I took it as Robert would be teaching and having his kids cleaning the rifles before they ever shoot anything. Exposing them to it is fine, so they know it needs to be done.
I'm also fine with having them start on air rifles, though depending on your backyard(neighbors in range?) it may still not be practical, but you can shoot even inside. The important thing is that they don't get to handle the gun - powder or air driven, without adult supervision at all times.
I'm hesitant about your course of action. One needs to remember that you need fun in there as well for it to really stick, you're both taking too long and inadvertantly teaching the kid that the firearm isn't dangerous.
Cleaning the rifle can wait, depending on parents and selected cleaning chemicals you might not want to expose the sprog to that anyways.
I'd start immediately with full up fire with live ammo(blanks are somewhat hard to get anyways), but with the parent holding the gun. I'll note that the cases of injuries where a child is shooting at a range involved fully automatic weapons - if the gun's single shot, there's nothing else coming out of the firearm if the kid looses control of it, no matter what. Especially if the parent has control of the additional rounds(in a pocket or something).
Gradually ramp up the child's ammo budget as he or she progresses - another dozen rounds for cleaning the rifle, for example.
No, it's not actually a significant problem even for the police, but it's an even less significant problem for private citizens, yet that's who the legislators are pushing to have the systems.
Realistically speaking, it's a backdoor way to ban 'Saturday Night Specials', IE cheap handguns which actually are the prevalent firearm used in crime.
Would YOU want to carry an expensive gun that you might have to ditch on a moments notice?
And if gun ban advocates truly want safety, they'd work to repeal that NJ law.
I'm sorry that it lacks citation, but one of the original sponsors of the law actually proposed that. Sort of. She promised to 'Vote to repeal the law if the NRA stops opposing smart guns'.
My thought is that the NRA wants the law GONE before it stops opposing the technology, preferably via a court case that ensures that other states can't do it as well.
Sorry, but i highly doubt that any policemen would enable such a lock on their gun as they would not ever be able to use their gun in the instance where they have gloves on their hands....
Fingerprint locks are not acceptable to me because of this. On the other hand, the already existing 'Magna-Trigger' and 'Maglock'(for 1911's) are semi-widely deployed. They're keyed to universal magnetic rings though, not anything serialized, making them the equivalent of bathroom dispenser locks - they won't stop or slow down anybody that came prepared to defeat them.
RFID is an option, but that would be more vulnerable to EMP*/interference. Also, the one RFID gun I remember has a 20" unlock range with the watch, which would mean that the gun would still fire in the majority of 'just disarmed the officer' cases I've read, many of which had the officer struggling with the perp for the gun when he was shot, which means that the wristwatch would be within 20" when the trigger is pulled.
Really, I think what the legislation is trying to do is make the guns more expensive in the hopes that only rich(safe) people would buy them, same idea with anti-Saturday night special laws back in the '70s. Back then they recognized that criminals overwhelmingly carried cheap small handguns, not expensive and bulky 'assault weapons', so they tried to ban 'cheap'. A 1911 was in no danger, but a.280 was.
*Honestly, I don't think this is that good of an excuse. Good EMP is actually hard to do.
3) Many policemen would far prefer that their gun not be useable if someone takes it away from them.
Honestly, I think that the officers that install 'MagSafe' type safeties on their firearms are being responsible. I posted earlier that ~5% of officers shot are shot with their own weapon taken from them in the same incident. Yet nearly all police departments will campaign long and hard against being included in laws like New Jersey's that would mandate 'smart guns'.
Personally, I think that the requirement to trigger being forced to buy smart guns should be all the police departments in the state going to them voluntarily. If they move away from them, the requirement goes away as well.
'No firearm safety feature that is not present on all police firearms shall be required on a private citizen's' - Something like this.
3) No slower than existing draw-rack-point-click. I would even say, if fingerprint-based, the sensor MUST go on the trigger itself and detect a thin stripe of index fingertop.
As a shooter I have one problem with this: I wear gloves when shooting. How's it working through that?
So, the reason "crazy gun nuts" really oppose letting any of the "identify the owner" technologies into practice and letting the market decide is that the government has already spoken, and it isn't going to let the market decide. I'm a libertarian, and I'd love to see the market decide... but I oppose blanket bans for all sorts of reasons, and think you should too.
