“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.
Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives
181–190 of 451 posts
Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Most of your argument is about motorized vehicles, not bicycles. I agree that motorized two-wheeled vehicles are inherently more dangerous than non-motorized forms of transportation, but that is multiple separate discussions, and your argument doesn't necessarily apply to bicycle-oriented vs car-oriented city design. Walkable cities are for everyone. This is trivially untrue. Cities with lots of steps or staircases a…
They are the same thing.
Bicycles have wheels, they should be on the streets.
> Cities with lots of steps or staircases are only accessible for pedestrians, but no one else.
And that's good!
BTW, you can walk the bike.
Just like you do when you have to jump on a train or take the subway.
If you're talking about accessibility in general, that's a whole other problem.
Bike lanes on sidewalks aren't accessible either, there are deaf pedestrian, blind pedestrians, handicapped pedestrians, that are put at risk by sharing the same space with bikes.
> I guess it depends a lot on what you consider "bikers"
[1] is very young [2] is expert bikers, people that dresses for biking
the percentage of the population that can bike regularly in a large city is quite small and Copenhagen is a very small city.
The point is that you don't solve anything with bikes, just like you don't solve anything with skates, kick scooters and whatever you are thinking of
You're over optimizing for a small percentage of the population.
You solve a lot by removing cars from the streets (think about underground parking lots) and giving way more space to walking lanes, hardly separated from wheeled vehicles (cars, public transport, motorbikes, bycicles, whatever...)
If you improve the walkability, you also improve the mobility: people can easily switch from bike, walking the bike for a bit on a sidewalk, take the public transport, get off, walk a bit more, jump on the bike again.
If you cannot walk easily, safely and fast, you're packing pedestrian on very small areas, you're making their journey uncomfortable and leaving them at the mercy of wheeled vehicles, because they can be obviously faster and demand precedence.
And those who use a vehicle are encouraged to leave it very close to where they are going, because walking, even a little bit, is painful.
That's how we end up with cars parked in handicapped spots or on double lines or on the sidewalks or bikes chained to school gates or road signs or bus stops as you can see in cities like Milan [1] (where they use the bike a lot)
Ironically the road sign in the picture says "bikes chained here will be removed"
The majority of people in large cities walks, even if you don't notice it, even in cities terrible for walking like Rome, it's what people are good at.
Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives
#183Jaywalking is also a notion that was created by the car industry, with regulation and a PR campaign to shift the blame from cars to pedestrians. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaywalking#Origin_of_the_term
Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives
#184“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.
[1]https://www.montlick.com/montlick-blog/auto-accidents/333-el...
Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives
#185> Even so, 85 to 90 percent of toxic vehicle emissions in traffic come from tire wear and other non-tailpipe sources, which electric and hybrid cars still produce. First of all, this person meant to say "particulates" [1] and so we are not talking about CO2 at all . Secondly, the source that he links to has this table in it for PM10 (the table for PM2.5 would be analogous) [2]. Almost all of this argument is based on…
Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's like the article states - it's actually unusual for a non drunk driver in America to face charges when in any incident with a bicyclist or pedestrian even with a death unless there is a LEO watching or LEO victim. It's a common topic on blogs about cycling in the USA.
Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives
#187“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…
Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a European I was really surprised at how cycle-friendly San Francisco and Palo Alto (especially Stanford campus) are- its much better than you might expect. Room for improvement, but no worse than many cities over here.
As a resident of Copenhagen this was not really my impression. Yes, Palo Alto is cycleable, kinda in the same way any small town in the world is cycleable - low amount of traffic and comparatively wide streets. San Francisco is cycleable because it is 7x7 miles large so not that much space to sprawl but cycling infrastructure is basically completely absent. What surprised me though is how overall passable public tran…
Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives
#189living 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 :)
Re: Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now try going carless in Montana :)
There are plenty of similar places in Europe. I don't see how this says anything useful.
i can't think of any places like that in europe. european cities are simply not that spread out. so unless you live on a farm far from everywhere, you should be fine.