How is this different from actual criminals that we lock up behind bars? Sometimes till the remainder of their lives. These aren't children, and the quicker we start treating them as adults, the quicker they'll learn to obey the laws before the real and life-changing consequences kick in.
Speed limits in the US have a particular problem. The speed limits are set too close to the speed people are expected to drive.
If the typical traffic speed on some highway is 65 MPH and someone is driving 76 MPH, that... isn't much different. It's not some night and day distinction where you can objectively say that 65 is perfectly safe and 76 is recklessly dangerous. The variation in stopping distance between those speeds is less than it is between one car and another from the same speed.
The normal way you resolve this sort of thing in the law is by setting a legal limit which is objectively reckless, e.g. by setting the speed limit to 125 MPH. Then you aren't actually expected to drive 124 MPH, you're still expected to drive around 65 MPH, but we can reasonably say that if you're caught doing 130 there you're deserving of some penalties.
However, that doesn't generate fine revenue because then hardly anyone actually drives that fast. What generates fine revenue is setting the speed limit there to 55 MPH even while the median traffic speed is still 65 MPH, and then doing only enough enforcement to make sure people don't follow the law. You maximize revenue when everyone is "speeding" all the time and all you have to do is post a patrol car there once in a while and rake in the dough. But that also makes it unjust to impose harsh penalties for it because then receiving a citation is a matter of bad luck rather than doing something outside the bounds of reasonable and expected behavior.
> You maximize revenue when everyone is "speeding" all the time and all you have to do is post a patrol car there once in a while and rake in the dough.
This is the major problem with speed limits in the USA. The speed limits are set to ensure easy revenue collection, not for safety. Nearly every single person on a given road is speeding, so they just send out officers and collect fines, regardless of whether or not the people fined are actually driving dangerously.
> The normal way you resolve this sort of thing in the law is by setting a legal limit which is objectively reckless, e.g. by setting the speed limit to 125 MPH. Then you aren't actually expected to drive 124 MPH, you're still expected to drive around 65 MPH, but we can reasonably say that if you're caught doing 130 there you're deserving of some penalties.
I can't think of any teenage boy I've ever known who would have driven anywhere near 65 mph if the speed limit were 125 mph, no matter how much they were told that people were "expected" to drive around 65 mph.
I don't doubt that you could further reduce the problem with stricter laws.
The question is, how much more are we willing to pay to do that? The US already incarcerates its population at a greater rate than most of the rest of the world (5th highest as of 2022).
If incarceration was really that effective, shouldn't we also have some of the lowest crime rates in the world? If that's not the case, then why should we think that doubling down on that strategy is likely to be effective?