This boils down to NJ's law being my ONLY reason for being opposed to the law. Unlike for civilians, there are open statistics for police officers being shot with their own firearms. In fact, the percent is 5% of officers shot are shot with their own weapon. One in twenty.
There exists devices already that can prevent this that use magnetic rings called 'MagSafe' - but anybody with a ring can fire the gun. I read a tragic report where the officer was killed, but the criminal tried taking the cop's gun, but discarded it, unfired, when the system worked to prevent him from using it to shoot at MORE police officers. Obviously you can't deploy the system to EVERY firearm, because then a criminal will know to get the ring(and they'll be all over the place), buy why not for 'all police weapons'?
Yet every police department in a jurisdiction considering laws such as New Jersey's will campaign long and hard to exempt themselves from the requirement, when they're at the highest risk for being shot with their own weapon. Why aren't they clamoring for the technology? It's not reliable enough.
You want a little kid to learn how to use firearms? Use a.22 caliber rifle and have them learn from the prone position. Safest way to keep them unharmed while they learn.
As a responsible gun owner, I have 1 additional modification to make to this statement: Use a single shot.22 caliber rifle for the young and new ones. They can trade up to a pump/bolt type action when they demonstrate that they can handle the single shot smoothly. IE safe operation without hesitation.
Since a commercial vehicle drive many times the miles of a private vehicle it is much more likely to get into an accident based on miles traveled.
How about that there's so many more private vehicles on the road they're still more likely to cause issues? It also depends on the commercial/private vehicle in question. Ever heard about the crazies with a 100+ mile daily commute of several hours?
Also, I did an awful lot of daily inspections on vehicles that averaged about two dozen miles a week. Small densely built bases where we just walked unless we needed the GOV to haul a bunch of stuff, equipment, supplies, whatever.
We're back to my point: I believe that given today's technology and development levels that a mechanical inspection every oil change is 'good enough'. If a cabbie is driving 300 miles a day, that's an inspection around every two weeks. For a private vehicle it'd be about once every four months*. Other than that it's noting down stuff that's not working right and fixing it. Notice that the alignment is off? Note it down and have it fixed during the next maintenance period.
*Keeping in mind that quite a few vehicles today are on 5k oil changes, not 3k.
It doesn't matter how many injuries come from things that are nothing to do with guns. If gun ownership were more tightly controlled, those 14000-19000 nonfatal injuries and the hundreds of fatal injuries from accidental shootings would be reduced by at least an order of magnitude - lives would be saved.
Citizen, please report to the clinic for the mandatory installation of your permanently mounted helmet(it'll save lives!), automatically inflating life vest(it'll save lives!) while our safety inspectors go through your home to remove dangers such as all your knives, the stove(it can cause burns!), bathtubs(big falling AND drowning hazard!), etc...
The problem with your line is that nearly everything is dangerous to some limit or other. If you don't set a downward limit on something and do it for 'just one life!' the result is no freedom. I'll say it outright: Freedom is worth lives.
The real number is closer to 12,000, with only about 200 cases of "justifiable homicide" with a gun. That's fewer than the number of accidental shootings.
That's only true if you include 'fired the gun' in the definition. Most cases merely showing the firearm is enough to convince the criminal to leave.
As uncqual said - most accidents today are caused by driver error, not mechanical malfunction. A pre-trip inspection, unless you're checking the driver, is looking for mechanical issues.
My point is that back when mechanical taxi-cabs started taking over from the horse-drawn ones, a daily detailed inspection of the mechanical parts made perfect sense. The equipment wasn't all that reliable back then.
Get into the '60s and you still had a lot of problems, but you were to the point that doing many inspections was no longer daily for consumer type vehicles, but 'once and oil change'. Today the oil changes have extended to 5k miles.
To make it more clear, I have basically 3 inspection lists. Daily drive in my own vehicle is 'lights work, tires aren't flat'. Each fill up I check the fluids. Every oil change the belts and brakes(among other things) get looked at.
Considering the only thing you seemed interested in was cleanliness I have a good idea.
Important part here is 'seemed'. I used to have a GOV license, vehicle checks were part of that.
I guess you know better than every transport commission in existence that requires daily inspections(almost all do).
And most of the lists were less stringent than what I do when I take my motorcycle out.
