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Crazy. Apparently your friend is not the first person, news story from February 2023: https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/little-known-maryland-law-requires-people-with-sleep-apnea-to-report-diagnosis-to-driving-authorities/3272929/
This is probably because driving is treated as a "privilege" by the state.
Driving should be treated as a privilege. I'm more opposed to safetyism than the median person, but it still surprises me that we came up with a norm that operating one specific class of heavy machinery is basically a right that's hard to remove, even for individuals that are incompetent or repeatedly demonstrate that they will drive while inebriated. Tens of thousands of otherwise young, healthy people die in vehicular accidents annually and it remains an entirely niche issue to even think about traffic safety.
This doesn't get me to the point of favoring this particular sort of intrusion, but I generally think licensing is far too liberalized.
I'd prefer if driving with insurance was treated as a right. And that car insurance companies were allowed to price in all relevant information.
I get the dangers of vehicles, I avoid dangerous drive times, avoid highways if I can take slower roads, and generally follow all rules of the road. I've gone 15 years without a ticket for a driving infraction. And I've never been in an accident worse than a fender bender at the wheel.
The state can be a bit of a sledgehammer with things. Sleep apnea and bad sleep can increase your risk of causing an accident, but the state is applying a one size fits all solution: take away the license.
The price of admission to driving on shared roads should be to compensate others for the risk you pose. If the risk you pose becomes too large then it will be too expensive for you to drive.
The underclass already elects to just skip insurance, so I'm pretty skeptical of making much headway on this without dramatically changing enforcement mechanisms in a way that looks pretty similar to just taking away licenses from the incompetent. Years ago, I got T-boned by an uninsured motorist that ran a stop sign and they didn't even receive a ticket before driving away. Anarchotyranny gonna anarchotyranny when it comes to vehicular law enforcement.
Years ago I read a suggestion that you should be legally required to provide proof of insurance when buying petrol, and the petrol station should refuse your custom if you can't.
The proposal was made before smartphones, I can imagine all kinds of ways it could be implemented nowadays. Like you download an app from your insurance provider and the app displays a QR code which the petrol station scans, and if the scanning fails then the petrol nozzle locks.
I’ll make a bunch of money reselling petrol to the uninsured at mark-up.
How? Are you currently making a bunch if money selling contraband?
Will you fill up a bunch of 5 gallon cans and sell it out of your garage?
I own a gas station.
Legitimately one of the funnier Motte exchanges I've seen in awhile. Good lesson in assumptions!
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