, and which I’m not compus mentis enough (when are you ever compus mentis, Sarah? Shut up, you) to do was about race, and that was probably going to get political too.
However, today I have to take the younger kid to the DMV to get his driver’s license (which will then be mailed to him, in a week or two – you wish I were joking) and it is the sort of thing that puts me in a p*ssy mood where I do unreasonable things.
Part of this is that the DMV brings back the worst aspects of my childhood and adolescence. To do anything in Portugal you need to go to window A to buy the special watermarked paper, then take it to window B to get a license to go to window C which in turn… At the end of the day, if you’re very lucky, allows you to approach window Z where you get whatever the heck it was you needed. A lot of this bureaucracy is related to schools, which means I spent an inordinate amount of time in line to get a certificate saying I had completed course A and could now take course B. (And more than once — once after I finished COLLEGE — they made a mistake and told me I had flunked ninth grade and drop out. They’d got the wrong page in the records book. AND THEN I had to stand in line all over again, because it was THEIR fault, but my problem.)
Perhaps this is the Portuguese version of a jobs program, but I have this theory if they abolished 99% of it the country might actually have jobs. It’s a crazy idea, I admit, and it might not work. I just think that it’s about time we gave it a try.
And speaking of giving crazy ideas a try….
Dan says I’m no longer allowed to call DMV employees prepotent incompetents, though the last time it didn’t go that badly, possibly because they thought prepotent had something to do with viagra.
Dan can set these restrictions on me because he’s my set of external brakes, to be applied when I’ve burned through the internal ones (by the time I was three, I think). That’s his job. He – among other things – keeps me alive and out of jail.
On the other hand you know what they say about pressure cookers. You can’t make the pressure disappear. You have to bleed it out.
Well, if I have to behave and not call bureaucrats names – which does not stop me from mumbling stuff in other languages, mind – it’s impossible to stop from thinking about other things.
The other thing that comes to mind is this: WHY do I have to spend my entire day waiting for other people to give my kid permission to drive a vehicle? The kid has completed a course and has a certificate. He has driven for fifty hours and we’ve filled the forms and signed them. He has his driver’s permit now more than a year old as required. So why do I have to go with him? To verify address. By which they mean, to make sure he lives with us, since he’s a minor, and he might have faked the certificate from a professional (and expensive) driving course AND the driving logs. Sneaky these teenagers. Also, extremely accomplished. Also, stupid. If they can fake all that, why not scan in a license and fake that too.
No, seriously. I have to go along to verify address. And to be there. Do you know how else they could verify address? No? Yeah – it’s right there on his driver’s permit. You know how else they could verify address? He could take two pieces of mail, one with his name, one with ours. Do you know how else they could verify address? He could take my driver’s license with him. Do you know how else they could verify address? I have an address listed in my driver’s license forms which they have on file. You know how else they could verify address? They could call me.
But none of those would require me to waste my entire day.
This of course led to other thoughts. It’s never a good idea to get me thinking.
In this case what I thought was: why driver’s license?
Before you say because vehicles are dangerous and we want to make sure people are qualified to operate them, let me tell you a story: I have a had a driver’s license for 28 years. I’ve driven for 14. Not only did I pass my driver’s test, I passed it with flying colors. Then, first time driving on my own, I wrapped the car around a phone pole. Why? Well, mostly because I had undiagnosed astigmatism, but also because despite a driver’s course and a test, NO ONE SPOTTED IT. (And trust me on this, that is a minor inverse miracle. I have BAD astigmatism.) Also, because no one ever told me to slow down around turns. (Which might have at least prevented the car being totaled.)
Am I alone in this? Oh h*ll no. Most normal functioning adults could pass a driver’s exam after a brief practice with a car. Does this mean they’re safe drivers? Um… no. It takes years of driving for that. (I am a very safe driver. I’m just terrified of driving. Why? Because I imagine my characters behind the wheels of the other cars. I still drive, but only when I HAVE to.)
In Portugal, at least, while I’m sure the function of driver’s licenses is the same as here – I don’t know. To give you an opportunity to interact with the government? Perhaps jobs program? – they make a better job of justifying it. I.e. before you can get the license you complete six months of daily instruction. (Or to be honest, that was the system when I was there, almost thirty years ago. Might not be true now.) I don’t know if it teaches more than we learn here, but it MUST because with their roads and the national temperament (laws happen to other people) if they went out as unprepared as we do there would be piles of cars and corpses at every corner.
But seriously, people, yeah, the car is a lethal machine. Potentially. However, most people aren’t using it as a license to kill, because they don’t want to die which is a likely result of crashing into another car head on. And those who are crazy enough not to care, also don’t care about getting a license.
So what purpose does the DMV serve? Again, no idea, other than making Sarah almost comically mad, and I don’t think they’d create an entire department for it. (Maybe they would?)
Why do free citizens in a free country need a license to drive?
Because it’s the way things are done. Because we’ve never tried it any other way.
And don’t tell me there’s no other way. Of course there is. For instance the kid is more proficient at driving than the average bear (or his mother) because the insurance gives us a huge discount for his completing this defensive driving course with a professional driving school. We have two kids driving, we need the discount. Insurances could certify drivers, couldn’t they? Why not? They’re the ones with a vested interest. The government’s driver certification program has no vested interest in your being a good or even competent driver. All they have a vested interest in is giving you a license. Why? Because the process of taking form A to windo B to window C gives jobs to government employees. And to do that, you MUST pass the driver’s test.
I’m just glad they haven’t thought of other things that could be lethal and that we do without a license:
Do you have a license to buy gas? Do you have a license to clean cat boxes? (Ammonia) Do you have a license to walk? Do you have a license to operate a chainsaw? (I saw – okay, peeked between my fingers at – Texas chainsaw massacre.) Do you have a license to cook? (Trust me, I have three friends who can make it lethal. Without trying.) Do you have a license to rock and roll? (You haven’t seen my brother dance.) Do you have a license to mow the lawn? (Machine. Sharp. Cuts.) Do you have a license to run a stove? (Hot. Makes boiling oil.) Do you have a license to hike? (At least one Colorado fire was started by hikers.) Do you have a license to write? (You could give people dangerous ideas) Do you have a license to read? (Nine out of ten mass murdering dictators wrote their theories in book form. What if you follow the ideas?) Do you have a license to travel? (You could pick up terrible diseases.) And last and most importantly, do you have a license to be Sarah? (A Sarah is a lethal thing to be.)
No? Then why do you need licenses to drive, buy guns, own a dog, or get married?
And why – WHY – would any person in their right mind want to expose me to bureaucracy?
According To Hoyt 
Don’t hold back Sarah. Tell us exactly how you feel. [Wink]
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No? Then why do you need licenses to drive, buy guns, own a dog, or get married?
Obviously, this is a state by state issue on a number of the items you listed, but to these three, as a former radio guy, former military guy, and son of a former military guy, I’ve lived in a lot of different states. Yes, all of them require a driver’s license. No, most do not require a license to buy a gun or a dog. The marriage license thing…if I remember correctly it harkens back to days of yonder when they were far more concerned about close family getting…closer and, probably in some cases, Jim Crow.
Of the other things you listed, what do they all have in common? They are things you are doing for yourself, to yourself, or by yourself, on your property or in your home. Driving requires many things that directly affect others and there’s no way around that. You go on publicly-owned roads with other people and there are many social conventions that must be observed and it’s in society’s interest to make sure we all have a reasonably common base (driver’s ed) to educate us on those conventions. Private roads are another matter…you don’t need a license to drive all over your South 80 (if you happen to own 80 acres and they’re south of your house).
Honestly, as a dyed-in-the-wool Libertarian, I’m simply not “Probability Broach” enough (lol, look it up) to insist that I be allowed to rampage all over Creation in my vehicle without a government-issued permit to do so. I accept the slight intrusion into my privacy in order to gain access to those publicly-owned roads. To look at another way, I don’t carry a concealed firearm because I’m expecting to have to use or even want to. I carry it because I may have to. Same with wearing a seat belt. I don’t expect to get into an accident or even want to, but I will be thankful that I took the slight precaution to husband my well-being by clicking it into place. I don’t have a problem with carrying a driver’s license in case there’s an incident. If there is, it becomes useful in a lot of ways. In a minor fender-bender, it gives both parties reasonable expectation that the info included on it is accurate for exchanging. In a serious crash, it lets the responders know who you are. In a REALLY serious crash, it lets them know what organs of yours they can have.