As uncqual said - if the daily checks were so important for the safety of the vehicle they would logically be required for private citizen vehicles as well. Because there are plenty of failures that can cause a vehicle to be hazards for others, and many of the safety checks aren't actually beneficial for the passengers.
Police officers 'in the line of duty' are heavily shielded by their respective departments, so I doubt that even a small claims court motion would succeed without involving the department.
Still, I'd have them be a named party, thus generally requiring the officer AND police representative to show up to make their case. If it's tossed out(which I figure it will be), then go to a full court.
I've reviewed the literature and found a much better article going in Dominion Power's hijinks.
Personally, my 'solution' would be simple - disallow them purchasing 'renewable energy credits'. In order for it to count it has to be a renewable energy source IN THE STATE AND ON THE GRID.
Oh, and the charging for solar installs is only for 10kw-20kw systems. Keep it at 10kW and you don't have to pay anything. But yeah, massively stupid.
I mean, I live in Alaska and I keep looking at Solar panels. Really the only thing holding me back is that I'd rather put a new roof on first, and I think that the inverters need to come down in price and up in warranty before I pull the lever. Please note that this is because I can't 'break even' even assuming I do most of the install myself with our crappy isolation levels. Go to a spot further south with equally high electricity costs and it'd be a stupidly easy decision.
That just goes to show how ill qualified you are to do a real pre-trip inspection. Do you check your tire wear, belts, fluid levels, lights and signals, fluid leaks, etc. A pre-trip inspection is much more than cleanliness.
You have no clue as to my inspection abilities. Not objecting to doing a pre-trip inspection. Disputing that nowadays you need to do this daily.
Worst case you do what the military does - hand the driver a checklist to go over.
By the way a full time Uber driver can easily log 1K miles in a week.
Which means that rather than having some mostly superficial stuff inspected 'daily' it's inspected once a month(ish). I figure that's a suitable inspection period.
Part of the licensing of cabs is the safety of the cabs. For example drivers are required to inspect their vehicles daily and have them inspected by an independent company every six months.
It takes a special license in order to inspect your vehicle?
As for the daily inspection(which I'd do just for cleanliness), it seems to me that the regulation seems old - cars today are more reliable, but the mechanicals should be 'inspected' every 3-5k or so miles when it gets an oil change.
They'll just stonewall anything that doesn't come from a court/judge. Or worse, they'll rubberwall it instead (which is kind of like stonewalling, with the addition of making you bounce back, i.e. create more work for you). You'll end up in a game where you'll have to spend more than one dollar for every dollar they spend. And since they have practically unlimited funds, the only thing that will happen is that you will run out of money.
You have to remember that the goal isn't to get my money back, it's to cost them, preferably in a very legal and visible way, more than what they took from me. If I spend $1200 in order to cost them $800 because they 'improperly' confiscated $400 from me, so be it. It's very much a scorched earth policy. Sure, I'll try to be efficient about it, but that's the way it goes.
And since they have practically unlimited funds, the only thing that will happen is that you will run out of money.
It's not without end - I'm not trying to bankrupt them. I'd be satisfied somewhere between costing them 2-10x what they took.
They can ask, but they not actually likely to get it. The feds don't compensate state actors for 'legal hurdles' on any sort of regular basis. Even state legislators tend to ask some very pointed questions when you beg for money due to lawsuits, and keep in mind that I'd be writing to them, so they have MY side of the story.
Consider red light cameras - the moment revenue dropped such that the cameras weren't making enough money to cover the hassle(which included lawsuits over them), many local governments started dropping them like hot potatoes.
Make it so that the anticipated butt-hurt from confiscating random cash in the low hundreds without substantial additional evidence is thousands in hassle expenses and they'll stop doing it.
Tesla's customers are largely environmentalists, who will be that much more eager to buy due to the factory being greener. For comparison, someone buying a can of pasta sauce won't care about the specifics of the canning factory, so price is the only factor.
It is a factor, but on some level almost all of us are 'environmentalists'. I don't think that the news that the battery factory will be some flavor of 'energy neutral' will actually sell all that many vehicles.
As you say - you can see solar panels because most of the cost is installation. I'll point out that if you design your building to have solar panels on them as part of the initial construction it's much cheaper. Ergo, if it 'barely' makes sense to install panels as aftermarket components to a building, it's a much easier decision to add them from the beginning. Especially if by doing so you can avoid some of the installation charges, gain local, state, and federal rebates, etc...
