glippy
Recycles dryer sheets
But if someone I knew was killed by someone with a gun, knife, or beat to death with a shoe, they would be just as dead. I can't understand how the tool used would make a difference. Other than death by a gun would probably be less painful than death by shoe beating, so maybe the shoe beating should be sentenced harsher? But that goes against your argument, I think.
But the example was assault, not murder. So if someone you knew was attacked by someone with a shoe, vs. attacked by someone with a rifle and the damages in either case were the same (e.g. some scrapes from where they were grazed), it doesn't mean the punishment should be the same, since one attack was inherently more dangerous than the other. The riskier something is the harsher it should be punished in order to deter others from taking those same risks with other people's lives.
Insurance premiums are already based on the vehicle profile/history.
True, but insurance only protects against actual damages to others because that's all the courts will award in a civil suit.
If you limit people who engage in risky behavior to only paying actual damages you're not discouraging the risky behavior, nor are you properly compensating the injured party who is limited to being "made whole", but never compensated for the fact that his injuries never would have occurred in the first place had the at-fault driver chosen a smaller vehicle.
I understand it won't be a popular idea since drivers of larger vehicles currently offload their risk to others without having to face any liabilities for the increased risk they are creating, instead pushing the liabilities onto everyone else. I, too, wouldn't want to have to suddenly start paying for something I had been getting for free.
But this uncompensated off-loading of risk by the individual to everyone else is an externality that's creating the big vehicle arms race and just making us all, as a group, pay more for transportation than we would otherwise have to.