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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

#371

Post by nickpsecurity »

carapace wrote: post #366
nickpsecurity wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too don't like the article presented that way. I should note that it was a conspiracy in this case. Automobile manufacturers ran media campaigns and lobbied to make walking across the street a crime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM Most of these are also laws passed by groups of people deciding to control others for a mix of perceived altruistic and selfish reasons. It's not secret but there's people co…

Man, I was talking about this a couple of years ago and got called a conspiracy nut. I was like, "crack a history book." Now I can just point to this video. Cheers! (FWIW, Robert Anton Wilson once pointed out that, of regime changes in the 20th century, over half of them were the result of some sort of coup . In other words, conspiracy is normal. Make of that what you will.)

Yeah, it is. Glad to see another person realize it. Most write-ups about it act as if believing in conspiracies requires a nutball. Whereas, the world is full of actual conspiracies going on all the time. I wrote a counterpoint to Bruce Schneier saying that:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/06/the_psycholog...

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

#372

Post by carapace »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #10
nerdponx wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget that, at least in the case of New York, mass transit was deliberately pushed out, in pursuit of some kind of elitist pipe dream. The more I read about Robert Moses, the less respect I have for his legacy.

Your comment makes me think of the premise behind Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Judge Doom: Several months ago I had the good providence to stumble upon this plan of the city council's. A construction plan of epic proportions. They're calling it a freeway. Eddie Valiant: Freeway? What the hell's a freeway? Judge Doom: Eight lanes of shimmering cement running from here to Pasadena. Smooth, safe, fast. Traffic jams will be…

https://inhabitat.com/what-happened-to-los-angeles-streetcar...

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

#373

Post by pixl97 »

adrianN wrote: post #231
pixl97 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are very apt to be hit and killed by other bad drivers in that slow vehicle.

Replace everyone's cars with electric tricycles then.

And replace all American suburbs and infrastructure, because that is what you are asking.

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

#374

Post by dsfyu404ed »

caconym_ wrote: post #343
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh quit your puritanical hand wringing. Average people can drive in an average manner and go years or often decade, sometimes entire lifetimes without screwing up badly enough to attract law enforcement attention or get in a crash. We as a society have determined that is mostly good enough. Most people are satisfied with the current level of risk/reward of driving and unless improvements come with minimal trade-offs…

> puritanical > religious Nice. Your point has regressed from "most drivers aren't irresponsible" to "most drivers are irresponsible but it's fine". If you can support the former with hard data, great, let's see it. The latter is an opinion; it's one I do not share, and it's not something I'm interested in discussing because there is zero chance of that discussion bearing any sort of fruit.

There's no regression whatsoever.

I am telling you, your definition of "responsible" (and by implication irresponsible) is not shared by society at large. I have told you this in several ways. Since apparently my last way of phrasing it wasn't easy to deflect now you're trying to straw-man me.

What sort of citation do you want? You said ~3k people are killed by distracted drivers and implied that it's a regular occurrence and a Problem(TM). I pointed out (with citation) that that's about the same number killed in fires, something infrequent enough that it's generally considered Not A Problem(TM).

Make no mistake, preventable deaths are tragic but preventable deaths as a result of motor vehicles are not the epidemic you portray them to be.

Of course further discussion will bear no fruit. Your mind is made up and will not be changed.

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

#375

Post by bluGill »

inflatableDodo wrote: post #290
bluGill wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've concluded the opposite: leave the cars where they are. What I want is a separate pedestrian level to the city - a skyway system (though I'm fine with it being underground). Let the humans walk in air conditioned comfort while not cars to worry about. This is much cheaper than the underground roads.

How about air conditioned skyways for pedestrians in cities and underground roads everywhere else?

Underground roads are orders of magnitude more expensive, so it isn't worth creating them (with some exceptions). With unlimited resources we could create as many as we want, but I have better things to do with my time/money than build roads.

