A high-hooded truck or SUV is far more dangerous to the public than a small car, and a small car is more dangerous than a motorcycle, so a speeding ticket/liscense points/jail time for an SUV should be >4x more severe than a motorcycle doing the same violation, and bicycles should basically only recieve token fines.

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[–] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

If you're going to do it this way, I think you missed the opportunity to do it actually right:

The problem is not just the size and it's not just speed but really energy. Penalties should scale as mass*speed^2^ (perhaps with an income multiplier) and for fairness it might be worth subtracting a reference safe energy otherwise your ticket for going 56 in a 55 is still way WAY higher than 30 in a 15.

An SUV that is 20x the weight of a motorcycle is 20x worse at a given speed, but the motorcycle going 200 mph and the 20x weight SUV are just as bad at slow highway speed.

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    The energy alone isn't the whole story, the bike or low-hooded car is much more survivable because of the lower point of impact.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Multiply again by h_CM / h_CMRef where the denominator is the height of the center of mass of a typical sedan.

    It just gets a little funky if, say, you're driving a sprayer that is multiple times taller so you couldn't collide with a reference vehicle anyway. Edge cases happen.

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