Black boxes ?

Well JP

I can't disagree with you that limiting speed in this way can be dangerous under certain circumstances. That's why I said you'd have to work out certain aspects.

But to the extent we have speed limits on our roads, I don't see why it's abhorrent to enforce them. Are you saying that it's okay to have laws but that we must also have the ability to break them? Or are you against laws?

Very good points, AZ

I am NOT arguing that we should have the freedom to know what our neighbors are doing in their homes or even what they are doing in their cars. I used that only to illustrate the opposite, that simply because we like freedom, doesn't mean we are "free" to do anything we want.

Some of what you talk about is policy related - to what extent to do we as a society think it is prudent to collect certain information. As technology advances, we will have to decide what is appropriate. Other aspects get into the area of privacy. It will be up to the courts to decide what is legal.

I don't know if requiring black boxes in cars would be appropriate. We as a society will have to decide that. For me, I wouldn't mind. But I am not sure I would support mandating black boxes for people who don't want them. On the other hand, I am not sure that I would prohibit insurance companies from imposing a surcharge on those who refused to have them either, for example. It is a good issue to think about. I doubt requiring black boxes would be judged illegal. But I am not sure.

I agree, too.

I should have added that a perfect example of the absurdity of that article is its reference to:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the PEOPLE.

Right there - the purpose of the amendment was to ensure that a tyrannical federal government would not encroach wildly on the ability of the people through their state legislatures to enact (or not enact) their own rules. The idea is that, if the Constitution doesn't give the feds the authority to regulate something, the decision whether to regulate it belongs to the states. This is the interesting part: It in fact IS the states and not the federal government that decide who receives permission to drive and who does not. And that "right" as you call it varies from state to state and is modified all the time.

So on one hand the writer points to an amendment that he argues prevents the feds from regulating in this area and at the same time argues that there is a universal right to drive. Well if this is an area reserved to the states, where does the universal right come from - the Ukraine? The reasoning is contradictory.

AZ: none of those specifically mention who's driving....who the hell is gonna deny my right to ride in someone else's car? no one can deny you your right to travel, or use the public highways (as you have so preparedly pointed out), but they don't give YOU the right to be the driver...

additionally, how does this quote (from above) support your point? frankly, it looks like you're destroying your argument. > "...For while a citizen has the right to travel upon the public > highways and to transport his property thereon, that right does not > extend to the use of the highways...as a place for private gain. For > the latter purpose, no person has a vested right to use the highways > of this state, but it is a privilege...which the (state) may grant or > withhold at its discretion..." State v. Johnson, 245 P 1073.

john

You'll have to take up your complaints with the Judges who were the ones who have said we have that right. No one has said the state may not exercise reasonable regulation of that right just as there are regulations on many other rights, some that are MUCH more clearly spelled out as a right, such as gun ownership, or the right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure.

You must be joking if you think the gvt is restricting much of anyone from driving based on passing a test. It clear from what you see on any day on any highway that anyone with a pulse can get a drivers license......

And to continue....it is extremely difficult to take away that very easily obtained license for any reason. Look at the numerous old people who can barely see, have the reaction times of snails, and who have been signally a left turn for 20 miles.

The facts are against you. The courts have ruled we do have the right to private travel subject to REASONABLE regulation, just as with other rights. I would gather from your post that you either didn't read, or don't understand the 2 constitutional amendments that govern.

We have the right to travel and to do so in this day and age means the right to drive a car. I challenge you to fine ANY state where the "regulation", in the form of license testing, amounts to anything more then what anyone with a pulse could pass.

Perhaps you don't recall, but not all that many years ago the gvt DID put onerous requirements on the right to vote. One of which was the poll tax. Poor people couldn't afford to pay the poll tax and so were not allowed to vote. For MANY years that was considered perfectly legal regulation of what you call the "right to vote". As with ALL rights, they exist solely insofar as the courts allow them to exist, regardless of what the constitution may say OR NOT SAY about them.

The bottom line is that on the question of the right to drive, there ARE court rulings that support it as a right. If you don't agree, I would challenge you to find some court opinions that say it is not a right and post them here.

Or one might argue that, since we must be licensed to exercise the

You seem confused with the notion that rights are not absolute. Just because reasonable regulation is allowed does not mean something is not a right. Again, go back to the court rulings. If you wish to do more then opine, dig up some court rulings that support YOUR claims as I have done for mine.