Now…using the driver’s license for anything other proving my ID if there’s an incident? That’s a whole other can o’ Big Brother, akin to the myriad of ways the social security number is used in ways it never should have been.
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Besides that, you have two related items when it comes to driver’s licenses:
1) If a person cannot pass the minimal requirements for receiving a license, then they REALLY have no business on the road.
2) When someone displays negligence in their driving, such as driving while intoxicated, or swerving all over the road, or whatever, they can have their driving privilege revoked, through the legal system (although the number of times I’ve seen videos outside courthouses where the person who just lost their license gets into their vehicle and drives off tends to raise some skepticism of that practice), and will face more severe penalties if caught behind the wheel while their license is not valid.
Could insurance companies verify drivers? Certainly, they could, but then you would have a patchwork system, which would have widely varying standards. It could probably work, but I think that it would not necessarily be any better than the current system.
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Still…getting your license being an all day affair, only to have to wait two weeks for it to show up in the mail is simply ridiculous. That’s a state thing, though, as none of the last four states I’ve lived in since 2001, IL, IN, GA and MO (roots semi-firmly planted in MO now) were that awful and, in all cases, gave me a driver’s license on the spot as long as I had all the paperwork they needed…which usually amounted to my previous state’s ID and new proof of residency such as a utility bill in my name.
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Same here in PA. The slowest part of replacing my license was posing for their camera and waiting for the obligatory horrid picture to load on the screen so I could lie and tell them it was fine.
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Depends on the area of the state, too. My first license, including the test and waiting for the guy to get off lunch, was less than 3 hours. I got a paper copy the same day.
Same state, in the Seattle area, I got there half an hour early…. and there was a line of 150 people. I know, because that’s the number I got from the print out machine. A half hour later, I realized that I’d left the garage open. Went home. Fixed it. Came back. Three hours later, changed the name. They averaged, with four windows, one person every two or three minutes. One person did absolutely NOTHING that I saw.
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Wayne, in aviation certain specialized certifications are managed by membership groups with oversight by the FAA. Airshow performers, depending on what they are doing and if they are doing it in formation, are checked and tested by the two sub-groups of the EAA, the CAF, and I think ICAS and the Soaring Society of America have some certification powers as well. The aerial applicators (aka crop dusters) work through the NAAA and some state aviation departments, all overseen by the FAA and the various insurance companies. So that is one model, although I’m not sure how well it would work on a larger scale.
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Uh, also why do they suspend peoples drivers license for unpaid child support? Does this make them a bad driver? Will it be easier for them to obtian work and pay their child support with a suspended license?
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Punitive. Basically, it’s a case of, “Okay, if you will not do Thing X and are not giving sufficient reason why you are not doing Thing X, then we are going to hit you where it really hurts, because that will probably make you prioritize Thing X.”
Like when I went to the Privacy Protection company to get at the website that was erroneously saying my stuff was free. Could I have used the obfuscated email that went through the privacy protection company’s servers? Probably. But after 3 different attempts to contact that site, I was under the impression that the site was acting in bad faith, and wanted to get ’em in trouble if they didn’t start behaving themselves.
And whaddyaknow! I get progress. Very, very prompt progress.
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If that’s really a problem, I’m surprised they don’t just station an unmarked car within sight of the courthouse parking lot and send the idiot back for round two within a few blocks.
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Daniel,
HOW are people going to get around? Seriously. I’ve been a non-driver in the US. I couldn’t/wouldn’t drive for 14 years. Unless you have a spouse or a very good friend (and even then, depending on schedules) you can’t get back home from the courthouse. This is part of the reason I find driver licenses unreasonable. People ARE going to drive — legally or not. They have to.
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It’s a serious punishment. If the legal system doesn’t abuse the use of it (as in bearcat’s question above), it’s a very effective incentive to mend your ways. If you have to scrape around, call in favors, pay for a cab, etc to get around, then you’ll think twice next time. I DO believe they should provide transportation to/from work and once a week to a grocery store, if the person says they need it, but the vehicle can be VERY obvious and embarrassing to be seen requiring the use of.
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What, you mean like a bus? *grins*
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Well, one that looks like the “Special Needs” buses, and with signs indicating that it is transport for those who have lost their license. Like I said, something embarrassing.
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Painted a “nice” bright uncool color like 70’s orange with 3 foot high letters saying SHAME on all sides? With a big bell or siren and flashing lights every time it picks someone up or drops them off?
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Sounds like a plan.
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You know what? Except for the siren and the flashing lights, that’s pretty much what our city buses look like. They are utterly godawfully ugly.
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Buses might work back East, or in the big cities, but not in most of the West. I constantly hear the politicians go on about mass transit, but mass transit only works in areas where you have massive amounts of people at point A, that want to go to point B. People are just to scattered out here in the West for it to be feasible.
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Hear – Hear –
You need a car in the West if you want to go to the grocery store. I used to walk to grocery store near my home (30 minutes each way). Now they are gone.
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Yes. Even our business area isn’t centralized. And people don’t go in at nine and out at five, and… I continuously HAVE to explain this to my European relatives. “No, it’s not that we’re stubborn. It’s that our cities weren’t BUILT for public transport.”
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Exactly –
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And here’s the part that keeps pissing off all the progressives and hip urban planners: we don’t want them to be!
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Once again FRO exactly – who wants to be sitting next to a smelly homeless guy (or gal) when I can drive my own car????
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YES!
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Well, after a few times having the local news station catch people doing this, they posted some guys to watch and stop them from taking off. I remember one guy on the news; you could tell that he truly didn’t think that the loss of his license meant anything.
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Wayne, that expresses a point I first heard Ken Hamblin make: for you or me having to spend a day in court or a night in jail is (at best) a terrible inconvenience and nuisance; for members of the underclass it is a day’s break from going through dumpsters and three hots and a cot.
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My dad works for the DMV, he has to go to court regularly to testify and read the drive records (long story, and a huge waste of tax dollars because a judge decided nobody but a DMV employee was qualified to read a drive record and state whether someones drivers license was valid, invalid, revoked, or if they simply didn’t have one) some of these people have been stopped over FIFTY times while driving without a drivers license!
Tell me, does suspending their license really stop them from driving? Remember only law-abiding citizens obey the law.
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Yes. It’s the same thing as gun laws.
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I worked with a guy who was in jail, on work-release (spent his nights and weekends in jail was allowed out during the day to go to work) for driving on a suspended license. He drove himself from jail to work and back each day. He had to work to try and pay his child support (missing payments while off work was how he lost his license in the first place), so in order to get to work he had to drive, and yes at least once I know of him getting pulled over while driving back to jail to spend the night.
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Oh Daniel – daniel – The police nowadays don’t do anything w/o a federal grant. I have been so disappointed lately. The stories I could tell about recent events in our town.
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I DON’T think they need to give me a license — they don’t do it well, they don’t really verify anything, and the dept is under “dept of revenue” which tells you why it exists.
Seriously… license to drive? And as for being allowed to rampage all over creation: why do you think I am afraid of driving? Because people WITH LICENSES can and do. So what does this little piece of paper do? Bloody nothing. Gives bureaucrats a piece of you, that’s all. And, btw, tons of people — illegals, people with revoked privileges, etc — drive unlicensed. It’s the same thing as outlawying gun ownership. Who drives without a license? People who don’t give a f*ck. What does having a license do? Register you as one of the good sheep. ARGH.
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A friend of mine had a log loader, it was oversize, overwidth, overhieght, and overweight, to legally drive on public roads. Whenever he had to move it he had to go down and buy a permit. He always claimed that piece of paper they sold him made the bridges a lot stronger. ;)
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I do suggest one exception to the use of a driver’s license other than for operating a motor vehicle – to verify you’re who you say you are when you vote. If I had any faith in the voter registration system, I’d say we could just require a person to display their voter registration validation card at the polls, but that won’t work unless it had a photo. Colorado requires some form of photo ID to vote, which is why the majority of the voter fraud cases here arise from absentee ballots.
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and absentee ballots are easy to obtain and all over the place, which makes you ask “what is the difference?”
