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I just heard what I think is a terrible atrocity (granted on the much milder-end of terrible atrocities) that no one seems to know or care about. Apparently Maryland requires that if you have been diagnosed with sleep apnea:
Failure to do this will result in your driver's license being revoked.
This really makes my blood boil. I found out about this because my friend in Maryland is one such person affected by this, with her extremely mild case of sleep apnea (that probably 75% of Americans actually have). She didn't bother with or really need the CPAP, but now, the DMV found out, and is threatening to revoke her license, so she has no choice. Hell, I'm a person who's been diagnosed with very mild sleep apnea, but I chose to not use the CPAP machine, because I couldn't stand having an intrusive device strapped onto my face with tubes running on my bed, pushing air down my throat all night every night. Provided I didn't sleep on my back, I was completely fine, and I didn't need to use the device at all. Since then, I've lost weight, and I don't have sleep apnea anymore, or at least not as much, but I don't even know if they ever declare someone as "no longer having sleep apnea", or if I'd actually pass that threshold, or if the DMV would care. My only saving grace is that I don't live in Maryland, but man, this makes me so scared about what might come next, and how long I'll get to keep my driver's license for before this either comes to my state, or some other health-related driving restrictions start cropping up.
This seems like such rampant safetyism to me that it honestly makes me so angry, probably angrier than I should be. I guess this seems like such government overreach, much in the same way as covid restrictions. Except that these restrictions really could last forever, and expand to other states, and never go away, unlike the covid restrictions. Did Maryland honestly have rampant cases of drivers falling asleep because they were so tired from their sleep apnea that they needed to mandate an intrusive, ongoing, never-ending medical treatment to save people from crashing their cars? Does this help anyone at all, or were they just looking to do some security theater?
I really want to do something to fight this before it expands. Is this the sort of thing the ACLU would take up the fight for? Are there any organizations that would actually fund and spearhead a class action lawsuit for this sort of thing?
This is among the things that governments can get away with under the ridiculous excuse that this is a licensing issue and not a criminal one. This is directly downstream from every liberty-infringing restriction designed to punish drinking and driving, and comes from exactly the same place and for exactly the same reason. The same reason why refusing to take a breathalyzer in the field can get your license suspended despite not being found guilty of anything is why they think they can use the same cudgel to beat another group of people.
I had not heard of this rule, but I could hardly have asked for a better example of why you never let the government start sliding down the slippery slope. DUI laws are among some of the worst offenders.
How is this a 'ridiculous' excuse? The road network as it is today only exists thanks to the government, why should it then not be able to regulate who can drive, and how they can do it, on the roads they are largely responsible for? I for one am glad to be free (or freer than I otherwise would be) from a drunkard killing me in his car, all so that a few cranks can delude themselves about how much liberty they have.
I think it's close to a ridiculous excuse because the ability to drive has such a major impact on people's lives, and so so much infrastructure for the past century has been based on the assumption that you have a car. It's really hard to live without a car if you're not in New York City or certain other urban areas on that scale. I think it could easily destroy someone's life if they rely on their car for getting to work (and for some jobs for work directly), for groceries, for dropping off and picking up kids, for seeing relatives, for going to doctor appointments, for taking care of friends and family, for getting to hobbies, etc, and suddenly tomorrow they're told that they can no longer do this for any reason other than them posing a legitimately imminent threat in some way.
Interesting euro/American contrast here - fewer Euros would tolerate living in a place where you can only "exist" (ie do normal stuff like go to work, go to school, see friends, buy groceries, etc) with the help on a car, so this dilemma doesn't arise as much over here.
That is, I fully accept that freedom of travel should be a fundamental right, but also agree that driving a car is not - it's something you do on the state's sufferance.
These two principles don't often conflict in Europe, but it's a damn hard dilemma. Probably it's easier to solve with AI driving than by rebuilding most of your cities
Easiest way to solve it would be to make America greater than ever before, with population size and density that would make car heavy suburban lifestyle impossible.
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