My solution is to add lower classes of driver’s license with maximum curb weights, and making the current driver’s license nearly as strict as a CDL.

So, you’d have a class that’s moderately strict that would give you Geo Metros, and then you’d have a class that’s the current lax standards that would give you European quadricycles (speed limited to 50 mph, power limited to around 20 hp, weight limited to around 800 lbs). Maybe no license would get you a light quadricycle (speed limited to about 30 mph, power limited to about 6 hp, weight limited to around 350 lbs), so you could still get to work even without a license, but a crash == you die.

But how about the “scantily clad” bit from the newscasters?  What this lady wears in pictures she puts on facebook has absolutely nothing to do with how she drives. An obvious and despicable use of slut-shaming.

Another time, a lady with a child in the back was driving 1-2 mph on the freeway offramp while talking on the phone, so I honked to get attention and passed her.  She followed me to the supermarket parking lot, noted my licence plate, and called the police and I got a nice visit from an officer at home (who was nice to me, btw).   It’s incredible.

The coasts use the pack-a-pipe + roll-sushi kneedriving test.

So yes, she could possibly harm you, but not any more than the rest of the collection of assholes tailgating each other on the freeway constantly. 

And it will continue to be this way until as a nation we get serious about driver responsibility. Today, a driver can kill a person through their recklessness and get away scot-free with a $40 traffic ticket.

Penalties need to match those that exist for the same outcomes for non-driving offenses, and we need to treat driving like the privilege it is, rather than as an “unalienable right” as we do now. Much more intensive driver training, both initial and recurrent, as well as stepping up enforcement and penalties (including taking away privileges for multiple violations, for greater lengths of time and for fewer violations than is the standard today).

(Bonus side-effect: by taking driving seriously, we would eliminate a significant portion of the motorists on the road, solving congestion problems in major cities without laying a single mile of new pavement).

People laugh at a person like the one in this article, or even call her out for being worse than average, but the fact is even the average driver is pretty damn irresponsible and poorly trained. Drunk driving is awful, but it’s shocking that about half of the deaths each year are caused by drivers who are stone-sober.

Not funny.  

She couldn’t talk on the phone while driving but she could text. And argue. When I sent her a text that said “WRONG NUMBER”  she sent a lengthy reply about how she knew her friend hadn’t changed her number so I was the one who was mistaken. I didn’t make any further effort because I was afraid of indirectly putting other people in danger.