66 points

Many who do this have no choice but to drive or lose their housing, job, children, etc. But, this city seems to have an extensive public transportation network.

permalink
report
reply
17 points

I don’t live in Guelph, but I know a few who do, and have also briefly read from others complaints about the transit system in Guelph. Sure it’s better than it is in some other places in Canada, but that’s a looooow bar. Toronto has the best transit that I know in Ontario, and there’s still a lot of shortcomings with it.

Here’s an article that gives a bit more info on Guelph transit system. It seems that there’s some disagreement on whether it is actually “bad” or not in the article. To be fair, I’m biased as to what qualifies as a good transportation network, as most people from this community would be.

permalink
report
parent
reply
11 points

Even without that option, if a license is suspended, it usually is for a reason. And more often than not the reason is that the driver is not safe for the environment. The risk of losing whatever is dear to them if they lose the licence is a something that should have been taken into consideration before whatever lead to the suspension.

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points
*

Even without that option, if a license is suspended, it usually is for a reason. And more often than not the reason is that the driver is not safe for the environment. The risk of losing whatever is dear to them if they lose the licence is a something that should have been taken into consideration before whatever lead to the suspension.

Treczoks

Loss of security of employment, thus security of water, food, clothing, shelter, sleep, and defense for self and children, is not a humane punishment. It inhibits the individual’s ability to rehabilitate themselves. Perhaps you should’ve thought about this before demonstrating in public your lack of basic human empathy, now preserved in quote.

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points

If a person has harmed others, and is likely to do more harm in the future, it’s appropriate to remove them from society. This is why prisons exist.

Drivers licence suspension typically is the consequence of crimes that are too minor to warrant prison. In this case, the perpetrator has the chance to make changes to their life to avoid prison. For example, they can accept slow public transit, bike to work, get a closer job, move to a place where it’s easier to live without a car.

Obviously, It will be challenging for the perpetrator to reorganize their life in a way that does not require them to risk harming others, and many will fail.

But your argument that society is required to accept being victimized by dangerous drivers because it would be inhumane to force them to use alternative forms of transportation (used by millions of people too poor to afford a car, even in the most car dependent cities) is absurd.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Predicating your very survival on a privilege that you may not always be entitled to is hopefully something that will be bred out of the species in a few more generations.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Loss of security of employment, thus security of water, food, clothing, shelter, sleep, and defense for self and children, is not a humane punishment.

Here, at least, suspending a license is done only when a driver has definitely shown that he or she is a danger for other people. For somemone going through a school zone with 90km/h or driving completely drunk, I care more for the actual or potential victims of the driver than the drivers’ ease of transport.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Where is the human empathy if the suspended driver harms or kills another community memeber in a car crash?

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

My license was suspended in rural Michigan because I had a broken muffler. I fixed the muffler, but the fix wasn’t recorded correctly, and so I rec’d an administrative suspension of my license. …Which I didn’t even discover until I was pulled over a year later, and arrested. But there’s not any public transit in rural Michigan, and the distances too far to realistically ride a bicycle, which meant that I couldn’t stop driving to get to and from work. I kept paying my fines, but every time i had enough saved to pay the reinstatement fees, I’d get pulled over again (yay for having a shitbox car and living paycheck to paycheck, right?). Eventually I ended up in a place where I could bike to work, and ended up riding five miles a day to work in west Michigan for about a year, including through blizzards.

Don’t assume that licenses get suspended for reasons that have anything to do with the safety of the driver.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

OK, that sounds like a very American problem. They don’t suspend a licence just for fun in my country.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Extensive public transit hardly means functional. And women are far more likely to be harassed/abused on public transit than men.

permalink
report
parent
reply
17 points

Isn’t there someone like this in every town in the country?

permalink
report
reply
4 points

Which country?

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

Guelph is in Canada.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

I was taking a jab at their “the country”.

permalink
report
parent
reply
24 points

I wouldn’t be surprised if half of the people who lost their license are still driving. Losing your license in the first place, is not a sign of good decision making.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Loss of licence in a city built exclusively for car based transport isn’t going to be very successful in keeping people from driving

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Yeah, the drunks with several DUIs.

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

This was me for 8 years. I had multiple driving on suspended in multiple states. Finally paid everything off, which was a LOT of money, and got my license back. If you don’t have much money you really don’t have much of a choice if you live in a rural area.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Maybe if every town in the country has properly funded public transit that was safe and reliable, we’d see less situations like this.

My city’s of public transit is a joke and we wonder why there’s so many drunk drivers. Can’t even sleep off the booze in your car without getting a DUI from some dickhead cop.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

My town has several, they generally use their riding lawnmower instead of a car though.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points
7 points

Take away that car and auction it off. It’s the only way people learn. If it isn’t hers, well, tough luck if someone made it available to someone without a licence, and paying it back might teach her a lesson.

permalink
report
reply
-10 points
*

Does she need to work? Is commuting by public transit intolerably slower than driving a car?