Not at all. That paragraph is saying that COMMERCIAL use, i.e. the use for "private gain" is a privilege but that if the use is not for "private gain" then it is a right. In one of the rulings above they state "the legislative power is confined to regulation,". That's the same as is true of EVERY right we have. Name ANY right that does not have SOME limitation and/or regulation on it? Free speech? Can't yell fire in a crowded theater, can't incite to riot, etc. Just because regulation is allowed does not mean there is no "right". I don't see how it could be more clearly stated then the court rulings state it where they very clearly make the distinction between private use versus commercial use when they draw the line between what's a right that can only be regulated versus a privilege that can be completely denied.

The courts don't talk about it but to help the discussion you might consider the difference between things which MUST be done, such as "if you get 70% on this incredibly easy driving test the state MUST issue you a license"

versus

"if we like the color of your shirt we may issue you a license... or maybe we won't, we don't really know, but pay us $100 and get in that line over there and we'll let you know... if we feel like it."

The first is the reasonable regulation of a right. The second is the administration of a privilege.

Which one do you see the states doing when it comes to drivers licenses?

Do you have kids? Do you think they have any rights or do you think they have no rights but only those privileges you choose to extend to them? Apply the same two rules I outlined above to...

Do they have a right to be free of you beating them black and blue and breaking their bones? Lots of parents you to think their kids had no right to be free of such treatment. Have you checked with your states Child Protective SErvices agency lately?

DO they have a right to all the candy they want? Very few parents or anyone else would think they have that right but that IF their parents wish to extend to them the PRIVILEGE of having some candy, the parents may do so.

How do you view your relationship to your "state"? Is the state your parent and you some child that gets whatever privileges the state deems is appropriate to dole out to you?

Or are you the "child" that HAS rights regardless of what the "parent (the state)" might happen to think?

trying to imagine what the world will be like when the day comes when we have lost ALL ability to break ANY laws. I'm sure it will be a wonderfully safe place to be and everyone will just be thrilled to be living there. ... At least the ones who have not already slit their wrists. Some people seem determined to push us in that direction just as fast as they can with black boxes, speed limiters, GPS tracking devices, etc.

sounds like you're doing the job of a supreme court judge; i don't think that you--or anyone not on a federal level--can authoritatively interpret that 'in this day and age' the right to travel on the roads means drive.

you're talking about the jim crow laws in the deep south, AZ. there were also literacy tests at the polls, as well as other numerous atrocious methods to keep people (blacks in particular) from voting...and it was never considered legal, it was merely a corrupted system. those tests are certainly not legal now.

no, your court rulings grant the right to travel, not drive. they are not equivalent.

john

That's what I've been trying to get across in the drivers license - is it a right or privilege - thread. I don't recall which side of that you were on.

If insurance rates were actuarially based on any real difference between their loses from people with and without the black boxes that might be ok. However, from past experience we know insurance companies screw their policy holders in many ways, pretty much in any way they can that isn't prevented by the regulators. So the black box issue would just be one more way to screw one group of policy holders.

I must agree that the right to travel is incontravertible.... however, if driving a car to get there is the favoured mode of transport we can see that licencing requirements for both vehicle and driver have changed the right to travel into a privelege. We can walk without government approval.... ride a bus without government approval - but we can't drive without a licence and the car we drive needs a licence.

You lead me to understand that, in the US, everyone has the right to fly an airplane (one of your favourite reflections).... but we can plainly see licencing requirements there.... Both of our respective governments have certainly clouded the issue, but I must assert that rights are what we do without government intervention and privileges are those things we get to do after we pass a licencing requirement...... one of those requirements, sadly, is that we must obey some rules (GAD... even as a rightful pedestrian, I see there are some rules....).

I have offered a valid argument FOR data recording and all I see in return is rhetoric about rights and freedoms...... no mention of the rights and freedoms of victims of those sounding off about their own rights and freedoms. No... I'm not a right wing whacko, but I would much sooner trust my future to an impartial machine than an eyewitness that didn't like the colour of my shirt.

I hate trying to decipher "lawyer-speak"...... I get a chuckle out of "the right of locomotion"...... but it remains...... when you pay for a "right", it is automatically a "privilege". Your privilege to "locomotion" can be revoked for many, many reasons.

Well AZ, if you want to argue that driving is a right but that the government is free to regulate it, fine. Let's go with that: The government therefore has the power to require black boxes and take away the driver's license of anyone who violations that provision. And no one can object based on the principle that driving is a right, since rights can be regulated.