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Sheet – (a long form of shit)… I just voted in my primary and I tried to show them my driver’s license. The clerk turned her head away and wouldn’t look at it. It was okay when she saw my voter card. I was not happy.
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Idaho doesn’t have a voter card, we are required to show picture id (usually a drivers license) and each precinct has a list of all registered voters.
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That’s pretty much how they do it in Colorado, too, bearcat. The county where you’re registered also mails you a card about three months ahead of any statewide election telling you how you’re registered (party affiliation, congressional district, precinct number, location of the precinct polling station, hours of operation, etc.). You still need a photo id, but they’ll issue you a provisional ballot you can use if you have your registration card. They hold your ballot until you can go home and get a photo id to verify you’re you…
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In our town, you just go in and give your name and address, and they let you vote. No ID required.
This is how I knew that my EXACT NAME TWIN was not only going to the local college, but also had her place of residence in the same neighboring town. O_O
Also, she needed to pick up her books at the college bookstore, used the nickname of “Liz,” and someone stole her boyfriend and wanted to apologize about it. >_>
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Did you accept the apology?
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No, I explained that she wanted the other Elizabeth [same last name], because, well, I think I was married by that time, and I was quite, quite sure of my fellow. (And still am, after 20+ years. *sappy smile*)
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You want to know what is really freaky? I was added to the local college’s alumni list and kept getting their mail. I got tired of this and called. They said “Sarah Hoyt?” and my address and then “You graduated class of 1920 and–” And they paused as they realized my voice didn’t sound at least 100 years old. I said “Uh, no. I didn’t.” “Oh, I’m sorry. Must be your grandmother then.” “No. Bought house nine years ago from strangers, Sarah Hoyt is my married name.” LOOOOOOOOONG silence. “Okay. Uh. Freaky. This lady with your name lived there. Uh.”
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That is freaky! When Jean and I first got married, something almost as freaky happened to us. We were stationed in Enid, Oklahoma. At the time, the base had exactly 227 enlisted people assigned. Everything was done by contract.
After a burglary and murder within three houses of where we lived, we bought a mobile home. There were two mobile home parks in town. The one we chose had an opening, and we moved in. That’s when the freaky things started happening. We kept getting mail addressed to an Airman Second Class (back in the dawn of the world) Michael E. Weatherford and his wife, Jane. I was an Airman Second Class, but my name is Michael A. Weatherford, and my wife’s name is Jean. Yep, they were the couple that had rented the spot before us. Unfortunately, THEY didn’t take their financial responsibilities seriously. We got served twice by the county for non-payment of their bills. We finally moved on base. That was the only thing that stopped the harassment.
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COOOOOOL!
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*SNIP*
Sorry to respond to you; there’s no blessed “comment” button at the actual, normal, respond-to-the-post spot, and in my defense your comment is what got me thinking.
Then why do you need licenses to drive, buy guns, own a dog, or get married?
To keep track when things go wrong, minimize the ability to do wrong by enabling coordination of consequences, and money/control/power.
Sometimes they’re justified, sometimes they’re not; from personal experience in areas with lots of illegals, the licensing program makes it a lot easier to make sure everyone that has one has insurance! For marriage, it greatly simplifies inheritance, child support, etc.
(I’m not a big fan of licenses for dogs or guns– one’s not big enough to justify the notion, the other is too big to give the power away.)
Heck, I’m all for adding a license– for bicyclists who are on the road. Plates, too. For ease of enforcing traffic laws, and helmet laws. Don’t want to license your bike and yourself for the bike? Cool, you’re a pedestrian, and under those laws. (Seattle has a big problem with jaywalkers, too, but people are USUALLY slow enough that I can do something, and other people can see them; bicyclists move fast enough that they can cause accidents very, very easily, even if they’re not killed in the process.)
It’s bad enough that I actually rolled down my window to thank the one bicyclists on the road that was actually obeying all the rules and being safe– HE EVEN SIGNALED!!!!
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Only one complaint with your comment, why should bicyclist have to wear helmets?
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If you click in the empty text box, the POST COMMENT button shows itself. I don’t know if this is a WordPress update or what, but it got me for a while earlier today as well.
To play devil’s advocate, a bicycle is a very light, relatively low-speed vehicle. Even if you plowed into a Farmer’s Market at full speed, your likely only to hurt yourself and more than likely cause minor injuries to others. Unlike a car. Even a small car in the same scenario will shove a few people of their mortal coils.
I do not wear bike helmets partially because that’s how I grew up and partially because I think they look ridiculous. Prior to having kids, I vowed not to force my kids to wear them either. I did about-face on that last one, though, and I’m not at all sure that’s a positive development.
I see those poor kids out rollerblading though with helmet, elbow pads and knee pads and (insert emasculating comment about their father here).
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We do this because we have way fewer kids than our ancestors. The risk is small, but when your kid is the only one, or one of two or three, you’re not willing to take it, period. I’m not sure this is good for society at large, and I’m sure I over protect my dual investment too. All I can say is that I wanted to have more.
I still say licensing drivers does nothing. Look, I know — literally — the world’s worst driver. She has been cut out of cars with the jaws of life multiple times. Not only is she licensed, she’s never lost her license. Once while in the car with her (I didn’t know how bad she was) and pregnant, I watched her forget she was driving, drive across a lane of traffic, up a slope to a McDonald’s (on grass) to stop against a sapling, look over at me and go “How did we get here.” And that’s why I stopped letting her drive me anyway. BUT she’s licensed. Also, as bearcat has pointed out people who don’t obey the law — and the most likely to have accidents — blow off licensing laws. So only those trying to do right — and therefore unless legally blind or whatever, not likely to try to have an accident — will obey.
This reminds me of something we were watching, where they offered 10k child life insurance as a prize. It said “Protect your child. Death could happen at any age” as an enticement. But there’s faulty thinking there — getting insurance doesn’t prevent the kid from dying. It just gives money for a (cheap) funeral. Same thing — licenses might allow you to catch perpetrators of vehicular assault, but when I read reports those are 90% more likely to be unlicensed or driving on a suspended license, anyway. The license doesn’t guarantee COMPETENCY. So… What does it do, exactly? Except serve as an ersatz ID?
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I finished writing the comment and found that the button was missing; copied the comment, refreshed, tried a half-dozen different ways of reaching the point of commenting, tried adding words, deleting them… *shrug*
I always find strange bugs.
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It does that to me now and then. Mysterious is wordpress and inscrutable are its ways. (Or something.)
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I have it do that to me sometimes, click on a different area of the screen totally away from the comment area, then click back in the text box. I have no idea why this would work, but it always makes the Post Comment button appear for me.
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In response to your devil’s advocate, that’s why no license for bikes acting as pedestrians. When they are on the road and they behave like jaywalkers, they are causing a hazard; people will be killed trying to avoid injuring them. Same reason there are crosswalks while jaywalking is illegal.
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It drives me crazy when bikers cross using the crosswalks, do Uturns in the middle of highways, and also ride towards traffic. When they get hit, the driver gets blamed. I think the bicyclists (who are doing these things) should be the one going to jail after hospital time.
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No. What drives me bonkers are the ones in front of me on a downslope in the middle of the road, while I’m on an SUV. I can’t go around them. Riding the brakes is iffy, and I still gain speed. They’re riding truth to power or whatever, one of these days the brakes will give and there will be flattened bicyclist. I know they’re thinking “I pay taxes too” but all the while I’m thinking “You might be stupid, but I don’t want to kill you!’
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Ummm… they may pay some taxes, but they are not paying taxes for the roads (that comes from gasoline). Plus they do so many stupid things that it is hard to remember them all. The adults are worse than the kids.
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All states that I am familiar with it is illegal for bikes to act as pedestrians, they are considered vehicles and aren’t allowed on sidewalks or crosswalks unless you are pushing them.
Admittedly this is a law that is honored more in the breach, but is so in Idaho, and at least was so in Washington when I lived there, and was also true in Oregon.
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Exactly. Some kid was killed in Las Vegas for going across the crosswalk on a bicycle. The driver who wasn’t drunk was not charged. The child’s parents were upset; however, the child definitely going against the law. Another thing that scares me are old people on the hover-rounds who drive across the crosswalks against traffic. Saw that happen a few weeks ago. They use those like pedestrian traffic too.