Note how I mentioned energy usage vs roof area - if you have a roof that's only good for keeping rain off your equipment, it might make sense to dual-purpose that area to also collecting power to run your equipment.
It doesn't matter if it's the same thing, multiple frivolous cases are considered repeatedly suing even if they're for different things. For the times where you legitimately (or even could legitimately) have a problem with the police, the court wont think twice, but making a claim for every single time you get in trouble with the cops and the court will notice.
It doesn't take multiple lawsuits over $400 before the police department has spent far more than $400 simply doing all the legal stuff. I don't get into trouble with the cops that much(or really ever).
Point in short, abuse your right to sue in Oz, it will be taken off you... but it takes a lot for that to happen.
If I sue because they confiscated money on me claiming that it was 'probable cause' that it's mere existence in my vehicle means it's drug money, I surely have recourse to arguing against it in a court of law. All the way up to the federal supreme court (SCOTUS). Such is highly expensive, especially if it's 'only' over $400, but my point would be to make it clear that at that point I'm doing so not to recover the $400, but for the principle of the matter. I fail to see how I'd be declared a Vexatious litigant over following the proper procedures in a SINGLE lawsuit starting at small claims and being appealed up as necessary. That I would engage in an active political campaign against the practice would be a separate matter.
Unless I'm the target of a directed police campaign, such is unlikely to happen to me more than once, period. If I AM the target of such a campaign, that's another reason to sue, but would roll up all the police actions against me into a single suit.
As for corruption, I'm not so sure. Part of our 'problem' is that we really, really like to air our dirty laundry.
In Australia that will have you listed as a vexatious litigant and you'll be denied access to the small claims and civil courts unless the court decides your claim has merit.
Like in any situation, knowledge of the system is a must for doing this sort of thing. In the USA it's pretty easy to sue in small claims, and normally speaking if your claim is tossed out in small claims that doesn't disallow you from 'appealing' it right into the normal court system, which is what I was talking about.
I wasn't actually talking about repeatedly suing them for the same thing. I was talking about doing the usual procedure - sue them in small claims, then elevate to the civil courts. The trick is that the normal response to a letter written by a lawyer is another letter written by a lawyer, and this can get quite expensive quite fast, but quite a bit of back and forth via official documents isn't unusual before an issue ends up going to the courts.
Then again in authoritarian Australia, we have this silly law that the police cannot seize cash unless they have a warrant to seize evidence
This is actually something I've written to my representatives about. I know it's screwed up, I don't like it, and want to see it stopped. You Aussies, going by statements from Australian citizens I've had conversations with on other boards, have your own issues that are seriously FUBAR.
The issue can be a complex one, but I think it boils down fairly easily: 1. Most companies can go completely to renewable power, excepting some where they need the byproducts for other uses. Concrete manufacturing, refining iron and making steel, etc... However, this doesn't mean that it's economic to do so. 2. There is however a limit - if the manufacturer uses more energy than their roof/property collects, they obviously can't go 100% renewable without obtaining more property. 3. I figure that it's probably easier to go 100% renewable if you plan to do so before even breaking ground on the factory. Such as selecting a location with nearly ideal solar patterns. 4. Net metering only works so long as there are other customers looking to buy the power when it's being produced, and generators producing when it isn't. If 'everybody' tries to do it, the system would break down. 5. To go along with this, even if they can't net meter, they're a battery factory. They can create a lot of backup storage even if they only drain/refill all their produced batteries once as a 'test', cleverly arranged to provide back up power. Or produce some batteries at cost, use degraded but still functional batteries returned under warranty/core charge, etc...
As the AC mentioned, the goal is less to get my money back than to make sure they don't turn a profit. That's their ultimate goal - increase the funding available to them so they can have more toys. If they're spending it on postage to respond to my letters, they're not buying more toys with it. They're not buying a fancy cruiser if they have to hire a temp worker to watch me because I plop my ass in their precinct protesting for whatever reason, asking questions, and making freedom of information requests.
As for 'can't sue them to get the money back', they have to send a representative to the court to make that argument. Sure, they might win, but that's X hours of the representative's time.
Meanwhile I'll be posting 'row row fight the POWAH!!' online and soliciting donations to continue my campaign of legal harassment for their imposing fiscal penalties outside of proper justice channels.