No you can't. There are laws against walking in the road, laws about which side to walk on, laws about where you may and may not cross the road, etc. ALL rights are subject to various laws and regulations.

.. ride a

You keep confusing the issue of how the gvt chooses to implement it's "reasonable regulations" with whether there is a right or not. It's a right no matter how they set up the "regulation". Just because they instituted a licensing system for drivers along with various laws and only implemented some laws for walkers doesn't mean both are not rights.

You can assert it all you want. That plus $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee. Now how about finding some legal basis for your claim as I did for mine.

one of those requirements,

As is your habit you confuse and mix together two separate issues. No one said the black box can't provide some benefit. The issue is not that. It is whether the owner of the vehicle being used in PRIVATE transport ought to have the right to decide whether the vehicle has a black box or not. I don't expect to change your mind but some people actually value their rights and are unwilling to just toss them aside like you and others are willing to do.

Next you'll be talking about how it's "for the children".

I'm sure the right-wing part is incorrect.

Great. But why are you not willing to let others have the choice and if they weight their concerns perhaps they will choose to go with the eyewitness who might say "Yeah, but the reason he hit the other guy wasn't because he was speeding, even though the BB says he was going

60 in a 50 zone, it was because of the third car that almost ran him off the road and disappeared over the hill. Yeah, I'm sure I'd rather have 5 seconds of data and just forget anything the witnesses say.

Please provide something other then your assertions to back that up. It's patently false based on ACTUAL court rulings.

Then cite a court case that disproves the earlier cases. In all the years I"ve been hearing this nonsense that "it's a privilege" I have never once found anyone who makes that claim post a single citation in support of the claim. Will you be the first?

When you say "it was never considered legal", what do you mean? It certainly was considered legal, that's why it took many years and many challenges to finally get courts to rule against it. All laws are "legal" till a court of final authority says they are not.

You are exactly correct. As I said earlier, the only rights you have are what the COURTS are willing to let you have since it is they that speak for the constitution. However, if someone goes to court in an attempt to overturn a law mandating black boxes they will have a much better chance of success if all parties, including the court, acknowledge it as a right, not a privilege, because then they have to argue about whether the regulation is reasonable. If courts only consider it a privilege, then you have very little you can go to court over since privileges, by definition, can be granted or withheld at the whim of whoever has the greater power, which is always the gvt.

I asked the question earlier - do you exist as a slave to the gvt, subject to the gvts whims, being granted or not granted whatever privileges your gvtment deigns to hand you? Or do you have rights?

I am not against laws. Laws do protect as well as constrain us.

Enforcement of laws is one thing, preventing you from making a choice in the speed you can drive goes too far. I would prefer not to be a puppet on a string. God could have made the world without sin and we could be his little puppeteers, but He didn't. In the same vein, our laws should mirror Gods approach and guide us not control us.

JP

So, to avoid being puppets on strings and to suit god's purpose, we must of the means to break the law. That really is what you want to argue, huh?

Should everyone be allowed to carry pipe bombs? Or CAN we eliminate those means to break the law? What if I think god requires me to have a bomb because he gave me hands capable of carrying it. Is that okay? How about anthrax? Can we have that to fulfill god's purpose or just to prove we aren't puppets? Machine guns? Nuclear weapons. Geeze, take away those nukes and what puppets we will be? We will have no dignity as human beings and will be relegated to nothing more than hamsters in little wheels... Is that it?

So we have to have the means to break the law because god didn't prevent us from having them?

Well, I'll tell you what, are need to find yourself a better god. I can see nothing in the Constitution or anywhere else to suggest that we, as a society, must allow our neighbors to have the tools to violate the rules that we are required to follow.

If you want to posit a scenario where we have no dignity as human beings, consider what it would be like if we had ZERO way to break any laws as that seems to be the world you would like to live in. We would have no knives, no guns, no ceramic's because we could break them and make sharp edges, no razor blades, nothing at all sharp, nothing heavy could be allowed to be available to us least we hit someone with it, all baseball bats would be burned, our tongues would have to be removed least we say something illegal, no cars of course since it's impossible to use one without breaking several laws inadvertently, and on and on. We pretty much would all have to be put in cages and god knows how we would be feed unless it was by machine since there would be no way other then with robots to allow any "thing" to be running loose since anything sentient running loose would have the capability of breaking a law.