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True in Utah and Nevada.
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It is against the law.
And when you ask a cop why he didn’t do anything about the bicyclist that just did a bunch of dumb stuff and generally caused a hazard, he’ll inform you that when he does, they don’t have ID, don’t have any way of being tracked, and generally don’t show up in court– with no repercussions, because it’s awful hard to prove that it was them causing a hazard without arresting them.
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All well and good to try to keep them off the sidewalk, but when there’s no room on the street for a bike and a car at the same time, I’d rather they were on the blippin’ sidewalk!
Or when the county, in its infinite stupidity, gravels the d*** development! (For serious. I’m just glad that happened after I’d been moved out for several years!)
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Because I’m forced to wear a belt? *grin*
Mostly added to roll the helmet law into the category of riding that caused it.
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My kid’s helmet may have saved her from a concussion and from worse facial damage when head met pavement and she lost half of one front tooth and a third of the other.
I’m at least mildly pro-helmet. I wouldn’t have thought she truly needed one, myself, but she lost control on a steep hill and went face-first onto the pavement. I was right behind her, unable to do a thing.
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I’m all for wearing a helmet. Requiring them by law, though? Not so much.
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I’m for wearing a helmet — in theory. In fact, the helmets that are peddled to cyclists have been shown to give little protection against concussion, and no protection at all against neck injuries, which are far more serious.
I do not have a link handy at the moment, but a study was done a few years back comparing injury rates among cyclists in jurisdictions with mandatory helmet laws to those where helmets were seldom worn. The Netherlands has the highest rate of bicycle use in the Western world, but no helmet law, and few cyclists there wear helmets voluntarily; yet it has a much lower rate of head and neck injuries to cyclists than you find in jurisdictions where helmets are required.
The theory, as I understand it, is that the feeling of safety people get from wearing a helmet encourages them to indulge in riskier activity while cycling; and this added risk far outweighs the minor safety benefit of the helmet itself.
If these things are true (and I have so far found no evidence to the contrary), I would go so far as to recommend that the existing bicycle helmets be abolished, or at least, that it should be illegal to claim any safety benefit at all from wearing them. It’s false advertising. What’s worse, it tends to be false advertising from the government, which (as a monopoly and a ubiquitous one) needs to be subjected to much stricter scrutiny than any private business. Meanwhile, let cyclists take their chances without helmets until someone develops a helmet that actually does some good.
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Hmm… Yes, I remember hearing that American football players have been tending to get injured more, and with more serious injuries, because the safety equipment makes them feel safer, now that you mention it.
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Worse than that — Robert has a size nine head. Marsh is an eight and a half. Putting them in helmets meant putting them in too-small helmets, which if I understand are worse than nothing. For Robert, in football, his helmet obstructed his view AND his mobility. SO… they never learned to ride bikes. They did use their scooters, but I never made them wear a helmet.
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Oh, yes, the oversized head thing. Mine is about the same as you say Marshall’s is, and I don’t know how big my older son’s really is; since he has decided to grow his very curly hair long, it kind of makes it quite a bit bigger. The cycling helmets that look like half of a football don’t come down on our heads at all, just riding on the side edges.
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Marsh keeps his VERY curly, very THICK hair cut to about a quarter inch. :-P
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I’m like Marshall, only in the winter I let mine grow long in the back, to keep the back of my neck warm. But mine is very curly, and thick (used to be so thick it had to be thinned when ever it was cut unless it was shaved off, now I guess age is catching up to it and it has thinned down to a normal persons thickness ;) )
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In fact, the helmets that are peddled to cyclists have been shown to give little protection against concussion
Aha! I see what you did there…
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No, you don’t. They didn’t say pedaled.
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Well, if we hadn’t had insurance, and the kid hadn’t have the “needless expense” of a helmet, then who pays for the ER visit and reconstructive surgery?
It’s a case where optimizing for the individual is sub-optimal for the community, and affects the community to some extent. Therefore, it becomes the community’s biznezz. To some extent. (And to another extent, the next generation should be protected from their parents’ stupidity, if possible.)
Of course, it doesn’t catch the edge-cases, and it doesn’t guarantee that the “solution” is actually effective. Because Groups are Stupid.
On the other hand, the Libertarian Ideal is that people are responsible. (And the Extremist Libertarian fallacy is that optimizing for the individual will also optimize for the group — and/or that an optimized individual will have sufficient compassion to self-restrain enough to optimize for the group.) Which patently does not play out to ideals — the Tragedy of the Commons is one example, while my sire, from an early, less gub’mintal and more “do-it-yourself” era (my granddad lived through the Depression), is the epitome of Entitled Jerk and Emotional Abuser. So, frankly, Individuals are Stupid, too, and Stupid in enough numbers that they ruin it for the responsible folks.
And all that said… I dunno if bike helmets are actually law in our town, or just Extremely Recommended, and the Asperger’s folks in the family treat it like “law” because, well, Asperger’s. (The kid, in particular, rather takes amiss the idea that anyone might eat dessert before/instead of the Meal. Alas!)
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Alas indeed – sometimes it is fun to have dessert first or even dessert as a meal. ;-)
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Always eat dessert first. You never know what may happen before the meal is over!
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I was telling Dan that, as we’re trying to get through the next six months “Remember Heinlein — budget luxuries FIRST, you can always eat stir fried vegetables for a week to make ends meet, but get the guys the mouse they want. And let me buy an audio book a week. (It’s what I clean AND exercise to.)
Well, the basement is bleach-disinfected, then cleaned with lemon pinesol. I have MAYBE four more loads of wash to do. I have cleaned all the wood floors in the house and the kitchen tile. I’ve stripped and taken the world’s longest, hottest shower. AND NOW I’m going to make dinner.
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Problem: wearing “protective gear” has been associated with more dangerous behavior.
Humans being the perverse folks we are, we talk more risks when we’re “protected.”
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It is heartless to say this, and I don’t know that I subscribe to it, BUT:
When an institution decides to accept all patients without concern over ability to pay, it is dubious for that institution to demand others, especially those not party to the decision, underwrite that choice. If a hospital decides to provide indigent care, it is the responsibility of those managing and underwriting that hospital to finance their decision.
When a city, state or nation decides that no hospital may turn away a patient for lack of ability to pay, that governmental entity is responsible for the cost of its decision and must raise taxes or limit other services sufficiently to fund its obligation; it has no legitimate right to demand people carry insurance, only that people accept the risk of not having insurance.
Surely it does not require explanation that providing more than minimal indigent care (treatment for contagious disease, palliative care, possibly some other situations) creates a moral hazard and a tragedy of the commons. It encourages risky and irresponsible behaviours.
Part of this problem arises from the fact we no longer permit medical caregivers to charge sliding scale fees based upon patient ability to pay. But I don’t see that particular clock being turned back.
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Emotionally, I see how allowing those who can’t pay to not be treated, legally, is an issue.
Rationally, not so much.
It’s like requiring that grocery stores give people food, and then insisting it’s OK because they can 1) get a fraction of the cost of the food back after hours of paperwork, and 2) charge those who have more a higher price.
It’s murder on the instinct for charity.
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Further pushing your example, it is penalizing those who maintain vegetable gardens, fish, hunt or raise chickens for their thrift and industry.
I have no basic objection to the town council throwing everybody a picnic dinner, but being called to kick in to the pot once I’ve turned up seems a bit much.
I expect by now all y’all know about Davy Crockett’s speech to the House of Reprehensibles in 1830 [ http://www.fee.org/library/not-yours-to-give-2/ ] as well as President Franklin Pierce’s 1854 veto statement [ http://www.liberalinstitute.com/CharityNotProperGovernmentFunction.html ] but in matters of charity it is important to remember that, as in all branches of economics, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
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Of course you have to be licensed to drive. Why would you deny the government such a potentially useful lever on your behavior? /sarc
The more they license the things you need and want, from jobs to personal relationships, the more they can control you by threatening to withhold the license.
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As if any thing short of putting me in a cage or killing me is really going to control my behavior if I choose otherwise? If you ever have read “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” then think of me as a rational anarchist. Thank God every day my parents instilled the Judao-Christian ethics into me very young. I am the equivalent of a male Sarah.
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Yes. You sound it.
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My dear Roulston, the whole point of licensing everything is to give them an excuse to put you in a cage or kill you.