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I took it as Robert would be teaching and having his kids cleaning the rifles before they ever shoot anything. Exposing them to it is fine, so they know it needs to be done.
I'm also fine with having them start on air rifles, though depending on your backyard(neighbors in range?) it may still not be practical, but you can shoot even inside. The important thing is that they don't get to handle the gun - powder or air driven, without adult supervision at all times.
I'm hesitant about your course of action. One needs to remember that you need fun in there as well for it to really stick, you're both taking too long and inadvertantly teaching the kid that the firearm isn't dangerous.
Cleaning the rifle can wait, depending on parents and selected cleaning chemicals you might not want to expose the sprog to that anyways.
I'd start immediately with full up fire with live ammo(blanks are somewhat hard to get anyways), but with the parent holding the gun. I'll note that the cases of injuries where a child is shooting at a range involved fully automatic weapons - if the gun's single shot, there's nothing else coming out of the firearm if the kid looses control of it, no matter what. Especially if the parent has control of the additional rounds(in a pocket or something).
Gradually ramp up the child's ammo budget as he or she progresses - another dozen rounds for cleaning the rifle, for example.
Hardly a significant problem.
No, it's not actually a significant problem even for the police, but it's an even less significant problem for private citizens, yet that's who the legislators are pushing to have the systems.
Realistically speaking, it's a backdoor way to ban 'Saturday Night Specials', IE cheap handguns which actually are the prevalent firearm used in crime.
Would YOU want to carry an expensive gun that you might have to ditch on a moments notice?
And if gun ban advocates truly want safety, they'd work to repeal that NJ law.
I'm sorry that it lacks citation, but one of the original sponsors of the law actually proposed that. Sort of. She promised to 'Vote to repeal the law if the NRA stops opposing smart guns'.
My thought is that the NRA wants the law GONE before it stops opposing the technology, preferably via a court case that ensures that other states can't do it as well.
Sorry, but i highly doubt that any policemen would enable such a lock on their gun as they would not ever be able to use their gun in the instance where they have gloves on their hands....
Fingerprint locks are not acceptable to me because of this. On the other hand, the already existing 'Magna-Trigger' and 'Maglock'(for 1911's) are semi-widely deployed. They're keyed to universal magnetic rings though, not anything serialized, making them the equivalent of bathroom dispenser locks - they won't stop or slow down anybody that came prepared to defeat them.
RFID is an option, but that would be more vulnerable to EMP*/interference. Also, the one RFID gun I remember has a 20" unlock range with the watch, which would mean that the gun would still fire in the majority of 'just disarmed the officer' cases I've read, many of which had the officer struggling with the perp for the gun when he was shot, which means that the wristwatch would be within 20" when the trigger is pulled.
Really, I think what the legislation is trying to do is make the guns more expensive in the hopes that only rich(safe) people would buy them, same idea with anti-Saturday night special laws back in the '70s. Back then they recognized that criminals overwhelmingly carried cheap small handguns, not expensive and bulky 'assault weapons', so they tried to ban 'cheap'. A 1911 was in no danger, but a .280 was.
*Honestly, I don't think this is that good of an excuse. Good EMP is actually hard to do.
3) Many policemen would far prefer that their gun not be useable if someone takes it away from them.
Honestly, I think that the officers that install 'MagSafe' type safeties on their firearms are being responsible. I posted earlier that ~5% of officers shot are shot with their own weapon taken from them in the same incident. Yet nearly all police departments will campaign long and hard against being included in laws like New Jersey's that would mandate 'smart guns'.
Personally, I think that the requirement to trigger being forced to buy smart guns should be all the police departments in the state going to them voluntarily. If they move away from them, the requirement goes away as well.
'No firearm safety feature that is not present on all police firearms shall be required on a private citizen's' - Something like this.
3) No slower than existing draw-rack-point-click. I would even say, if fingerprint-based, the sensor MUST go on the trigger itself and detect a thin stripe of index fingertop.
As a shooter I have one problem with this: I wear gloves when shooting. How's it working through that?
So, the reason "crazy gun nuts" really oppose letting any of the "identify the owner" technologies into practice and letting the market decide is that the government has already spoken, and it isn't going to let the market decide. I'm a libertarian, and I'd love to see the market decide... but I oppose blanket bans for all sorts of reasons, and think you should too.
