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Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

theatlantic.com

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Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#141

Post by afiori »

spaceribs wrote: post #122
unwrap wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a pedestrian it doesn't matter whether you have "right of way", because you can be right a hundred times over and still go to a mortician. That's all I am trying to say. If you are crossing the road, please wait for the cars to stop, or make absolutely sure there aren't any nearby. Cars are multiple-ton steel monsters, it takes a lot of energy and space to slow them down. Just bringing some perspective from a cou…

You've used the word "Idiots" a lot to describe people who walk into the street, but I think it's idiotic for pedestrians to follow the same intersection rules as a 2 ton vehicle. You want to take out your air-conditioned garbage-spewing box out to race across the city without a single care for anyone else using the streets? Well I think you're an idiot for advocating towards that selfish goal.

If I understood correctly in this comment unwrap was simply stating that if the street are factually dangerous you should treat them as dangerous. unwrap was not defending drivers that kill people.

> but I think it's idiotic for pedestrians to follow the same intersection rules as a 2 ton vehicle.

I mostly opt for having rules on the pedestrian side. But each person should be careful about their own life and constantly be aware of the current risk.

Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#142

Post by anonymou2 »

rocgf wrote: post #130
anonymou2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they have the best cycling infrastructure, they are called roads.

I get the feeling you do not know what good cycling infrastructure looks like.

Don't trust your feelings. The problem with the way cyclists and cycling transportation have been used politically is that it is now impossible to have any serious conversation about it, it's just like climate change. The experience of cyclists riding on roads have been quietly dismissed so that the establishment can get away with their bike lane agenda.

Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#143

Post by VBprogrammer »

lmilcin wrote: post #113
chronolitus wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me float you a hypothetical situation: you're in command of a few tons of steel, and your priority is to get to some arbitrary location. Your second priority, I assume, is to not murder anyone. Here's what you know about the environment : it is populated with (harmless fleshly) people who are also going about fulfilling goals 1 and 2. You know with high probability that at any given moment one might quickly cross…

I agree completely. After watching hundreds or even thousands of accidents on Youtube it could be said that there typically are two parties that could be blamed for the accident. One is officially at fault but there typically is somebody else who did not pay enough attention or did not slow down at intersection or did not do one of the many things that careful drivers would be expected to do. Drivers (or pedestrians)…

An interesting concept in this area is the naked streets concept, where by the streets are stripped of the usual trappings of lights, signs and lane markings.

Since no one then feels like they are just "in the right" everyone tends to be much more attentive.

https://www.pps.org/article/hans-monderman

Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#144

Post by bsder »

"Yet the most prominent way of setting and adjusting speed limits, known as the operating-speed method, actually encourages faster driving. It calls for setting speed limits that 85 percent of drivers will obey. This method makes little provision for whether there’s a park or senior center on a street, or for people walking or biking."

This statement causes me to question the veracity of the rest of the article.

Practically every municipality bends over backward to slow traffic near places where children, the elderly, the blind, or even just where too many accidents occur.

"Operating-speed method" is only really used for high-speed, high-throughput, limited access roadways.

Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#145

Post by scotty79 »

sokoloff wrote: post #112
donatj wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with it being so black and white. Higher speed travel saves time and energy. 55mph is generally considered optimal for vehicle fuel consumption. Slowing speeds pretty directly affects climate change and pollution. I’d like to see a direct comparison of loss of life vs mph including figures on deaths from increased air pollution and other climate considerations. I think one could also argue time lost in tra…

Driving an electric car for 4.5 years has helped me experience the tradeoffs in speed and efficiency (range) on a daily basis with fast feedback. Though 55 mph is much more energy efficient than 65 mph, 35 mph is much more energy efficient than 55 mph as well. I think the 55 mph point is realistically a balance between energy and time efficiency, not an optimum of energy efficiency alone.

Get a car that shows you current fuel efficiency. You'll see that most efficient means as slow as you can suffer through.

Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#146

Post by anonymou2 »

dannyw wrote: post #92
em-bee wrote: post #30

living in a big city in europe i was able to live without a car easily, but when i got a job in the US i fully expected that i'd have to learn to drive and get a car to get around. BUT, i managed to get an apartment 10 minutes walking from the office. this was in san diego, of all places, a city which is very spread out. a few months later i moved in with friends and we found a place far north. most of my roommates h…

Now try going carless in Montana :)

you haven't watched "Mountain Men" have you? :-D

Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#147

Post by wycy »

methodover wrote: post #43

“Given New York’s lax enforcement record, the Freakonomics podcast described running over pedestrians there as “the perfect crime.”” I was driving in Oakland when the car in front of me didn’t slow down for a pedestrian in the crosswalk. The pedestrian disappeared in front of the car. I stopped my car, got out, found the struck young woman trembling and bleeding in the street. The speed limit was 30 miles per hour. I…

It seems like absolute common sense that as abilities degrade as you age you should have to retest for drivers licenses periodically. Perhaps with greatly increasing periodicity with increasing age. However, any politician who proposed or approved such an idea would be immediately voted out of office, because old people are very reliable voters. So it's not going to happen.

Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#148

Post by afiori »

lostjohnny wrote: post #135
bancars wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to give this argument a rest. Cycling infrastructure has everything to do with availability and very little to do with hills. I don’t avoid biking to work because of the hills, I avoid it because it’s treacherous.

Disclaimer: I don't like cars, I love driving, but as a sport, not in urban areas. Biking is like running, playing soccer, playing tennis, swimming, many people don't do it because they don't do any sport. Biking requires skills that normal people usually don't have, but that they believe they have. It is in fact more dangerous than driving (compared to the driver, not pedestrians) As soon as older people could not b…

And I would add, public transport; even better if free for elderly and people with disabilities.

Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#149

Post by systemtest »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #76
methodover wrote: post #43

“Given New York’s lax enforcement record, the Freakonomics podcast described running over pedestrians there as “the perfect crime.”” I was driving in Oakland when the car in front of me didn’t slow down for a pedestrian in the crosswalk. The pedestrian disappeared in front of the car. I stopped my car, got out, found the struck young woman trembling and bleeding in the street. The speed limit was 30 miles per hour. I…

Wait, what!? In Europe if you strike a pedestrian on the crosswalk you'll definitely loose your license and be looking at manslaughter charges too while your insurance company will murder you after paying the victim's medical/disability/court bills.

I have hit a pedestrian. Instead of using the nearby crosswalk she walked in between the cars and when she walked in front of me it was too late for me to brake. She flew a couple of meters and landed on the crosswalk. In the police report is was stated that I hit the person on the crosswalk as I couldn't prove otherwise. The woman was taken away in an ambulance due to a broken leg.

I was 16 at the time. Really shaken up about what had happened. But after collecting myself and fixing the dangling headlight I was able to drive home. I got a ticket for not giving way to the pedestrian (€45 I believe) and insurance covered everything regarding the woman. Didn't even get a letter other than one that they would take of everything.

So yes it happens here too (The Netherlands)

Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives

#150

Post by maxsilver »

stellar678 wrote: post #39
DaveInTucson wrote: post #27

According to Wikipedia [0], the number of MV-related deaths has been right about 10 or 11 per 100,000 per year for the last ten years. Which makes the opening claim "Americans are condemned to lose friends and relatives to traffic violence" seem particularly overwrought. And while the legal system may have been of some help, I rather suspect the main reason cars took over is because they give the user a tremendous am…

If you live in a small town of 100,000 people, that means 11 of your neighbors will be killed by drivers crashing their cars every year. And that doesn’t account for the deaths and health costs caused by road pollution, by inactive lifestyles forced on communities due to car-centered infrastructure, etc... Given the car-oriented status quo, perhaps it’s true that cars give owners tremendous freedom and agency (at the…

> If you live in a small town of 100,000 people, that means 11 of your neighbors will be killed by drivers crashing their cars every year.

True. But for comparison, if we live in this small town of 100k people, then 192 people will die from Heart Disease, 178 people will die of Cancer, 47 people will die of Respiratory diseases, 43 people will die of Stroke, and 16 will die from the flu (influenza or pneumonia) every single year, according to the CDC. "Motor vehicle accidents" are not even in the top 10 causes of death (they're 13th, using 2016's data).

> the most desirable and productive parts of our cities are that way despite cars and not because of them.

Which is a strong argument for cars. Cars make things drastically more affordable for people. If you remove them, you increase the costs for everything (food, transportation, housing, healthcare, education, etc), to heights no regular person could ever afford. That also carries tremendous costs and even carries it's own death toll.

Paradoxically, making things "more desirable and productive" makes them worst for real people (because that value will be captured in a pricetag, and real people will never be able to afford it). Paradoxically, too much safety can actually be less safe overall (that safety will be captured in a pricetag, and real people will never be able to afford it, and will be forced into less safe alternatives) - https://local.theonion.com/neighborhood-starting-to-get-too-...

More people died from suicide (45k in 2016) in the US, than died from all automobile accidents nationwide (37k in 2016). The tradeoff here is not as simple as people often imagine it to be.

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