A Driving Utopia

Let me start out by saying that in most areas of life I am a libertarian. As long as you’re not hurting someone else, you should be free to do as you please. But there is one area of life that I am the most hardcore, totalitarian fascist known to man, and that is driving.

I love to drive, and will often hop in the car and go for a cruise (or at least I did back when filling up a tank of gas didn’t double the value of my car). But what turns me into a swearing maniac is all the morons on the road who are obstructing people who know how to drive and who are making things unsafe for everyone.

I will write other articles about these idiots and their behavior, but in this piece I am proposing a system to weed out the worst drivers, thus drastically cutting down on traffic, accidents and road rage.

The basic premise of my philosophy on driving is that good drivers tend to be intelligent people, and bad drivers tend to be unintelligent people. The easiest fix would to simply add an IQ test to the standard driver’s license test, and only grant licenses to people who have at least an IQ of 100 (average intelligence). Maybe 95 if we’re feeling generous.

But unfortunately, too many dipshits vote every year, so it might be hard to accomplish our driving utopia by implementing that system. While I think that most stupid people don’t know exactly how dumb they are (or else they would hardly ever say anything for fear of looking like a fool), I’m sure that their experience in grade school has at least clued them into the possibility that they’re not as smart as they think they are.

But we can use their inability to reason against them by installing a system that is too complicated to explain in 30 seconds on the evening news.

The first step is to develop a method to determine who the top 1% of drivers are. This goes beyond simply knowing what the signs on the road mean and a basic driver’s test. We need people who realize how traffic works, and how to increase the efficiency of the roads.

The test would probably just be driving around for about 3 hours or so, both in city and highway situations, and an observer recording whether you understand more advanced driving concepts. Those who pass the test are called Driving Enforcers.

For instance, if you are at stopped at a 4-way intersection, and are the first car in the right hand turn lane, you need to realize that when the people on your right hand side have a green arrow and are turning left in front of you, it is impossible that you will be hit when taking your right hand turn, so hit the gas and go.

The second preliminary step involves chemistry. Required is a paint that has two special characteristics. We need a paint that cannot possibly be removed, except when it is whipped off with a secret chemical solution that only the government will know the recipe for. The paint must also turn a different color after 3 days time (for the purposes of this article I will imagine that the initial color of the paint is blue, and after 3 days it turns red). You will see where I’m going with this in a minute.

After developing the special paint and finding enough top-tier drivers who will be enforcing the law, we are ready to begin. Their cars will be outfitted with a paintball gun on their hood, which can be aimed and fired by hand from the driver’s seat. They will be firing paintballs which use the special paint which we will have developed by this point.

Next we abolish all traffic laws that exist at this point in time, and replace them with the following:

§1 – All citizens over the age of 16 are permitted to drive in the state of _______ except for the following:
     (A) Any person who has been hit with paintballs by a Driving Enforcer on 10 separate occasions in the same calendar year.

§2 – Any person who falls under §1(A) shall:
     (A) If never before sentenced under this section, lose their license to drive for a period of 365 days.

     (B) If sentenced under this section in the past, lose their license for life.

§3 – Driving Enforcers shall fire their paintballs at a car when, in their best judgment, the person driving that car should not be on the road.

§4 – Within 72 hours of being struck with a Driving Enforcer’s paintballs, the motorist must go to an Enforcement Station to have the paint removed. If a driver is stopped by police and the paint has turned red, an automatic 30-day suspension of their license immediately takes effect.

     (A) When a motorist goes to an Enforcement Station, officials will remove the paint and record a tally on the motorist’s record.

§5 – Anyone found driving without a valid license will be jailed for 3 months.

 

If I’m missing something, please let me know in the comments, but as I look at it, these should be the only laws we need to properly control traffic.

Ok, now how does this all work?

We still teach kids how to drive like we would now. There are still stop signs and stop lights, but there are no other laws. So if its 3 in the morning and you’re sitting at a stop light, and you’re the only car in the vicinity, you don’t have to wait until the light turns green to make your turn. We allow people to use their intelligence to make decisions that allow themselves to get to where they are going in the most efficient manner.

But if you’re such a bad driver that the people who know how to drive best determine that you have no fucking clue what you’re doing 10 times in the same year, you shouldn’t be on the road. You’re a moron, or you’re old as fuck, and you’re pissing everyone else off.

Now of course everyone makes a bad move once in a while, or doesn’t notice the light is green and causes the people behind them to miss a light they should have made. But keep in mind that only 1% of the people on the road will have enforcement powers, and if you’re driving so bad often enough that you get paint-balled 10 times in one year, you suck. It’s not that hard to figure out.

Bad drivers cause accidents. I’m not saying that only bad drivers cause accidents, but I’m convinced that they cause most of them.

Bad drivers create traffic. If you’re in the left lane and you’re going the speed limit without anyone immediately in front of you, you are preventing people who know how to drive from getting to their destination as quickly as they should be able to.  And apart from simply getting rid of the people who are causing traffic, you have less cars on the road in general, further reducing traffic.

This is a green policy, in that many more people will be taking public transportation. Fewer cars means less emissions.

There will be less demand for gas, which will lower the price at the pump. 

It also removes the need for police for most situations on the road. Their only purpose will be to arrest people driving with red paintball marks on their car.

Once those on the bottom tier are removed from the road, things will get better for everyone. Less traffic, less accidents, less road rage.

I’m not a politician, I’m an idea guy. But we will eventually need politicians to run on this platform. We cannot have any other issue that we stand for, or we will divide our support. Once our movement has gained enough momentum to actually get this system in place in one of the states, the rest of the country will soon follow, as there will be very clear and convincing data available that this is the only way to operate a system of roads.

Share this with other people who know how to drive. It may take a few years, but together we can really improve everyone’s lives immensely.