It would justify the behavior.

permalink
report
reply
6 points
*

It would not justify it, you just like the excuse because you tend to do similar things. You are not entitled to murder others, especially those who aren’t responsible for your situation, in order to satisfy your “needs”. Cannibalism doesn’t magically become acceptable because you’re starving.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points
*

Pretty weird that you’re baselessly accusing this person of doing similar things just for asking whether or not she’s doing this in the absence of a viable transportation alternative.

Like why are people on this site such dicks? It’s way past Reddit levels of snark and it just makes for a shitty experience here. It’s like hanging out with a bunch of jaded and snarky IT guys.

I’m no fan of shitty drivers and I think if we live in a world where license suspensions are a thing, that’s fine but don’t be surprised when stuff like this happens when public transit sucks. It may exist but there’s a reason why a lot of folks prefer their car over poorly funded public transit.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

If your job is indirectly about murdering people, you’re just a soldier and this is war. It is the Nuremberg defense, the “I was just following orders” excuse.

I’m no fan of shitty drivers and I think if we live in a world where license suspensions are a thing, that’s fine but don’t be surprised when stuff like this happens when public transit sucks. It may exist but there’s a reason why a lot of folks prefer their car over poorly funded public transit.

Have you thought about why public transit is poorly funded and developed?

permalink
report
parent
reply

Some people, when given a choice between cannibalism and dying of starvation will choose the former. The ones that do may choose to regret it, but they are alive to have the capacity to regret.

At the point that you are struggling to survive, any society that does not immediately render aid is no society at all (not to you), and is either an enemy, taking resources you need, or prey.

I find it unfathomable that people imagine that poor people and untermenschen should just resign themselves to dying off. It explains why the working class might resort to terror attacks to assert their right to exist.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

but they are alive to have the capacity to regret.

Oh, wow, that’s so comforting to know: the monster feel a tinge of guilt. So, are you ready to die for someone else’s character development (best case)?

I find it unfathomable that people imagine that poor people and untermenschen should just resign themselves to dying off. It explains why the working class might resort to terror attacks to assert their right to exist.

The least one can do is understand the class war. You don’t punch down or to the side. You don’t do reverse-Robin-hood.

Aside from that, if all that’s left of this species is monsters, there’s no point to it.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Justify? Maybe not. But explain? Yes.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Well, it depends on whether you believe everyone is, to borrow from the US Declaration of Independence, endowed with inalienable rights.

Here in the States there’s actually a legal defense, Necessity . This is the same category under which self defense lies, that if a crime committed is necessary to preserve life and well being it may be justified or exculpable.

Usually the justifying life and limb cannot exceed the harm done by the crime. So in the case of cannibalism (which was mentioned elsewhere in this thread) one isn’t justified to kill someone else to preserve their own life, but if they happen to be dead already, it’s justified to eat their remains to live (as per the Donner Party incident – though in that case, they decided to eat their fallen after considerable deliberation)

It gets weird when, say, a mother breaks into a pharmacy and steals very expensive medicines in order to keep her kids alive because the price of the medications raises questions as to the value of a human life.

Now in the US, the courts are terribly corrupt, and thanks to prior incidents exculpation based on circumstances (e.g. Dan White’s twinkie defense) federal and state courts in the US are less likely to actually consider circumstances without some top lawyer guns making a big stink (usually hiring expert witnesses to painstakingly explain why those circumstances make a difference). So if you’re poor enough that you need to steal bread to live, you’re probably not going to benefit from a necessity defense, even when it should be valid.

Licenses are a wrongdoing against the state, and behaviors are licensed by the state allegedly in protection of the interests of the public. Licensed driving is to assure one is qualified to drive, so the wrongdoing against the community doesn’t happen until the driver is involved in an incident that brings harm to others (or to other public interests, such as the environment – driving into a lake would count).

But where this goes under necessity is that her occupation, and thus her survival may depend on her capacity to drive, and if the state is going to strip her of license, it has to take that into consideration, or deal with the consequences of motivating more crime.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Need money but have to waste time working? That justifys theft.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Getting a job takes months on average. And the way our current system works, you have to lie about experience to get your first job, and then upgrade a couple of times to get a living wage with survival benefits. That takes years.

You have to eat and sleep today. If you have ongoing medical requirements, your healthcare can’t wait for a job.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Fuck Cars

!fuckcars@lemmy.world

Create post

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let’s explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be Civil

You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speech

Don’t discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass people

Don’t follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don’t doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topic

This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No reposts

Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

  • [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
  • [article] for news articles
  • [blog] for any blog-style content
  • [video] for video resources
  • [academic] for academic studies and sources
  • [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
  • [meme] for memes
  • [image] for any non-meme images
  • [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories

Recommended communities:

Community stats

  • 4.5K

    Monthly active users

  • 542

    Posts

  • 9.2K

    Comments