“An obscure federal rule is slowing the self-driving revolution. When trucks break down, operators are required to place reflective warning cones and road flares around the truck to warn other motorists. The regulations are exacting: Within 10 minutes of stopping, three warning signals must be set in specific locations around the truck.
Aurora asked the federal Department of Transportation (DOT) to allow warning beacons to be fixed to the truck itself—and activated when a truck becomes disabled. The warning beacons would face both forward and backward, would be more visible
than cones (particularly at night), and wouldn’t burn out like road flares. Drivers of nonautonomous vehicles could also benefit from that rule change, as they would no longer have to walk into traffic to place the required safety signals.
In December 2024, however, the DOT denied Aurora’s request for an exemption to the existing rules, even though regulators admitted in the Federal Register that no evidence indicated the truck-mounted beacons would be less safe. Such a study is now underway, but it’s unclear how long it will take to draw any conclusions.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/19/feds-pump-the-brakes-on-autonomous-trucks/
“The law demands a motorist come to a complete stop at a stop sign, no matter if any cars are coming. Traffic lights can offer an advantage: Some use magnets to detect traffic loads, but others run on timers, switching to red even if there’s no traffic going the other way. In either case, traffic lights can malfunction, turning into a de facto stop sign the same way a broken escalator becomes an expensive staircase. Besides, frequently stopping, starting, and idling wastes time, wastes gas, and puts unnecessary wear and tear on your brakes.
But at a roundabout, motorists keep driving through the intersection so long as it’s safe to do so. This sounds risky, but since everyone slows down a little bit and every car is constantly turning, roundabouts significantly lower the risk of high-speed impacts. “The net result of lower speeds and reduced conflicts at roundabouts is an environment where crashes that cause injury or fatality are substantially reduced,” according to the U.S. Federal Highway Administration.
Further, roundabouts are perhaps the least infantilizing form of traffic control. Red lights are just crossing guards for adults, and stop signs require you to wait your turn even if you’re the only one waiting. Roundabouts are more efficient because they let drivers rely on themselves, not an inert piece of infrastructure.”
https://reason.com/2025/08/14/swindon-united-kingdom/
U.S. roads are more dangerous for pedestrians than roads of other countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m99ecBUmcU
“Half of all drunk drivers who are involved in fatal car wrecks are extremely intoxicated—sitting at BAC levels of 0.15 or higher. In contrast, only 16 percent of those involved in fatal wrecks have BAC levels under 0.08 (and the number is even lower for those specifically in the .05 to .07 range who would presumably be impacted by a switch to a .05 legal limit).
The worst drunk driving perpetrators are also often repeat offenders who appear to be impervious to any legal limit. About 30 percent of DUI arrestees in Utah had a prior arrest for drunk driving and 10 percent had two or more arrests. This is the political reality that few want to address. The couple who has a couple of glasses of wine with dinner is not the problem—it’s the person who is well over the legal limit and often a repeat offender who is causing the majority of carnage on American roads. In fact, even Candace Lightner, the founder of MADD is against the proposal, stating that “running around trying to arrest everyone at .05 is impractical.””
https://reason.com/2024/09/21/will-cutting-the-bac-limit-to-05-really-make-our-roads-safer/
Business owners are buying into a bogus myth about driving
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/354672/hochul-congestion-pricing-manhattan-diners-cars-transit
American drivers are now even more distracted by their phones. Pedestrian deaths are soaring.
https://www.vox.com/24078289/us-drivers-distracted-driving-cellphone-road-deaths-pedestrians
“Motorists caught speeding in Peninsula, Ohio, have options: They can pay with Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or PayPal. But if they want to dispute a ticket, the flexibility ends.
Before vehicle owners can appear in municipal court to defend themselves, they must pay a $100 “filing fee.” No exceptions. No discounts. No deferrals. It’s the cost of admission—roughly the same as a one-day ticket to Disneyland.
Many drivers skip the expense and plead guilty, which works well for Peninsula. In just the first five months after launching a handheld photo radar program in April 2023, this village south of Cleveland generated 8,900 citations and $560,000 in revenue. That’s an average of about 1,800 citations and $110,000 in revenue per month.”
https://reason.com/2023/12/05/want-to-challenge-your-speed-camera-ticket-thatll-be-100/
“Nicole Harper, pregnant with her daughter, was driving her SUV home on a Arkansas freeway in July 2020 when Arkansas State trooper Rodney Dunn decided to stop her for allegedly driving 84 in a 70 mph zone. He turned on his lights in an attempt to make her pull over.
Following what she understood to be standard safe procedure in this situation, Harper moved into the right lane, slowed down, turned on her hazards to indicate to the officer that she understood what was going on, and was seeking a safe shoulder or exit to pull over.
No sane person could have imagined, given Harper’s behavior, that she was involved in any active attempt to escape the raw justice of a speeding ticket. Fewer than two or three minutes had passed since the cop first turned on his lights.
Corporal Dunn was having none of that. Using an insanely dangerous strategy that police in Arkansas are using more and more—144 times last year, double the number of times the year before—he slammed into her SUV causing her to hit the concrete median, flipping her SUV. The practice, called the “precision immobilization technique” (PIT), killed at least three people in 2020.”
“State transportation codes include hundreds of rules governing the operation and maintenance of motor vehicles. Many of them are picayune (e.g., specifying acceptable tire wear, restricting window tints, and dictating the distance from an intersection at which a driver must signal a turn) or open to interpretation (e.g., mandating a “safe distance” between cars, requiring that cars be driven in a “reasonable and prudent” manner, and banning any windshield crack that “substantially obstructs the driver’s clear view”).
“The upshot of all this regulation,” University of Toledo law professor David Harris observed in a 1998 George Washington Law Review article, “is that even the most cautious driver would find it virtually impossible to drive for even a short distance without violating some traffic law. A police officer willing to follow any driver for a few blocks would therefore always have probable cause to make a stop.”
In the 1996 case Whren v. United States, the Supreme Court said such stops are consistent with the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures even when the traffic violation is merely a pretext for investigating other matters. If an officer stops a car for a traffic violation in the hope of finding illegal drugs or seizable cash, for instance, that is perfectly constitutional, even without any evidence of criminal conduct.”