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Do you really want to give a person with severe cerebral palsy the RIGHT to drive a motor vehicle, when they can't even drive their powered wheel chair by themselves?
How about someone with late-stage Alzheimers disease, or Lou Gehrigs disease?
As always, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it, and the Law Of Unintended Consequences could very easily rare up and bite a chunk out of your "Rights"/
I was a Logistics/Transportation major, including Urban/Personal Transportation, as an undergraduate; and as it turns out, I'm going to have to struggle with physical issues impeding both operating a vehicle and walking longer distances in later life. Two points need to be emphasized:
(1) The options for those unable to drive, particularly outside urban areas, have been eroding since the widespread acceptance of the personal auto. The strongest single proof is the shrinkage of the intercity bus network. Lyft/Uber will help, but the limits to which it can develop haven't yet been determined.
(2) The constant babble from some quarters about "self-driving cars" has to be drawn into line with what advances in technology can and can not do. This thread isn't the place for it, but I could easily cite a half-dozen factors where the fantasies drawn from too much "George Jetson" and the afternoon talk-show promises (always from the non-technically-trained) that "A self-driving car will be here in five years" run up against hard realities.
But beyond that, most of the "pinch points" can be surmounted, or at least eased.
At this point it is a de facto right. In Texas, for example, you can get a hardship exemption to drive even after loosing your license for multiple DUI/DWIs. There was a woman in Austin who drove over and killed a man in a convenience store parking lot who was cited 5 times previously for driving without a license. The penalties for bad driving (aside from those involving intoxication) are so minuscule that they do nothing to reduce risky behavior. Drive through a red light while texting and hit and kill a pedestrian in the crosswalk will result in a misdemeanor if anything at all. I could go on.......
Also bad land use decisions related to suburban development patterns are a self-imposed hardship, and should not get much empathy. In the old days rural people did not go into town on a daily basis.
Do you really want to give a person with severe cerebral palsy the RIGHT to drive a motor vehicle, when they can't even drive their powered wheel chair by themselves?
How about someone with late-stage Alzheimers disease, or Lou Gehrigs disease?
As always, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it, and the Law Of Unintended Consequences could very easily rare up and bite a chunk out of your "Rights"/
I agree. My 80 year old father once drove his car down to the drive-in restaurant for breakfast in his town. Well...it wasn't a drive-in restaurant until he arrived that day.
Some people, for a variety of reasons, need to not be driving a car.
Living 20 miles from a store or 60 miles from work is a choice a person makes. No one forced them to make that decision.
Sorry, but this statement is absolutely untrue. There are many factors which could affect where a person lives or works. For instance availability of affordable housing or available jobs. Everyone can not live in the city. Often cheaper housing can be found farther away from your local city centers. Which is why many people with lower incomes tend to live farther away from the city. So while for some it may be a choice, for many others it's simply what they have to do in order to survive. Also, there are people like myself, whose work requires them to travel all over the place. Should I maintain several residences around the 60 to 80 mile radius that I must travel for work so that I can be within walking distance of home at all times? I think not. The point is, there are many factors which could come into play when it comes to where a person lives. It's not simply about choice.
It's a necessary individual right, just as other rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. I hate to think what the majority of thee posters on this thread think of the Second Amendment. I'm glad we had the Founding Fathers. If cars had existed in those days, driving would be a constitutional right.
You mean a right, by birth? That is too scary to imagine. Someone with no training, no knowledge of traffic laws, regardless of disability, could get behind the wheel. Needless to say, it would make it harder to get drunks off the road. The day it happens,I give up driving. Maybe walking as well.
Honestly, I have actually discussed this very issue before with a few of my friends and I for one agree with you. I mean, according to the law, driving is still considered a privilege. But I submit that in today's society it is pretty much a requirement that you have access to a motor vehicle in order to get where you need to go in a timely manner. Especially for people who live in rural areas. There are still people out there who live 20 or more miles from the nearest grocery store, and still more who live 60 or more miles from their place of business or employment. For those people, driving is an absolute requirement. And for that reason I feel driving should no longer be considered a "privilege". However, with that being said, I still believe you should be required to prove you have the ability to drive in a competent manner. Furthermore, there should still be a minimum age for driving and the authorities should still have the ability to enforce safe driving to the same degree that they do now. So honestly, I don't really think much would change if driving were given the status of a "right" instead of a "privilege". The bottom line is we would still have people who would disobey safe driving laws and have their "right" to drive interrupted or revoked.
PS. I voted wrong. Although I do believe driving should be a protected right, I also believe that "right" should still fall under the law and be subject to interruption or revocation if a person simply can not be trusted to drive a car. I mean, I believe in the 2nd amendment, but I also believe violent criminals should lose their right to possess or own guns. So I should have voted no in the poll. My mistake.
It's your choice where you live - if you can't drive then you can't live in a rural area without either public transportation, cabs, Uber, etc. Just like people who need a lot of healthcare end up moving closer to good doctors and hospitals... the hospitals don't move to THEM.
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