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Agreed. I have long held that the very notion of a compelling public interest overriding individual rights tramels liberty and is, AAMOF, against the law (USConst, Amendment 9) in this country. Also: the tragedy of the commons is the tragedy of the COMMONS. What everybody owns, nobody owns.
M
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um… part of my point in Darkship Renegades. Interestingly, btw, is the notion that taking too much time to give me papers THEY require I have and wasting my work/productive time is an unwarranted “taking” — wouldn’t stand, of course, since I’m NOT required by law to drive. But apply that to say, being penalized with fees/taxes for not having health insurance — is any time spent in acquiring that insurance an unwarranted “taking”? Does the fact that I’m required to sacrifice my time in pursuit of something the government penalizes me for not having a violation of my constitutional rights? That law is SUCH a can of worms.
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I am of the opinion that the ONLY “compelling public interest” is the protection and preservation of individual rights, liberty and property.
I am also of the opinion that my opinion is of scant concern to our alien overlords, nor the corrupt gangster class administering this nation.
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A few items of DMV-flavored amusement that may lower (or raise!) your blood pressure ;-)
-My grandmother never took a driving exam. She was “grandfathered” (ha!) when licenses were first issued, I guess on the basis that if you hadn’t crashed the Model T by then, you knew how to drive. HOWEVER some of the social niceties didn’t get covered, which resulted in my 7-year-old self saying “Gramma, I think the policeman wants you to pull over.” Yep, she didn’t know what Officer Friendly doing the light show meant. And he was *pissed*.
-Pennsylvania wants an actual driver to take someone getting their first license to the DMV. My Swiss colleague at the lab wanted to get his US license, so I went with him. Much cultural knowledge needed to be spackled on during the drive. Him-“But everyone drives ten miles over the speed limit!” me- “Maybe so, but do NOT inform the State Patrolman of this when he pulls you over.” Him- “What is that nice office building?” me-“That’s a maximum security prison. They keep the electric chair there. Didn’t you notice the concertina wire on the fences?” (Stunned Swiss silence) Him- “You can wait for me, I’m sure it’s just a formality” (they haul me in to prove I have a valid US license) And then later, when he *had* the license, “You do know that doing a U-turn in the middle of a four-lane highway, crossing double yellow lines, is illegal?” Him-“Oh, nobody was coming.” (sigh)
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“prepotent incompetents”
I learned a new word! :) I wish I had known that phrase when I was in college – California community colleges are full of those.
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To be fair to community colleges everywhere, California itself is full of those.
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And actually, they collect in larger groups at four-year liberal arts colleges. Community colleges usually expect you to learn something.
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Its hard to believe but it sounds like the IL Secretary of States officeJthey run the DMV) one of the most corrupt orginizations in IL is a model of efficiency compaired to what you just described. Boogle!
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Sounds as if Colorado shares Australia’s philosophy about teenagers and driving. As a friend of the family put it, “the learners’ permits are how the government punishes you for having teenagers.”
The marriage license goes back to property laws and inheritance, as well as state and religious limitations on degrees of kinship. For example, for many years, bastards (as legally defined) could not vote in some states, and had at best secondary rights of inheritance if someone died intestate. IIRC, it was also an attempt to prevent false claims of marriage for property.
I can understand a driver’s license for proof of minimal skill on public roads. And I can see some kind of marriage registration, even for those with legal common-law marriages, for property ownership questions and child custody matters. Dog license? Meh. Firearms permit ? Not required for less than 88 mm or .5 kiloton, see local zoning limits and restrictions. Flying license? I’d say yes for those wanting to fly for pay, maybe for those just carrying passengers, and proof of minimum instruction and experience for the Cub and glider crowd (like we do with ultralights).
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I’ll give up my 155MM self-propelled M-108 when they pry my cold, dead hands from the controls! Now, if I could only remember where I hid it…
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You just have to be more careful to pick the state you want to live in – and the year in which you want to get a license. Here in perfect NJ, I drove the kid to the test. When each was done, we went inside, presented a few pieces of paper, PAID (of course). Child had photo taken. When photo was cool, new license was handed to child.
Aside from the nerves of watching said child parallel-park MY vehicle for a total stranger, and the astonishment that they all managed on the first try, and the fact of having to pay for the instruction (homeschoolers don’t get free public education for driving – in fact, we get NOTHING from the state), the process was just regulated enough for the children to take it very seriously.
Most of the instruction was done by yours truly, sitting (artificially) calmly next to appropriate child in MY car, while they learned to move tons of metal around at (sometimes) highway speeds.
I am very glad I am done.
But the paperwork (now that they actually smile and have customer service – privatized) was the proverbial piece of cake.
Driving in NJ, however, comes from a different dessert.
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Actually the new DMV got us out in an hour, because we arrived there 45m before they opened. Another ten minutes — judging by the line — and we’d be there till noon. There is one office in the city that does this. There are two offices that no one knows what they do. And Robert (who was renewing his license, having turned 21) and I almost started a riot in line. Okay, not quite, but we made fun of the idea of bureaucracy and the incentives behind it.
But, anyway, I’m home and I can work. (My life is so exciting.)
Oh, and now it’s up to a month before kid gets license in mail. We’re uncertain if he can drive in the meantime.
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You can get an extension of a learner’s permit — from the DMV, of course.
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(After posting that, maybe I should run… if I could!)
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‘s okay The DMV put me to sleep. I can’t chase you.
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yes, but they punched through it, since applied for the license. BUT the license will be mailed “within a month” ARGH.
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Idaho is mailing my renewed license to me, but they printed out a paper temporary that is good for a month.
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Okay, Finnish system: I still got the exact same driver’s license I got when I was 18 (same picture too, theoretically you can still recognize me from it I guess), and it’s going to be valid (or should be, unless the rules get changed again) until 2030 when I turn 80. Except that I have been required to get checked by a doctor every five years since I turned 45 since my permit is for trucks (not really worth anything anymore, I could have driven commercially originally but the rules have been changed since then and since I wasn’t doing that when they did I didn’t care to update the license when I still could have without any extra hassles, now I’d have to take at least a new driver’s test if I wanted to get back to that – right now I could drive only an empty truck and only if I don’t get paid for it :)). But anyone who gets their license now will only get temporary ones, they will be valid from 2 to 15 years, depending on things like your age and what kind of license you have.
Nice. Good thing that doesn’t concern drivers my age, at least not for now, I have enough problems remembering to get that every five years doctor’s check.
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The restrictions and obstructions to getting a Driver’s License are for an obvious reason: most efforts at voter ID laws rely upon the Driver’s License to verify identity, so the DMV is simply acting in a responsible manner to protect your franchise.
Management of this website is not responsible nor liable for spew damage to monitors or keyboards.
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Management definitely isn’t. Anyone reading RES comments with anything in their mouths — including but not limited to drinks, boiled eggs and spit — is entirely responsible for damage to any associated equipment — including but not limited to keyboards and screens.
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I never took drivers’ ed. The school I attended didn’t offer it until about ten years after I graduated, and I don’t remember hearing it being discussed. I learned from my parents, aunts & uncles, and cousins. I learned driving about a dozen different kinds of vehicles, up to a deuce-and-a-half and including a four-ton John Deere tractor. Since then, I’ve driven in Europe, Asia, North and South America. I’ve had a few accidents, but most weren’t serious, and only two were technically my fault (both resulted from mechanical failure of the vehicle I was driving). Getting a license the first time in Colorado IS a hassle — went through it with youngest daughter. The last time I renewed my license, it took waiting for an hour and a half, then five minutes with the clerk.
Vehicle REGISTRATION has never been a problem, at least for me. The biggest problem was the interminable wait to be served. Ever since the VA admitted I was more than 50% disabled, it’s been even easier – they mail me a new registration each year about a month before my old one expires.
I do believe the only reason the city requires dogs to be licensed is to raise revenue, and the program is not only stupid, it’s self-serving. In fact, about half of what modern government does is either self-serving, for the sole purpose of raising revenue, or to exercise CONTROL. Much of it needs to be ended.