This boils down to NJ's law being my ONLY reason for being opposed to the law. Unlike for civilians, there are open statistics for police officers being shot with their own firearms. In fact, the percent is 5% of officers shot are shot with their own weapon. One in twenty.
There exists devices already that can prevent this that use magnetic rings called 'MagSafe' - but anybody with a ring can fire the gun. I read a tragic report where the officer was killed, but the criminal tried taking the cop's gun, but discarded it, unfired, when the system worked to prevent him from using it to shoot at MORE police officers. Obviously you can't deploy the system to EVERY firearm, because then a criminal will know to get the ring(and they'll be all over the place), buy why not for 'all police weapons'?
Yet every police department in a jurisdiction considering laws such as New Jersey's will campaign long and hard to exempt themselves from the requirement, when they're at the highest risk for being shot with their own weapon. Why aren't they clamoring for the technology? It's not reliable enough.
You want a little kid to learn how to use firearms? Use a .22 caliber rifle and have them learn from the prone position. Safest way to keep them unharmed while they learn.
As a responsible gun owner, I have 1 additional modification to make to this statement: Use a single shot .22 caliber rifle for the young and new ones. They can trade up to a pump/bolt type action when they demonstrate that they can handle the single shot smoothly. IE safe operation without hesitation.
Since a commercial vehicle drive many times the miles of a private vehicle it is much more likely to get into an accident based on miles traveled.
How about that there's so many more private vehicles on the road they're still more likely to cause issues? It also depends on the commercial/private vehicle in question. Ever heard about the crazies with a 100+ mile daily commute of several hours?
Also, I did an awful lot of daily inspections on vehicles that averaged about two dozen miles a week. Small densely built bases where we just walked unless we needed the GOV to haul a bunch of stuff, equipment, supplies, whatever.
We're back to my point: I believe that given today's technology and development levels that a mechanical inspection every oil change is 'good enough'. If a cabbie is driving 300 miles a day, that's an inspection around every two weeks. For a private vehicle it'd be about once every four months*. Other than that it's noting down stuff that's not working right and fixing it. Notice that the alignment is off? Note it down and have it fixed during the next maintenance period.
*Keeping in mind that quite a few vehicles today are on 5k oil changes, not 3k.
It doesn't matter how many injuries come from things that are nothing to do with guns. If gun ownership were more tightly controlled, those 14000-19000 nonfatal injuries and the hundreds of fatal injuries from accidental shootings would be reduced by at least an order of magnitude - lives would be saved.
Citizen, please report to the clinic for the mandatory installation of your permanently mounted helmet(it'll save lives!), automatically inflating life vest(it'll save lives!) while our safety inspectors go through your home to remove dangers such as all your knives, the stove(it can cause burns!), bathtubs(big falling AND drowning hazard!), etc...
The problem with your line is that nearly everything is dangerous to some limit or other. If you don't set a downward limit on something and do it for 'just one life!' the result is no freedom. I'll say it outright: Freedom is worth lives.
The real number is closer to 12,000, with only about 200 cases of "justifiable homicide" with a gun. That's fewer than the number of accidental shootings.
That's only true if you include 'fired the gun' in the definition. Most cases merely showing the firearm is enough to convince the criminal to leave.
As uncqual said - most accidents today are caused by driver error, not mechanical malfunction. A pre-trip inspection, unless you're checking the driver, is looking for mechanical issues.
My point is that back when mechanical taxi-cabs started taking over from the horse-drawn ones, a daily detailed inspection of the mechanical parts made perfect sense. The equipment wasn't all that reliable back then.
Get into the '60s and you still had a lot of problems, but you were to the point that doing many inspections was no longer daily for consumer type vehicles, but 'once and oil change'. Today the oil changes have extended to 5k miles.
To make it more clear, I have basically 3 inspection lists. Daily drive in my own vehicle is 'lights work, tires aren't flat'. Each fill up I check the fluids. Every oil change the belts and brakes(among other things) get looked at.
Considering the only thing you seemed interested in was cleanliness I have a good idea.
Important part here is 'seemed'. I used to have a GOV license, vehicle checks were part of that.
I guess you know better than every transport commission in existence that requires daily inspections(almost all do).
And most of the lists were less stringent than what I do when I take my motorcycle out.
