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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29337 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

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I will register for the record, as a principled libertarian, that I am not sure whether his driving was, in actual fact, "reckless". It is possible to drive safely at that speed, if you are in an appropriate car, are driving in appropriate conditions, and are an appropriately-skilled driver highly familiar with your car.

Of course, I don't have enough information to judge if this guy was the right person with the right equipment under the right conditions, and if he wasn't then that's indeed pretty reckless.

He was cited for driving at that speed on Interstate 64 in New Kent County. From my travels there, I don't think that anyone could safely drive that stretch of road at that speed, regardless of their skill level. There are a lot of questionable sightlines.

Normally, recklessness involves danger to other people, not just to oneself. Quote from a court opinion that I posted recently:

Recklessness is distinguishable from negligence on the basis that recklessness requires conscious action or inaction which creates a substantial risk of harm to others, whereas negligence suggest unconscious inadvertence.

If nobody else was on the road at that time (on an Interstate highway, unlikely but not impossible), driving at extremely high speeds would be negligent but not reckless (under normal laws, not under this particular unusual law).

How does that work in situations where you believe the road would be empty, but a broken down car is right around the corner? Is there a test of reasonableness there, or is it a situation where the default assumption for a driver is that a broken down car is around every blind turn?

I can't find Virginia's definitions, but here are Pennsylvania's.

A person acts recklessly with respect to a material element of an offense when he consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the material element exists or will result from his conduct. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that, considering the nature and intent of the actor's conduct and the circumstances known to him, its disregard involves a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the actor's situation.

A person acts negligently with respect to a material element of an offense when he should be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the material element exists or will result from his conduct. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that the actor's failure to perceive it, considering the nature and intent of his conduct and the circumstances known to him, involves a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the actor's situation.

This Pennsylvania case seems highly relevant to the situation under discussion.

  • A motorist is driving at 55 mi/h on a road whose posted speed limit is 35 mi/h. At a sharp curve, he loses control and hits an oncoming car. He is convicted of reckless driving.
  • The appeals panel reverses.

    There is no evidence Appellant had any difficulties negotiating the road or came close to colliding with other vehicles prior to encountering the curve that caused him to lose control here. As such, and given that Appellant's speed was not so excessive as to itself create a high risk of accident, which could be imputed to Appellant by default, the evidence of conscious disregard, a key component of the willful and wanton [i. e., reckless] standard, is lacking.

    • Even when there are other cars on the road, driving at high speed can be merely negligent rather than reckless.

It's an Interstate highway. There aren't "blind corners" of the type you might find on a surface street. There are a few places Interstates do violate Interstate standards (e.g. I-70 and I-76 in Pennsylvania), but I-64 through New Kent County appears to be quite straight if a bit hilly.

Those hills catch you by surprise. I definitely went into a barely-controlled skid to avoid smacking into a small herd of deer cresting one of those hills once.

I'll agree with that in theory. In practice, note that "in appropriate conditions" requires "when the highway designers kept sight lines clear enough for that speed, including to any intersections or on ramps where someone might be trying to enter the highway after checking for traffic expected to be near the speed limit". Since highway designers never actually design for 115mph on purpose, you're pretty much stuck with places where it happened by accident, where the land was so flat and empty that you can't not see the road ahead of you for miles. I've had friends who enjoyed stretches of road like that in New Mexico, but I don't think any of them exist in Virginia.

My friends mostly enjoyed those stretches, I mean. One of them totaled his first car when a deer ran out into the road in front of him. In my experience most people who love driving that fast give other cars roughly the same consideration that he gave that deer, an implicit unexamined assumption that the highway ahead will be either clear or occupied by drivers doing the speed limit, that nobody will suddenly appear in front of them at surprisingly low or no speed. That assumption is usually correct, but it only has to be incorrect once.

I've had friends who enjoyed stretches of road like that in New Mexico, but I don't think any of them exist in Virginia.

Yeah, I guess this is where me being Australian starts to show up as relevant to my intuitions about this, because once you get a couple of hundred kilometres inland in eastern Australia (haven't been to the west) the highways start to look like "straight road for 50 kilometres, dead-flat wheat field for 100m on either side, no trees, mostly no large animals".

116mph is fast, but there's nothing magical about three digits in MPH. One of my cars had that as about its top speed and while driving that fast was LOUD, it doesn't cause you to lose control or anything. It's just that Virginia makes anything over 85 mph statutory reckless driving.

I added the caveats because, well, you can't do this safely in urban streets, or on a winding cliffside road in heavy fog. It also helps to know how your car actually handles at those speeds; stopping distance for 180 km/h is just a wee bit longer than for 110 km/h, and AIUI you also can't turn as rapidly without skidding. And I mean, I think some cars still exist that generate positive lift?

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