Just think, though, Sarah, about the future. From now on, it will be your SON’s responsibility, and HE gets to hassle with DMV! 8^)
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My older brother is a good driver, and it took him two tries to pass the driving test in Ohio. My little brother is a better driver, and it took him four. I could never actually tell where the car was in relationship to the road, so I never took a driving test. (Got an A on driver’s ed in high school, though.) My dad and I both kinda gave up, because I couldn’t even get around in a parking lot without a lot of screaming and terror, although part of that was driver’s ed class making me drive my 3rd time behind the wheel ever on the highway at rush hour through the deadliest cloverleaf in the area.
At thirty, I did finally figure out where the car was, with the assistance of a friend who filled about thirty two liter bottles with water and used them as pylons (much better than real pylons, which are scary) and let me use her car, but they have a highway portion on the driver’s test and I can’t bring myself to get on the highway without screaming.
And then they made it so you can’t even get a learner’s permit without car insurance, so there’s kinda no point with no car and no insurance.
But it’s sad to be unemployed and see how many jobs require you to have a driver’s license, and know that I’d be qualified if I could just get over this panic thing. And the difficulty estimating speed and distance thing. And the poor hand-eye coordination.
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speed/distance — have you checked your astigmatism. My hand-eye sucks too. I ALSO have panic — and steely self control. I still don’t get on the highway without force majeure. I’m not afraid of the speed — I’m afraid of the MERGING.
For the record, Master Drive has a “desensitizing” program for the panickers which supposedly has 80% success. I just haven’t rustled up the 2500 dollars to go through it. I WANT to because they say and it feels right, that the panic makes you more prone to having accidents.
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I have astigmatism too – however, I have this need for freedom and a car means freedom to me. I finally got over it at the ripe age of 24. In most cases I let the hubby do the driving. He loves to drive. But, I drive when I need to do it.
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took me till 32. I’m still afraid of highways because of the merging. Yes, it IS a serious case of overthinking it. I keep thinking “How can this work”? and, well… BUT being able to go to the store or move around in the neighborhood is helpful.
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Germany merge lanes actually cured me of merge panic ;-)
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This is an important part of the puzzle. While nobody has come up with a good, solid answer for it, the plain, simple fact is that at some point as we age, we become liabilities behind the wheel. How does that get addressed except by drawing a line? It sucks, but it’s got to be somewhere. What’s the other option? Making the old person’s children responsible for not letting them drive, much like those same children are responsible for THEIR children?
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eh. I was more scared when I was younger. ;) I’m only 49!
Truly if I could go back and do ONE thing I’d take Portuguese drivers’ ed. Supposing I survived, after driving there, driving here would be a piece of cake.
And even with the very difficult test there, you still get drivers who drive the wrong way on the highway because it’s convenient to them and/or decide to drive ONLY on the berm and or… Tests are no guarantee of proficiency, let alone mental health.
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I have a grandmother-in-law who should NOT be behind the wheel of a car. She’s 88 and lives alone. Nobody has the guts to tell her. If she screws up and hurts someone because of her deteriorating driving skills (I won’t ride with her anymore after a couple of mortal close calls years ago), the only person to be held responsible will be her.
I know it’s sounds weird, but there’s just something askew about that.
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This is why a lot of states have mandatory you’ve-got-to-be-completely-re-tested-once-you-hit-a-certain-age rules. It takes the onus off the kids to make grandma come in.
I swear, half of the amber alerts I’ve seen have been for lost elderly drivers, not children.
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I’ve driven motor vehicles in Saigon, Vietnam (I refuse to use the new name), Panama City, Panama, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Rome, Italy, Frankfurt, Germany, and London, England. Some of the scariest drivers I’ve ever run across live in Colorado!
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Do the motorcycle “clubs” in Colorado still do the naked mountain rides to haze new members?
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don’t know. It’s possible.
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LOL. Yes. The other day, Robert and I were waiting at a light in a median-divided downtown street. Four lane. this idiot turns left and goes to THE WRONG SIDE. As if the street were just to lane and the median marked the end of it. AND THEN HE PROCEEDED TO DRIVE ON THAT WAY despite honks and screams. It was… gah.
For that matter, one of the few times I overcame my merge-panic and tried to merge — IN DENVER — I accidentally got in between this idiot and the person who was following him. Idiot, instead of doing the logical thing — i.e. wait for buddy to pass me and/or move to berm and wait till I went by then go behind, starts hitting his brakes hard every five minutes, so that I almost hit him. I couldn’t pass him, the other lane was solid traffic. I mean, he wasn’t doing anything but giving me hysterics and risking my crashing into his back. At first exit, I got off, pulled over, and asked Dan to drive.
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This is why I am an advocate of front-mounted automobile cannon, coupled with video-recording device and recognition that “He deserved it” is full justification and exoneration for manslaughter.
Mind you, I’m still trying to figure out when the interpretation of a turn blinker changed from “make way, I am preparing to change lane / make a turn” into “hurry up and close the space before I move into it and forever render your willie wilted.”
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YES. I don’t get this either. I slow down to let people change lines because I FIGURE they need to be in that lane, but people will do the close up even when it’s clear the other driver is … oh, trying to go to the grocery store. WHY? WHAT is the point?
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Ooh, like “Why Johnny Can’t Speed”?
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And SJ Games’ Car Wars!
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<- multi-time _Car Wars_ Regional Duelling, and Racing, Champion
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Denver driving: the last time TXRed had a long yet rapid (and rather one-way) conversation with her deity of choice while operating a vehicle on the ground. I’d borrowed an airport car in order to pick up my crew members after they dropped a patient off at Big Downtown Hospital. The small red vehicle had four cylinders, three of which probably qualified for retirement. I floored the accelerator, merged into I-29 Northbound traffic, and found myself in a two-lane construction zone with nothing visible in the rear-view mirror but PETERBILT and vertical chrome slats. To my mild surprise, the engine did not blow up by the time I managed to find my escape hatch/ exit ramp. Like the Three Magi, we returned to our own land by a different way.
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This is not my favourite version of this song (that would be the Iain Matthews cover, although I also fancy the New Riders of the Purple Sage version) but it is apparently the best Youtube option: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m-NpphSJ5E
These lyrics are from a version by Del Reeves, who (best as I can determine) originated the song:
The scariest drivers I have ever seen are in Southern California – and I have driven in Johannesburg, South Africa, Panama City, Panama, Florida, Utah, Nevada, etc. I have to admit that Colon City in Panama is scarier than the California drivers, but not by much.
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NOTHING is scarier than Rome, Italy. There, drivers turn a four-lane street into twelve lanes, and people make left turns from the middle of the pack. Honking your horn at anything and everything seems to be required behavior. They ignore speed limits, and parking is wherever and whenever you can, including in the middle of the street. It’s so bad I’d bet it would cure schizophrenia instantly – any alternate personalities not in full control would curl up and DIE!
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Portugal!
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Sounds like Colon Panama. I only drove there once a year to get my car licensed. It was too much. I couldn’t use a left turn signal because they would go around me on the LEFT. Yea – I thought they learned their driving skills in Rome. Only not as many of them….
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Sounds a lot like São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. Some of those bus drivers seem to defy the laws of physics.
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I have driven around Lake Superior, in Italy and Greece, and of course in Finland and Sweden. Finns and Swedes are fairly polite drivers, I had no problems with that Lake Superior tour or in Italy, but Greece was kind of interesting. Besides which the map we bought there was kind of sort just the main roads and not even them completely accurately so I also got lost in the first time of my life. Fortunately we managed to hit one of the main roads while we still had enough gas to get back to civilization (meaning a service station).
One of the good points of the work I have been doing during the last 20 years, morning newspaper routes (done between 2 and 6 in the night, pays fairly well because of the time), I have learned to handle a car pretty well. I have problems with my balance so I have always used a car, my own or a company one, and the work involves things like getting your car as close as possible to the main doors of apartment buildings, or now when the routes I have are more on the countryside, driving on these small narrow lanes so that I can get close enough to the rows of mailboxes that I can get the papers in without getting out of the car and without totaling the boxes (company car, now, with the controls on the wrong side, because of that ‘needs to be able to do the job without getting out of the car’ thing, but at least the transmission on those are automatic, while most cars here still have manual transmissions).
Driving in traffic is, of course, something else. While I can handle a car around anything that stands still I’m not so good when it comes to guesstimating what other moving vehicles will do.