Skyways are significantly cheaper than bridges. It would still be cheaper to make the ground level of your city a building, but not having to support the mass of cars and trucks means skyways can be significantly cheaper.

In the modern world trucks and buses are far too useful to ban completely from cities where people live. People need their stuff delivered, and need to get longer distances once in a while. Thus I'm saying reserve the ground for those uses and get humans away from them. It is a compromise, but I think it is a good one.

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

#376

Post by the_gastropod »

ThomPete wrote: post #346
darkarmani wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not way to get around if you live in the suburbs and have to drive 30 miles to work and take care of your picking up the kids and drive 20 miles to the nearest grocery store etc. That's a consequence of cars not the other way around. If cars were never invented, you wouldn't have the problem of traveling 30 miles to work and driving 20 miles to a store. Those things are possible because of cars and now it chai…

Of course you would have that problem, it would just be even harder to get around and to get things around or to go anywhere. The reason why people choose to live further out is among other things to get more nature for their children, it is to get cheaper houses, it used to be safer etc.

You're ignoring the other side of the equation: the convenience of also being able to get food, medical care, entertainment, mail, etc. It's affordable and possible to live in suburban / rural locations because the automobile made it easy. Otherwise, these people would need to be significantly more self-reliant.

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

#377

Post by dsfyu404ed »

sokoloff wrote: post #185
mikorym wrote: post #166

> 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…

I drive an electric; wife drives a gas ICE; I maintain both. No way is electric brake wear 1% or less of a conventional car (what it would take for it to round down to zero in that table). I'd put it at around 5-10% of an ICE, making the total particulate emissions higher.

Unless you happen to have two of the same car in ICE and electric you're going to need to do some math to account for different brake pad volume and vehicle weight. There's a pretty substantial number of variables that would go into it. I assume you're using the same product line for all your pads.

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

#378

Post by sokoloff »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #377
sokoloff wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I drive an electric; wife drives a gas ICE; I maintain both. No way is electric brake wear 1% or less of a conventional car (what it would take for it to round down to zero in that table). I'd put it at around 5-10% of an ICE, making the total particulate emissions higher.

Unless you happen to have two of the same car in ICE and electric you're going to need to do some math to account for different brake pad volume and vehicle weight. There's a pretty substantial number of variables that would go into it. I assume you're using the same product line for all your pads.

Figuring out whether it's 25% or 50% may require that.

Figuring out whether it's sub 1% or >= 2% probably doesn't.

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

#379

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

magduf wrote: post #363
candu wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...no, but it bears remembering that many cities in Europe were effectively bulldozed by two world wars, not to mention centuries of smaller wars. Just because you can raze entire cities, displace their populations, and embark on "clean slate" urban planning projects doesn't mean you should. That's the civil engineering equivalent of rewriting the entire codebase from scratch.

>That's the civil engineering equivalent of rewriting the entire codebase from scratch. And yet, "refactoring" is definitely a real thing in software engineering and is not uncommon, for good reason: many times you really do need to throw everything out and start from scratch.

Is there a version control for reality so you can rollback if things go horribly wrong? How many lives are ruined if the refactoring fails. That's an incredibly poor metaphor for actual, physical, events.

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

#380

Post by oefrha »

tmux314 wrote: post #298

There is no doubt that we are over-reliant on cars. We (Americans) spent the last century towards developing automobile infrastructure. Now with global warming, it will take many more years to undo the damage. We can agree over that. But focusing the blame on car companies and the wealthy one-percenters is historical revisionism. It undercuts the fact that these policies were eagerly supported by lower-middle class a…

Having grown up without a car in a country with good public transport, I never had trouble vacationing to beaches and parks, visiting faraway families, or pursuing work in faraway places (well that last point didn’t apply to me, but certainly did apply to e.g. my parents).

Now, having lived in the U.S. for many years, I still hate driving, but I’m basically crippled if I don’t drive.

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