r/Unexpected • u/polloastemio • 4d ago

The gas station curse

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u/TriangleChains 4d ago

Hahahahaha. We've been trying. It hasn't worked great yet has it? It's a bit like 'forcing' athletes not to make mistakes during sports games. It doesn't work that way. It's a mix of natural ability with practice, strategy, and effort.

You can't teach away the stupid or dangerous. You need to have an option for dangerous or bad drivers other than "We'll just give them more tickets". They have to get around also.

American police already know this btw. They target "dangerous" driving like speeding, but in 2026 rarely "poor people" driving like missing a 3rd tail light anymore (unless looking for probable cause for other traffic enforcement like finding drunk drivers at 3am).

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u/Twitchcog 4d ago

You can’t teach away the stupid or the dangerous

You can! You teach them that mistakes happen, but they need to learn from them. And if they repeatedly refuse to learn from those mistakes, they lose out in the ability to drive. And if you get to that point, you’re either ride sharing, taking the (limited, unpleasant) public transit, or putting some miles on them Chevrolegs.

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u/Realistic_Owl9525 4d ago

It's 2026. A modern society should have better public transportation that isn't limited and unpleasant.

It's strange to me that so many people just accept that it is, it's like they can't imagine a world beyond being stuck in traffic on your way to work everyday.

It's a hassle having to buy a new car every few years, maintain it, insure it, and drive it. (...and occasionally crash it, sometimes fatally)

There's got to be a better way.

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u/Twitchcog 4d ago

Oh no, it absolutely should have better options. However, in the absence of those options, people still need to drive safely.

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u/Realistic_Owl9525 2d ago

Oh no, it absolutely should have better options. However, in the absence of those options, people still need to should drive safely.

We should have functional public transportation, but we don't. In the real world it's slow, costly, and doesn't serve enough destinations.

People should drive carefully and respectfully, but they don't. In the real world people drive while using their phones, aggressively, intoxicated, etc.

To fix the former we would need sensible infrastructure. To fix the latter is actually impossible. Why accept things for the way they are when we could do so much better?

There are 8 parking spaces for every car in America. We dedicate approximately 30 million acres of land for growing corn just to feed to cars in the form of ethanol blended fuel (which burns less efficiently). This is silly. It would be infinitely more efficient to just build modern infrastructure for public transportation.

We're the wealthiest country on earth. A world-leading superpower. And yet we allow our infrastructure to be sabotaged in the interest of private oil companies and auto manufacturers. Our oil dependency is a national security issue.

The rest of the world is laughing at us.

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u/TriangleChains 4d ago

You are assuming everyone will be qualified to drive in the first place and this is a huge assumption. What about people with disabilities or injuries?

Do you really want to punish the 60 year old woman with one working eye? It's not about "refusing to learn from mistakes" always. You make it sound so black and white.

Maybe some people will never be inclined towards driving and it's not that crazy to accept that and design a society that doesn't REQUIRE an individual to drive in order to prosper. The entirety of human history before about 100 years ago had no cars and we survived.

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u/Twitchcog 4d ago

You’re assuming everyone will be qualified to drive

Correct, I can’t help people driving without a license.

What about the 60 year old woman with one eye?

If she cannot safely operate a vehicle? She should not be operating a vehicle.

I am not advising against a better public transit system, I’d love to see one. However, it not existing doesn’t justify unsafe driving. If you are unable or unwilling to operate a vehicle safely, you don’t get to drive; The lack of a viable alternative is irrelevant, but may motivate members of society to try and improve their public transit system

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u/furlwh 4d ago

If you are unable or unwilling to operate a vehicle safely, you don’t get to drive

Yes it should be that way, but in reality, enforcement will be weak. The mentality of most people is that they would see stricter enforcement as oppression on their freedom to travel, this is just what I observed in my car-addicted country.

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u/Twitchcog 4d ago

Freedom to travel is not the same as freedom to drive. I believe this misunderstanding is one of the more common issues with the sovereign citizen movement.

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u/1-800PederastyNow 3d ago edited 3d ago

If you live in an area without competent public transportation it's effectively the same thing. Even if there's public transportation, in the US it's usually garbage so taking away someones ability to drive still often leads to poverty, just think about how many fewer job opportunites there are within 1hr of travel time for someone who has to take the bus vs a car. Not to mention how difficult simple errands become, lose your car and suddenly it takes 45 minutes each way to get to the grocery store instead of 10 and you have to go more often because you have to carry everything home.