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You’ll want to avoid driving in Seattle until you pass that program. I suspect that the freeway onramp design bid was sent by mistake to a psychiatric ward art therapy class. NONE of them are the same, and they must have looked pretty in the drawing because they make no sense to a driver. E.g. merging from the *left* on to a busy multilane freeway with a mere 300 yards before you have to merge left *again* because your lane just turned into an exit. On the plus side all the surviving drivers have much sympathy for merging vehicles, having been there, and will honor lane change signals (and even slow down!) This has needed explaining to some Boston friends.
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Yes, last time I was over there they had added several new collector-depositor onramp/exits and if those aren’t confusing and dangerous enough, some bright designer decided to crossbreed them with cloverleafs. The resulting mutant bastard is the worst design I have ever seen on the road; with the possible exception of multilane roundabouts.
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These sound rather like the notorious Pennsylvania instamerge.
Of course, coming from Australia, multi-lane roundabouts hold no terrors for me. They’re common enough there that you learn to deal with them.
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In Portugal multilane roundabouts are dealt with by everyone cutting wildly across everyone ele’s path. As I said, everyone there would be dead, if they weren’t, SOMEHOW superb drivers.
Jacques Prevert wrote a post modern play about roundabout with no outlet (All the roads are one way in.) Being me, I rather liked it.
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I was driving in London once, and got into a roundabout near Buckingham Palace. It wouldn’t have been a problem if it hadn’t been for this Middle-East “diplomat” that cut across four lanes of traffic to exit the roundabout. Of course, I was in a Nissan Stanza, doing the speed limit, and he was in a very large, stretched Mercedes Benz doing at least 70MPH. It HAS affected the way I think about people from certain places. Very large nuclear weapons play a part in my thinking dreaming.
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Not to mention “the Sea-Tac Stack”: Come over a blind crest on I-5 at 70MPH, and discover four lanes of traffic ahead doing 0 — then once one is stopped, pray the idiots behind you are paying attention….
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Hmmm, sounds like Houston!
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Oh, I’ve had huge astigmatism and nearsightedness for as long as I can remember. My vision has been corrected for it since I was three, fortunately. But it’s still a huge problem when I’m hurtling along, trying to drive.
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If you’re like me the d*mn thing changes, either temporarily or permanently in answer to things like… a slight fever. I’ve been having to replace my glasses more often BECAUSE of the astigmatism. Even a slight change and I can’t tell where I am on the road, or where the turn is. My son calls it “driving by instruments” because my mind is computing the stuff that should be automatic “okay, I’m at the pink house, that means that turn is half a mile away.” It takes long, I slow down at weird places and he goes “Mom, you’re driving by instruments again.” If it doesn’t go away within a week — it often does, if it’s just a fever or something — I go back to the eye doctor.
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I hate small print in low light. The laser surgery really helped the nearsightedness. I was close to being blind at one point, but it doesn’t help astigmatism. Many times I wonder what evolutionary reason for astigmatism – what can it be used for?
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To drive us insane, so we’ll invent civilization. O:)
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actually I think it’s not so much it serves a purpose, as we’ve prevented it being weeded out as it would have been in the wild. I can let my older son talk your hear off on this!
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ummm – but it had to have started somewhere –
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Astigmatism is one of those things that doesn’t really have to have a purpose – it can be explained as an anomaly that is just not weeded out completely. Unlike a defect which kills you before you have a chance to breed, many defects survive as baggage along with other traits which are pro-survival.
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Wayne – do you know what baggage of pro-survival skills are attached to it? I have always been curious. Listening to Sarah, my astigmatism is much less than hers. I can navigate … it is only when I am tired or under fluorescent lights that it becomes apparent. Or when I am shooting… I have to compensate by going 1 inch to the left so I can shoot straight. ;-)
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From an evolutionary standpoint, anything which does not prevent you having children or significantly impair your ability to raise them to breeding stage is not going to be weeded out.
The eye’s lens is susceptible to changes in blood glucose levels, so it may simply be that modern diets are a factor.
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I was pretty much trying to say the same thing that RES said, I just did it more clumsily.
Regarding your question, though, Cyn, I have no idea if whatever causes astigmatism is particularly attached to any other traits or not. I just meant that if a person has undesirable traits, those traits can still be carried on if the person is able to survive long enough to bring children into the world (they may not even have to survive long enough to raise those children, if they are part of a group). Basically, to misquote the song, “Whatever doesn’t kill you may not make you stronger, but it allows you to propagate your genes.”
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I was thinking about this after RES posted. If memory serves, a single non-breeding characteristic may not get weeded out on it’s own merits (or lack thereof), but that characteristic could be part of a bundle of traits that a population of a species has. That population may fall to another population of a species that has another set of traits, in which that particular trait doesn’t appear.
Sort of like a particular crew that pop, locks, and breaks the freshest, but doesn’t like multi-zippered parachute pants. Along comes a rival crew that is much better at the aforementioned popping, locking, and breaking, but they do favor multi-zippered parachute pants. All the other crews see this and everyone starts wearing multi-zippered parachute pants. Thus, through no fault on the part of the non-zippered parachute pants manufacturer, they go out of business and the owner is forced to live in a trailer with his alcoholic brother-in-law and a mother-in-law who thinks “Jersey Shore” is pithy.
See?
It’s all very logical.
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Interesting RES – my mother has hypoglycemia, but I don’t … and no diabetes in the family either. However, I wouldn’t be surprised that the modern diet with its high glucose levels might be causing this problem.
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I believe that if you were able to do the research, astigmatism has probably become much more prevalent in the last couple of centuries. Because we can compensate for it, it is no longer the detriment to survival that it would have been in a hunter-gatherer culture.
Much like many of the show dog breeds, because they are bred simply for show quality looks, their owners propagate all sorts of genetic faults, by breeding simply for the best looking dogs, regardless of whether they are deaf, epiliptic, entrophied eyelids, or more simple traits like a lack of stamina, or total lack of hunting/herding/working instincts.
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we had a girl-cat who was half persian. rescue but we knew the mom’s owners. When her mom died giving birth, the vet told us DT too was at risk (I don’t remember why) of dying if she got pregnant, so we had her fixed. He said it wasn’t unusual in persians.
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Of course, if I get over the panic I’ll start driving to Denver to the Denver Museum Of Nature And Science lectures every other day and you know… gas… Sigh.
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Gorgeous as Colorado is, I’d be scared to death to drive there, too, between the mountains and the snow and ice.
Texas is easy. Texas is flat. And wide. :-)
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eh. Where we live it’s most wide and it feels flat. I mean, I don’t drive up Pikes Peak. And snow doesn’t normally stay on the ground past a couple of days.
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I used to drive Berthoud Pass about twice a week. One of our favorite places in Colorado is Grand Lake, and you can’t get there easily without going over Berthoud. I did it so often it got to the point it didn’t bother me. I don’t like to drive the passes when they’re icy, but any other time is fine. Coming down the far side of Wolf Creek isn’t a lot of fun, but it doesn’t bother me. The two easiest passes in Colorado are Kenosha and Wilkerson. Both take you into Park County.
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Most scary Utah pass was Parley’s Canyon. I have some stories about going down it with bald tires in the middle of a snowstorm. I must have had a guardian angel.
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Wolf Creek Pass! :)
Ice, snow, narrow windy roads, none of that bothers me to much, not even pulling a trailer. It’s the rest of the idiots on the road that bother me.
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Amen, bearcat! I know what I can and can’t do. I’m not so sure about those other people I have to share the road with.
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And then you drive past one of those gravel runaway-truck chutes.
Always a great thing for adding a sense of safety to a ride.
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I always like the hills that have signs every couple hundred yards that say NO FINES FOR USING RUNAWAY TRUCK RAMPS, until they started posting those signs I never knew that you got fined for using them. I mean that’s a great way to increase safety on the roads, by fining people for doing the right, safe thing.
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I hear that many places — in Austin, at least — will flunk out a first-time driver during the first 1-2 driver’s tests, giving it on the second or third try. I suppose to keep the kids working double-time on the alertness and stuff. (My first flunk-out was not taking the brake off at first (heh!), and not looking clearly in all directions at the intersection. (Move the head so the officer can tell you’re looking, not just your eyes.))
