(90 day evaluation)

$250 night hotel
$150 day meals/drinks
$100 day etc

Pretty standard weekend out for a middle/upper class person.

Anyway it's an absurdly ridiculous fine. I will never drive through there and no one else should.

Community service and points.

I'm pretty much poor and I do that now. It's called a taxi.

Plug into the IRS, punch in social security number get persons net/taxable income. Not too hard. This isn't about rich/poor it's about income.

People talk about people trying to hide their money to avoid these fines....I doubt they are going to risk tax evasion charge to avoid a %00.4 fine they *might* get if they break the law (which is what a 200$ ticket @ $50k works out to be). If you are hiding taxable income you're looking at serious prison time.

Fixing the tax loopholes is another story.

I wonder if there is any precedent for that. I would think somewhere along the line someone has tried to scale fines to income in the US and had it challenged.

In Virginia a speeding ticket of 20mph over is pretty much an insurmountable feat for a poor person while it's a weekend out for a middle/upper class person.

Wish I had some mods points. That was a perfect reply.

So people of wealth and means will be subject to the horrific process of policing for profit and be able to force change instead of ignoring it because to them the fines are equivalent to their meal that night instead of groceries for a month for a poor person.

Traffic fines are the number one most regressive system we have in the US. Outrageous fines is a huge trap for poor people because while they are generally law abiding citizens they simply can't pay them and get caught in a never ending cycles of fines/suspensions/warrants/etc. Most courts offer no alternatives to paying the fine like community service etc. The best they will do is offer some payment plan through a for profit company.

Of course, you would never see such a system in the US because the poor are the only ones who gain something in that scenario and we all know about how the ruling class feel about them.

If they can figure out all of the other objects I would assume sensing white/red/blue flashing lights and pulling over wouldn't be an issue.

The legal aspect of this is kind of cool when you think about it. If you are being pulled over for a BS reason (lane drift/illegal lane change/following to close/etc) you have a mountain of data to bring to court to refute the claim.

The most interesting thing to me will be the ability to handle a traffic jam situation where the car needs to get to an offramp but no one will honor the signal and let them in which is the case in most metro areas. You *have* to be a jerk to get things done sometimes.

I have adaptive cruise control and a lot of other technologies that projects like this use (lane assist, blind spot warning backup camera/radar etc) and I can honestly say it has made me a much worse/lazy driver. I find myself constantly relying on these solely instead of a check on my natural abilities. This is with me consciously knowing relying on them is a really bad thing.

My anecdote may not apply to all but it certainly concerns me to the point of wanting to not use it. It reminds me of people in Oregon traveling to other states who have no idea how to pump gas because they do it for you by law there.

They work great though and it would be awesome to actually be able to only rely on them but I worry about the hybrid approach because they are merely driving aids at this point and I can see people using them as pseudo automated cars and the long term negatives outweighing the positives.

Pointing out that MJ is relatively safe (from accidental overdose) after decades of propaganda showing it to be a "dangerous" drug and comparing it to other "dangerous" drugs is a pretty important message.

Especially when you drop alcohol underneath the really nasty stuff.

It's making a really valid point. You put alcohol abuse up against MJ and the others for long term health affects you will probably see smoking climb the chart and fight alcohol for top run while MJ stays the same.

Really, it's what happens when you politicize a topic. All of the facts fly out the window and it becomes special interest and ideology.

It's the epitome of Colbert's 'truthiness' about the way he feels in his gut about the facts.

You say that like it's a real thing with alcohol.

The reality is that the needle pretty much swings right or left.

"we are working as fast as we can to re-enable the 207 million phones disabled in last nights vicious attack on 'merica"