Recently a couple of criminals masqueraded as Lyft drivers and committed serious crimes. These incidents got some headlines, but were, and remain, extremely isolated incidents.
The NC Legislature just responded to these incidents by unanimously passing a law requiring all rideshare drivers to put front license plates on their cars (which are not usually required in NC, for those who don't remember/know) and requiring them to have a lighted sign in the car. In other words, recognizing the harm that can be caused by malign actors, the legislature imposed costs and restrictions on all law-abiding rideshare drivers in the interest of the safety of the public.
A couple years ago, a negligent Florida nursing home allowed several residents to perish in the heat after a hurricane cut the power, even though a fully functioning air conditioned hospital was literally across the street. In reaction, Florida mandated that every single nursing home and assisted living facility in Florida install generators to run air conditioning. My company alone spent almost $2,000,000 to comply with this mandate. The total cost across Florida has not been reported, but I bet it approaches a billion dollars. The generator companies were pretty happy.
One could cite countless examples of similar legislative reaction to isolated tragic harms/deaths. And yet we have about one mass shooting a day at this point, tens of thousands of Americans are killed every year by guns, and we are told that no legislative reaction is possible because we can't inconvenience law abiding gun owners, or new laws wouldn't help, or NRA, or Second Amendment, or 30-40 feral hogs, or whatever. It's sickening.