Also, one then needs to have a lucky brooch to make it work. *nods sagely*
Move up to some sleepy New Hampshire town for a while, get your license where the only “highway” is a quiet stretch of the Turnpike, and see how that goes? *innocent smile*
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The boy is EXTREMELY good at driving. No, seriously. I’m more afraid of being driven than of driving. It’s a control thing. Other people on the road, I can’t control, so it freaks me — and someone else driving me freaks me MORE. There are VERY few people I feel comfortable being driven by: my husband; my older son; a couple of my close friends. But Marshall can drive me without scaring me, and for a new driver that’s a near miracle. My fear is more along the lines of the car he’ll be driving at least to begin with is a little past its last legs, and I’m afraid he’ll try to drive to Denver to midnight showings, or something.
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Son #2 got his license last month, first try, and they didn’t even make him do parallel parking. He has astigmatism and can’t read signs well so we’re getting him a GPS navigator so he can find his way back when he gets lost.
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(My pun generator has a horrible latency, took this long to kick in):
So, does this mean you want to eschew them up and espit them out? (runs)
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Licenses = revenue.
It really is that simple. The only question is which ones the ubiquitous “they” can get away with.
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*remembers her driver’s ed class* Actually, we did learn to slow down around turns! Mind, part of that was ’cause we took a turn on two wheels (…possible exaggeration…), so the instructor kinda pointed it out, but those of us in the care then did learn that one!
I also had someone in the car to stand on the driver’s break when I was trying to get a stick-shift from a dead stop, on a hill, to going up the hill. That was… interesting times.
Must run — kid is done with class so the free Wi-Fi’s about to go. >_>
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I had private classes, not high school. AFTER marriage.
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I went to a general Driver’s Ed school, for the insurance bennies. Private school = no school driver’s ed. (Though one weekend, I did take a friend’s car out and chase plastic bags around the parking lot of a local high school…)
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In my state, you get a sheet of paper at the exam, and then take that to the tag agent to get the actual license.
Some states have the motor vehicle stuff under the Department of Public Safety.
I submit that along with public money for roads meaning public strings for those roads, the CDL is also a reason for such programs.
I have a longer story about my own licensure experience, but I over estimated my ability to tell it, so I won’t. I am pretty happy with things.
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Now I will tell my stupid licensing story. When I was in Panama, I had eye surgery (laser) so I could finally see w/o glasses. It made my license illegal. So when we went to visit my parents (I was 35 by then more or less) they had my license, they knew my parents, they wouldn’t give me a new driver’s license because I lived in Panama. I was working for the military so I was under the home state rules. Finally they called my mother to see if I was really her child. I had to get my mother’s permission to get a DL. You can see that I don’t have much faith in government agencies of any type.
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Well gee, Cyn — they were protecting you from identity theft or worse!! You should have been GRATEFUL!
cough*hack*wheeze*gasp*cough — I didn’t think I could get that out without choking.
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It is pretty funny when you add the problems I have because I was born in Canada of American parents. Do you know how many times they gov. threatened to deport me to Canada? And no, I do not speak Spanish or have brown hair and eyes.
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Unfortunately – I knew two of them in the office. Let’s say I was pissed. This was a small town of about 2,000 people.
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Oh! I did that “in line forever at the DMV” thing in California many years ago. After hours of waiting I got to the front to be told the list of acceptable proofs of identification, sorry, go home come back tomorrow. Half as a joke I mentioned the only other thing in my wallet, “Too bad a military reserve ID doesn’t work, huh.”
If I had not made that JOKE I’d have gone home and had to come back to stand in line again. The list of acceptable proofs of identification included military ID, but the lady hadn’t bothered to mention it. Why? Because I was short and female and pregnant? (And yes, standing in line for hours.)
Every state I’ve lived in since then has privately contracted DMV offices. You walk in and there are nearly as many people to help you as people there to be helped. There may be some waiting but it’s never in a line, or on your feet. The person who helps you helps you from beginning to end. Even the state offices are bearable if you go to one of them instead of the contracted offices so you can save a few bucks.
I think that bureaucracies are so profoundly bad because the people who work in them understand all the hoops and processes and can’t understand why someone who gets a new driver’s licence once in 20 years can’t figure out the simple elegance of it all. When there’s no where else to go, there’s no motivation to favor ease for the “customer” instead of ease for the bureaucrat.
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Here in Alberta, too, we have the private DMV offices. You do generally have to take a number, unless you arrive at a really slow time of day; but you’ll be at the counter within 15 minutes unless something goes massively haywire. (Like the one time when I was at an office where the Internet connection went down, and they couldn’t reach the official databases so they could do their jobs. They finally had to ask everyone to go home, and shut down until the ISP techs arrived.)
The nice thing about the Alberta registry offices is that you can do nearly anything there — dog licences, marriage licences, corporate registrations, trademark applications, paying (but not contesting — they are not JPs) parking tickets and moving violations. I registered my DBA name for ebooks (Bondwine Books) at a registry office last month; took under half an hour all told, even though the office was quite busy. Most of the registry offices are run by insurance agencies, so if necessary you can get your car insurance on one side of the office and then go over to the other side for your registration. Quite handy, really.
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When I first moved to Charlotte North Carolina, the people at the MV asked if I wanted to change my voter registration as well. Sure. Next presidential election… you guessed it. Still in Gastonia. They eventually SAID they fixed it and credited my vote.
As Florence King says, the South is a matriarchy. One time at the Gastonia MV, I saw several employees very, very politely trying to convince an old lady who had just taken her vision test that she was legally blind.
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When I went to high school, in the late Jurrassic (actually one year too young to face the draft), Driver’s Ed was school-administered and free. Though it could take a while for you to learn to tell where you were on the road if you didn’t have a hood ornament. The teachers all taught you to put the hood ornament on the side of the road. Which made you drive far over to the right, of course.
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My friend and I dubbed hood ornaments “pedestrian viewfinders.”
These days, I rather miss the things; sloping noses on cars bug the bewhatsis out of me, because I can’t tell how close I am to things in front. A pedestrian viewfinder would be very helpful.
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If you’re Jurassic, I must be Precambrian! I got my draft notice three days before I graduated from basic training — after spending a year at the Air Force Academy. I hope my parents got things straightened out, since I never responded…
I’ve always managed to find a way to tell where I was on the highway – except for a few times in Germany when I couldn’t SEE the highway because of the fog.
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You’ll love this one Mike. My hubby got his draft notice while he was in Vietnam with the Army. He asked if he could go home so he could answer. lol His Sergeant said no.
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Actually, that happened a lot. The selective service was usually filled with older, retired military types, and didn’t do a lot of thinking. Also the active duty people didn’t share information with them very well. We had a bulletin board in our bar in Vietnam reserved strictly for draft notices to active-duty types. Our squadron had 294 AF, 49 Army, and 11 Marines. We averaged posting a new notice once a week.
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In Michigan you don’t need a drivers license, and you don’t need insurance to operate a moped. And if you are over 18, you don’t need a helmet either.
I have more fun operating my Honda Metro than my Mercedes. And I get over 80 miles per gallon. But then the top speed of 30mph tends to make for a numb butt.
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In regard to the need for the licence: It is an excuse for the states to make you waive your 4th amendment rights in regard to breathalyzers as well as a means of control as you have no right to a licence even if you pass the test (ruled on by the supremes).
As far as faking the licence instead of the documents to get the licence: Faking the licence does not help when you are pulled over and the officer runs the licence. Faking the documents to get the licence does.
As far as I am concerned you have a right to drive a car as part of your right to travel. Do you realize that currently if you have no licence, unless you can get a friend to drive you, you may not travel any distance outside a city. You need a licence to board long distance busses, trains and planes!!!
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A license, or a State Photo ID? (“Pedestrian’s License,” for amusing.) Of course, Stupid Transport Officials won’t know what to do with a State ID…
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NV has both… but you also have to have certain licensing to work in a Casino.
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Passed my driver’s test the first time — with a 100%, no less. Of course, my parents raced in Sports Car Club of America before I showed up; and my maternal grandfather drove semis for a living (the two rules he passed to Mom, who then hammered them into me: “Your head’s on a swivel — USE IT” and “Drive like everyone within a mile of you is a complete idiot”); so I *think* I had just a bit of an advantage over most folk here. :)
Age of drivers: Google “R.A. ‘Bob’ Hoover”. :)
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