As uncqual said - if the daily checks were so important for the safety of the vehicle they would logically be required for private citizen vehicles as well. Because there are plenty of failures that can cause a vehicle to be hazards for others, and many of the safety checks aren't actually beneficial for the passengers.
Police officers 'in the line of duty' are heavily shielded by their respective departments, so I doubt that even a small claims court motion would succeed without involving the department.
Still, I'd have them be a named party, thus generally requiring the officer AND police representative to show up to make their case. If it's tossed out(which I figure it will be), then go to a full court.
I've reviewed the literature and found a much better article going in Dominion Power's hijinks.
Personally, my 'solution' would be simple - disallow them purchasing 'renewable energy credits'. In order for it to count it has to be a renewable energy source IN THE STATE AND ON THE GRID.
Oh, and the charging for solar installs is only for 10kw-20kw systems. Keep it at 10kW and you don't have to pay anything. But yeah, massively stupid.
I mean, I live in Alaska and I keep looking at Solar panels. Really the only thing holding me back is that I'd rather put a new roof on first, and I think that the inverters need to come down in price and up in warranty before I pull the lever. Please note that this is because I can't 'break even' even assuming I do most of the install myself with our crappy isolation levels. Go to a spot further south with equally high electricity costs and it'd be a stupidly easy decision.
That just goes to show how ill qualified you are to do a real pre-trip inspection. Do you check your tire wear, belts, fluid levels, lights and signals, fluid leaks, etc. A pre-trip inspection is much more than cleanliness.
You have no clue as to my inspection abilities. Not objecting to doing a pre-trip inspection. Disputing that nowadays you need to do this daily.
Worst case you do what the military does - hand the driver a checklist to go over.
By the way a full time Uber driver can easily log 1K miles in a week.
Which means that rather than having some mostly superficial stuff inspected 'daily' it's inspected once a month(ish). I figure that's a suitable inspection period.
Part of the licensing of cabs is the safety of the cabs. For example drivers are required to inspect their vehicles daily and have them inspected by an independent company every six months.
It takes a special license in order to inspect your vehicle?
As for the daily inspection(which I'd do just for cleanliness), it seems to me that the regulation seems old - cars today are more reliable, but the mechanicals should be 'inspected' every 3-5k or so miles when it gets an oil change.
They'll just stonewall anything that doesn't come from a court/judge. Or worse, they'll rubberwall it instead (which is kind of like stonewalling, with the addition of making you bounce back, i.e. create more work for you). You'll end up in a game where you'll have to spend more than one dollar for every dollar they spend. And since they have practically unlimited funds, the only thing that will happen is that you will run out of money.
You have to remember that the goal isn't to get my money back, it's to cost them, preferably in a very legal and visible way, more than what they took from me. If I spend $1200 in order to cost them $800 because they 'improperly' confiscated $400 from me, so be it. It's very much a scorched earth policy. Sure, I'll try to be efficient about it, but that's the way it goes.
And since they have practically unlimited funds, the only thing that will happen is that you will run out of money.
It's not without end - I'm not trying to bankrupt them. I'd be satisfied somewhere between costing them 2-10x what they took.
They can ask, but they not actually likely to get it. The feds don't compensate state actors for 'legal hurdles' on any sort of regular basis. Even state legislators tend to ask some very pointed questions when you beg for money due to lawsuits, and keep in mind that I'd be writing to them, so they have MY side of the story.
Consider red light cameras - the moment revenue dropped such that the cameras weren't making enough money to cover the hassle(which included lawsuits over them), many local governments started dropping them like hot potatoes.
Make it so that the anticipated butt-hurt from confiscating random cash in the low hundreds without substantial additional evidence is thousands in hassle expenses and they'll stop doing it.
Tesla's customers are largely environmentalists, who will be that much more eager to buy due to the factory being greener. For comparison, someone buying a can of pasta sauce won't care about the specifics of the canning factory, so price is the only factor.
It is a factor, but on some level almost all of us are 'environmentalists'. I don't think that the news that the battery factory will be some flavor of 'energy neutral' will actually sell all that many vehicles.
As you say - you can see solar panels because most of the cost is installation. I'll point out that if you design your building to have solar panels on them as part of the initial construction it's much cheaper. Ergo, if it 'barely' makes sense to install panels as aftermarket components to a building, it's a much easier decision to add them from the beginning. Especially if by doing so you can avoid some of the installation charges, gain local, state, and federal rebates, etc...
