I was speaking to my partner about roads being privatized, and I was able to make an argument up to one point. When I got to talking about how 40,000 people die on government roads, she stopped me. She wanted to know how that these roads killed people. She was saying those deaths are “mostly from drunk drivers, people on cell-phones, road rage, and aggressive driving”.
Where does the 40,000 number come from? What evidence do we have that it’s government roads killing people?
Check the appendix.
Those are all proximate causes, the actual cause is whomever is in charge of the roads. Those problems occur because the managers have failed to adequately address them.
I’m not sure that you can directly attribute those deaths to the government. On the other hand, it makes a case for the inherent inefficiency in government regulation.
I’m not sure where you got that figure from. This website agrees with you though (42,815). The website’s source is FARS, which says that in 2008 a total of 37,261 people died on highways. The same website says that in 2008 23,317 fatalities had a BAC (Blood Alcohol Concentration) of .00%, while 2,072 had a BAC of .01% and 11,773 (32%) had a BAC of .08%+ (which is illegal). A total of 4,229 died in truck related incidents (unknown whether related or not to BAC), including 413 nonmotorist. Of the original figure of 37,261 for 2008, 5,282 were nonmotorists.
The argument you should make is that a private highway system would have incentives to make sure that the most efficient measures are taken to guarantee the safety of the clients which used the highway (in regards to roads, the case might be difference, since the owner of the road may not necessarily be making a profit off other people using it—as is the case in rural Spain). In these cases, the incentive would be the person’s own safety, or the safety of loved ones, which makes regulation on their property lucrative. Heavily travelled roads would probably ultimately turn commercial, though (because, the owner would probably want to make another income).
Thanks all for the responses. I shall check out that book and the information on the sites Johnathan supplied.
For what it’s worth, I don’t agree with this argument by Block. I think that politicians are not only able to reduce the numbers of deaths on roads but have something of an incentive to. Making roads more safe is a technical question in the more narrow sense of the word, the government can literally get together the brightest minds and figure out how to make roads more safe. What the government cannot do is obtain the necessary information regarding the preferences of consumers. It can’t figure out whether people actually care about how safe the roads are and what the cheapest way of producing good roads is.
They have no incentive to reduce the deaths on the roads at all. Traffic accidents and such means good court business!
I suppose this isn’t proven until it’s actually tested, right? I guess the same can be said for Block’s theory.
Do you have anything to back this up?
I’m sure if you’d bother to read Block’s book and/or listen to him do a talk on the subject, he would answer all of your questions.
I agree with you to an extent, especially in regards to smaller, city streets (as opposed to highways). The local government will respond to a local demand for a stop sign, because the local population will lobby for it. The problem is in efficiency, and I don’t think that the government (whether local or national) is efficient. I don’t think speed limits are necessarily correct, and streets where speed limits should be enforced don’t even have them! (Streets where children play, near their houses; this is usually enforced by the people living there, who put up signs of their own.)
I think I basically agree with you. There are several programs which have markedly reduced the amount of traffic accidents. For example, in Spain the new national driver’s license “by points” has decreased highway deaths by nearly half (at least, at first: I don’t live there any longer, so I’m not sure if it has gotten any worse). Is this the most effective response, though?
A little off-topic, but I have thought up a better title for the book:
The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions
What is the manager supposed to do about people who text or talk on their cell phone while driving? I don’t see how pristine road conditions are going to stop people from doing this.
It’s not up to me or you to come up with the solution, but the manager(s) of the road to come up with the solution. Just because you or I don’t have the answer to this problem doesn’t mean that there is no solution for it. For instance, can you solve the problem of current leakage in the 45nm gate width transistors of today? Do you even know what I’m talking about? If not: that’s what private companies are for. They solve problems we don’t necessarily have the answers to.
The manager(s) can decide that cell phone use isn’t a problem and they can do nothing about it.
Install cell phone signal jammers.
I would argue that cell phone jammers would cause people to NOT want to drive on that road, putting the owner of the road out of business or having to charge higher tolls to make up for the cost.
You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.
Do government laws against cell phone use while driving prevent people from driving on the roads today?
What if some roads accepted cell phone use and others didn’t? You would argue that the ones that would accept use would be full of traffic, and the ones that don’t accept use would be completely empty. Ceterus paribus, the one with no traffic would make no money and would be out of business. That way, the people in the market would decide that they should be able to drive on the roads and use cell phones at the same time.
I really don’t understand what the problem is here. Somehow, the managers need to stop cell phone use, and then lose all their business, yet stay in business and allow people to use their phones.
haha, what?
Nope. So again, what exactly would a private manager of a road do to combat the issue? Put cell phone zappers on the road and blow up someones phone when they attempt to use it while driving?
So you understand what I am saying then.
facepalm
I can give you specifics, but I’m not a road entrepreneur, so its merely speculation.
The manager can enforce any cell phone rules, either with fees or with security, can block cell phone signals, or do nothing as its not worth it. But competition will find the optimum solutions.
Your last statement, I agree with 100%. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in favor of a government solution, just wanted to see how others would answer my question, as the question is surely one that would be asked from someone who IS in favor of a government solution.
The only thing worse than demanding second sight is pretending to have it.
Jammer isn’t the same thing as zapper. It would just cause the cell phone to have no signal, not blow up in people’s hands. But of course, that’s what you’d envision, as capitalists are evil. When I say “you can’t have your cake and eat it, too” I am saying that you can’t let people drive and talk on their cell phones and claim that the government has effectively solved the problem of driving and talking on the phone.
No. You claim that there is no solution, so the government should handle the issue. There is no implicit or explicit logical connection there. We have a slew of solution generating mechanisms known as “entrepreneurship” and “free market” and “consumer choice” that would find out better solutions to problems and allow consumers to chose as they wish.
The government option is not an option at all. Whoever wishes to drive is at the full mercy of the government and its rules. The market option will reveal in time what the most preferred solution is.
What I don’t get is WHY the government should be in full management and ownership of the roads and WHY the market shouldn’t.