Comments on: Politically Correct Driving School

By: chuck

chuck — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:31:05 +0000

#17 fantom: spot on. Moreover, roads are built with taxpayer (re: our) dollars. Cars are built with private dollars, then taxed in order to be legal. The fuel used in the cars is found, extracted & processed with private dollars. Not to mention you must also purchase liability insurance. How does the government then say it’s a privilege? Very simple. Any government that’s big enough to give you everything is big enough to take it away. The fact is driving should be considered a right, until one does something to forfeit that right, i.e. drive drunk, cause an accident, fail to register, drive on a suspended license, etc.
But once again, government has convinced us, erroneously, that health care is a right, but driving is a privilege. Go figure.

By: Tristan Yates

Tristan Yates — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:40:21 +0000

Poor citizen – you call yourself a progressive? I say we send government thugs over thanksgiving to Americans houses to crush their cars and then issue them all bicycles and bus passes. Then we shut down the other sources of greenhouse gases, which are industry, energy, and agriculture. Think of how green this country will be when everyone’s freezing and starving to death.

By: Poor Citizen

Poor Citizen — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:35:06 +0000

Auto companies should pay a ten grand per vehicle license fee for any vehicle they sell to anyone in any state they sell it in that gets 40 miles, or less per gallon of gasoline. The money generated would go to green renewable energy enterprises. This would automatically begin to solve alot of problems. After five years, the fee would double for any vehicle produced that get 60 or less per gallon. There, then the free market would really get some credit for doing some good… for once.

By: YahooWatcher

YahooWatcher — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:43:12 +0000

I believe an underlying problem today is that we have a generation of drivers who are not very skillful now teaching their children how to drive. That teaching involves sitting along side them with their learner’s permit as well the past 16 years or so of little Joey watching mom yak on the cell phone, apply makeup, not use signals, etc.

I would also love to be a fly on the wall in engineering department at BMW, Mercedes, or Audi. I can imagine the engineers laughing about how Americans will never be able to properly operate their machines but we’ll take those suckers’ money anyways.

By: thames

thames — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:25:17 +0000

If you are a teen driver with just a trace of alcohol, your license is pulled until adulthood. And adults that are arrested for drunk driving, even without proof and before their day in court, must fight the DMV to temporarily regain their license…..

By: DGF

DGF — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:57:10 +0000

My former home of SE Michigan is indeed a created “tragedy of Shakespearean proportions through liberal governance”.
It is disheartening, but the uber surge of Liberal ideology had penetrated our region post election of Jennifer Grandholm, a Canadian born liberal.
My company fled in 2003 after increased taxation of small businesses.
Blame too, the Republicans and the Libertarians, also for not coming together to remove her in 2006.

By: 49erDweet

49erDweet — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:17:33 +0000

17. Fantom: Interesting take on “freedom”, but you’ve assumed a step too far. You are free to drive [or ride your horse] anywhere you want on your own property. You got that part right. But once you enter a public “way” there is a societal right to an expectation of safety and free passage [not saying it is alwaays met] that somehow trumps your original rights and to accommodate that expectation the governing entities that provide [and maintain] those same public “ways” are entitled to require a certain level of licensure and fair usage restrictions. That’s the legal premise that decides the privilege v. right issue, and prevents you from riding your horse on the freeway, too.

You are free to use another means to travel anywhere, such as trains, buses, boats [okay, there's some problems there, too], taxis, hitch-hiking, aircraft, etc. Not saying any of this is fair, just that its the legal basis for preventing bad drivers from messing up the flow of traffic. How else could repeat DUI’s, your crazy uncle Charlie, etc., be kept off the roads?

By: Fantom

Fantom — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:53:49 +0000

Interesting you bring up driving as a “Privilege” vr’s a “Right”. I tend to consider driving as a right.

Consider a free people. Would our for fathers have let the State deny them the Right to ride a horse? I seriously imagine such an attempt by the State would have resulted in armed confrontation.

The point being, is that a Free People have a Natural Right to move from point A to point B in the manner common to the day.

Should one endanger another by ones own actions in such use of ones rights, then one is held liable, both criminally and civilly.

By: ConservativeWanderer

ConservativeWanderer — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:17:06 +0000

49er @ 12:

The other day sat at a rural traffic lite next to a teen in a Prius and when the lite changed he tried to burn rubber, drag race and speed shift in order to “beat” me to the single lane merge point about a half mile ahead. Had to laugh and laugh. Prius drag racing. Gotta luv it. If his parents could’ve seen it they would have a fit.

Heh. A few weeks ago I had a similar experience. Some kid in a car so bright yellow it hurt your eyes decided he could get up a hill from a stoplight faster than anyone else. I decided to teach him that his little 4-banger wasn’t up to beating an SUV with a V-6, so I started to push it, and even though he was a little faster off the line I caught up to him in short order.

The look on his face was priceless.

After that, I let off the gas and went back to driving the speed limit. Lo and behold, a couple of lights later, there he was, sitting and waiting when I pulled up to the light. He sure got a long ways ahead of me with his lead foot, didn’t he?

By: Tristan Yates

Tristan Yates — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:45:54 +0000

Great! I’m sure teaching kids how many polar bears are killed by selfish Americans driving to McDonalds will mae them much better drivers. Or at least keep them off the road.

When I was in my 20s I took motorcycle training – made me a much better car driver. I would bet that there’s lots of good solutions for encouraging people to be better drivers that just haven’t been tried. I don’t know why I, as a citizen, can’t report a bad driver to the motor vehicle bureau or their insurance company.