Note how I mentioned energy usage vs roof area - if you have a roof that's only good for keeping rain off your equipment, it might make sense to dual-purpose that area to also collecting power to run your equipment.
It doesn't matter if it's the same thing, multiple frivolous cases are considered repeatedly suing even if they're for different things. For the times where you legitimately (or even could legitimately) have a problem with the police, the court wont think twice, but making a claim for every single time you get in trouble with the cops and the court will notice.
It doesn't take multiple lawsuits over $400 before the police department has spent far more than $400 simply doing all the legal stuff. I don't get into trouble with the cops that much(or really ever).
Point in short, abuse your right to sue in Oz, it will be taken off you... but it takes a lot for that to happen.
If I sue because they confiscated money on me claiming that it was 'probable cause' that it's mere existence in my vehicle means it's drug money, I surely have recourse to arguing against it in a court of law. All the way up to the federal supreme court (SCOTUS). Such is highly expensive, especially if it's 'only' over $400, but my point would be to make it clear that at that point I'm doing so not to recover the $400, but for the principle of the matter. I fail to see how I'd be declared a Vexatious litigant over following the proper procedures in a SINGLE lawsuit starting at small claims and being appealed up as necessary. That I would engage in an active political campaign against the practice would be a separate matter.
Unless I'm the target of a directed police campaign, such is unlikely to happen to me more than once, period. If I AM the target of such a campaign, that's another reason to sue, but would roll up all the police actions against me into a single suit.
As for corruption, I'm not so sure. Part of our 'problem' is that we really, really like to air our dirty laundry.
In Australia that will have you listed as a vexatious litigant and you'll be denied access to the small claims and civil courts unless the court decides your claim has merit.
Like in any situation, knowledge of the system is a must for doing this sort of thing. In the USA it's pretty easy to sue in small claims, and normally speaking if your claim is tossed out in small claims that doesn't disallow you from 'appealing' it right into the normal court system, which is what I was talking about.
I wasn't actually talking about repeatedly suing them for the same thing. I was talking about doing the usual procedure - sue them in small claims, then elevate to the civil courts. The trick is that the normal response to a letter written by a lawyer is another letter written by a lawyer, and this can get quite expensive quite fast, but quite a bit of back and forth via official documents isn't unusual before an issue ends up going to the courts.
Then again in authoritarian Australia, we have this silly law that the police cannot seize cash unless they have a warrant to seize evidence
This is actually something I've written to my representatives about. I know it's screwed up, I don't like it, and want to see it stopped. You Aussies, going by statements from Australian citizens I've had conversations with on other boards, have your own issues that are seriously FUBAR.
The issue can be a complex one, but I think it boils down fairly easily:
1. Most companies can go completely to renewable power, excepting some where they need the byproducts for other uses. Concrete manufacturing, refining iron and making steel, etc... However, this doesn't mean that it's economic to do so.
2. There is however a limit - if the manufacturer uses more energy than their roof/property collects, they obviously can't go 100% renewable without obtaining more property.
3. I figure that it's probably easier to go 100% renewable if you plan to do so before even breaking ground on the factory. Such as selecting a location with nearly ideal solar patterns.
4. Net metering only works so long as there are other customers looking to buy the power when it's being produced, and generators producing when it isn't. If 'everybody' tries to do it, the system would break down.
5. To go along with this, even if they can't net meter, they're a battery factory. They can create a lot of backup storage even if they only drain/refill all their produced batteries once as a 'test', cleverly arranged to provide back up power. Or produce some batteries at cost, use degraded but still functional batteries returned under warranty/core charge, etc...
As the AC mentioned, the goal is less to get my money back than to make sure they don't turn a profit. That's their ultimate goal - increase the funding available to them so they can have more toys. If they're spending it on postage to respond to my letters, they're not buying more toys with it. They're not buying a fancy cruiser if they have to hire a temp worker to watch me because I plop my ass in their precinct protesting for whatever reason, asking questions, and making freedom of information requests.
As for 'can't sue them to get the money back', they have to send a representative to the court to make that argument. Sure, they might win, but that's X hours of the representative's time.
Meanwhile I'll be posting 'row row fight the POWAH!!' online and soliciting donations to continue my campaign of legal harassment for their imposing fiscal penalties outside of proper justice channels.