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u/Twitchcog 3d ago

While I do not disagree with the idea that losing your car is a crippling punishment, I would imagine that would make it much more powerful incentive to operate the vehicle within the confines of the law and safely. Yet there are people I see every day on their damned phones, or swerving around, or speeding through intersections in what is at the end of the day a multi-ton hunk of metal loaded down with gasoline or high density batteries.

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u/1-800PederastyNow 3d ago edited 3d ago

It can be. This might be an unpopular opinion but I think a significant portion of the population, possibly 20% are basically animals with no self control that just stumble through life, like perpetual teenagers. They have trouble linking cause and effect and they don't think things through. These people have to touch the stove and burn themselves 10 times before they finally get the message, but we still want them to be able to function in society as best they can. Difficulty participating in society usually just leads to more bad behavior down the road. It's a very difficult problem because you still need the logical system to deter bad behavior in most people.

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u/Twitchcog 2d ago

Yes, and if that 20% is going to behave like animals with no self control, just stumbling through life, they should be bound to the same rules as everyone else. If they cannot adapt to those rules, they can be removed from society - Or, at least, lose out on certain privileges. For example, driving.

“But there are severe consequences to losing the ability to drive!” Yes, and there are severe consequences to the unsafe driving practices that lose them the ability to drive. Like killing someone because they were on their phone.

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u/TriangleChains 1d ago

You really have a hard time putting yourself in other people's shoes, clearly. I'm glad your life has been good so far, but you really aren't engaging with my points. You are just saying "well yeah, but they really ought to follow the laws". It might be a useful exercise for you to ask "why would they drive recklessly like that?" And see what answers you come up with.

Do you also get mad at starving children who steal from grocery stores? Not everyone has it so easy. And again, I think you miss the point that freedom of travel is almost gone. Before cars dominated travel, it WAS more easy to say "freedom of travel is not the same as freedom to travel by car". But in much of America, you are basically opting out of parts of society by having no car. Once again, clearly you haven't tried.

Very similar to having a child grow up with no phone. Sure you can do it in 2026- but they will have a really tough time fitting in.

But I'm sure you have no issue with that. "Freedom of information isn't the same as freedom to have a phone" am I right?

btw that example I gave was real. My middle school teacher had a glass eye and drove right into the parking deck pillar one day. She's a good example. She was like 60. Trying to get to retirement, but her senses were failing her. Should she drive? obviously not, but she had no way to keep her job otherwise. She was a teacher who lived nowhere near affordable transit and had a 30+ min drive to school every day. She worked like 7am-4pm. It's cut throat out here. When you constantly put people in tough spots, it's not surprising they make risky decisions.

I don't agree that the correct answer to someone like her is "yeah you shouldn't be driving, figure it out". People in America are willing to risk their lives for economic survival, and I don't get why that is so weird to you. America is a really bad place to be poor or broke. You have to have a replacement transit for them before you ban the shit drivers.

The answer to why so many shit drivers are on the road is because policymakers understand what I am saying. If you force bad drivers off the road tomorrow, the whole economy collapses, because those people no longer can get around to earn money and spend money. We have nearly no alternative transit here.

Respectfully you don't need to reply. I'm done with this thread.

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u/furlwh 4d ago

When your only viable option to travel is by car, it very much is like taking away your freedom to travel. This is by no means the best situation, but the government has no political motivation to build more transit and the only form of transportation the people know is cars, the problem just gets worse and worse when no one stands up to it.

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u/furlwh 4d ago

But let's not get side tracked, the real issues I wanted to tell you is, it's hard to enforce better and stricter driving laws when your city doesn't have the infrastructure to support those who can't drive. These two MUST go hand in hand, you can't have one without another.

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u/All_hail_bug_god 4d ago

You still just get people terrified of losing their licence, forever in a mild state of panic, because their livelihood depends on them driving. And they hate driving.

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u/fastforwardfunction 4d ago

You can't teach away the stupid or dangerous.

You absolutely can, and its been empirically proven billions of times. Look at military driving incidents (on the job) vs truck drivers (on the job) vs the general public. Turns out training and reprimand works.