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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

#421

Post by mikestew »

cgriswald wrote: post #299
wycy wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My license expires after just 6 years I believe, but it can be renewed without retesting or anything, so unfortunately expiry doesn't solve the problem (at least in the US).

I believe mine expires every five years, but the first time I renewed it I did it through the mail. The last time, I only had to retake the eye test (at ten years). And the DMV made me wait a long time, with the eye test at every window clearly visible (and I think the same one, but I could be remembering incorrectly). I can see fine, but it would have been trivial to memorize it. Even if you can't see it while waiti…

When my wife renewed her Washington license via mail, her eye test was checking a box on the mail-in form that effectively said, “yeah, my eyes are fine.”

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

#422

Post by Spooky23 »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #238
Spooky23 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an impossible case to prosecute, as the woman had no bad intent, probably had a clean record, and the only evidence is eyewitness testimony. Eyewitnesses suck at trial, and defending the elderly is pretty easy.

There is a wide berth between prosecution and no pentalty whatsoever. For example, In many states, you can lose a license without being prosecuted. Indiana is one of them. Alternatively, a prudent measure would be to require the driver to get a medical clearance to drive again. This, in my opinion, would be the wise choice.

That's another issue, as now you'll have police applying selective judgement, mostly in urban areas that impact people's ability to work.

Headline will be "Police target minority driver licenses for minor traffic infractions."

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

#423

Post by Zak »

claudius wrote: post #236
dalbasal wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you add in Germany, I think you get 1.5/3

2/3, no way policies in Germany don't favour cars.

German policies don't advantage private car use over public transit use to anywhere near the degree US policies do. To give some examples, a few of which the article mentions or alludes to:

* In many US cities, businesses are required by law to have certain amounts of parking for employees and customers. This makes car use more convenient and takes up space, making walking less viable.

* German taxes on gasoline and diesel are over 100%.

* Most areas of larger German cities are zoned for high-density housing; it's typical for street-level businesses to have several floors of apartments above them.

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

#424

Post by 205guy »

sokoloff wrote: post #101
majewsky wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a rough estimate, a streetcar line is more efficient than a bus line above 40,000 passengers per day. My city (Dresden, Germany) has a bus line with 70,000 passengers per day, and you can really see it cracking at the seams. During rush hour, busses run every 3 minutes, and that interval cannot be increased any further because the busses would start blocking each other, thus backing up from the bus stop into the r…

The German bus systems I’ve used have been night and day better than US ones. Buses that mostly run to a schedule are incomprehensible to most in the US. Probably related, I doubt we have a bus line with anywhere near that ridership.

SF has the notorious 38 Geary that had 55+K daily ridership (boardings) in 2017 [1]. It has many of the problems of an overloaded bus line (traffic causing buses to run together, etc). Oddly, the SF Muni metro lines (what they call the light rail, runs underground downtown but on the street elsewhere) don't seem as congested, but I can't find the ridership numbers.

People have been complaining about the 38 for years, but I don't want to criticize the SFMTA (local agency that runs buses/trolley buses and light rail) because it does seem to get the job done without much expensive investment (cost of most recent underground metro in SF was $1.6B for 1.7 miles [2]).

[1] https://sf.curbed.com/2017/9/19/16302396/sf-worst-bus-transi...

[2] https://www.sfmta.com/projects/central-subway-project

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

#425

Post by bsder »

bluGill wrote: post #163
bsder wrote: post #144

"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. Prac…

Municipalities do not do much to slow traffic. The might put up a slower speed limit sign, and post traffic copes - but the cynic who says this is about revenue not slowing traffic has a good point. There are plenty of real ways to slow traffic known in traffic engineering circles, but they are rarely implemented.

You are not in Southern California then. Traffic circles and road humps are quite endemic.

This is sufficiently common that I could use road humps as a proxy for "Am I going the correct direction?" back before nav systems. Maybe you weren't going the completely right direction, but a road hump (or traffic circle) meant you were on a road sufficiently useful that it needed a traffic calming measure.

Cities with winter have extra considerations, though.

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

#426

Post by clairity »

dalbasal wrote: post #117
nerdponx wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying we should never think in abstractions... but there is a formulaic pattern here that's old, paranoid and harmful. Except these conspiracies were (and are) generally real, and their effects are real. The pattern isn't journalistic, it's historical.

It's both historical & journalistic. Capitalism, corporatism, empire, patriarchy, globalism public choice, regulatory capture... these do all relate to reality, but they are not reality themselves. They are abstractions. A potentially useful way of seeing a broad picture, but also hazardous. Spending too many brain cycles in these abstractions makes us formulaic. We no longer see unique & specific examples, just unin…

your point seems to be directed at how human discussions happen generally and how we must necessarily abstract away details to even have those discussions at all.

but we sometimes collectively need to grind through the ruts a number of times before finding a good solution, especially if the solution involves a variable abstracted away by the model.

so why specifically does your noted pitfall need to be avoided? and what alternatives can you offer?

but more to the point, what's the model of car-centric cities you'd advocate?

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

#427

Post by t413 »

hkt wrote: post #91
stevenwoo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What's LEO?

Low Earth Orbit.

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

#428

Post by DaveInTucson »

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…

Here's another way to look at it. This link (https://www.asirt.org/safe-travel/road-safety-facts/) says "traffic crashes [...] account for 2.2% of all deaths globally." Which means that out of your 50 closest acquaintances, one of them is likely to die in a car accident.

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

#429

Post by t413 »

pmichaud wrote: post #352
stronglikedan wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a pedestrian (or cyclist), you should always give way to cars, even being prepared to jump out of the way when you have the right-of-way. Unless the driver is intoxicated, they get inconvenienced with higher insurance premiums for a little while at worst, while you get stuck with life long injuries and pain at worst.

Pedestrian culture in that area is weird. There's a general region which I think centers on Berkeley, but definitely includes Oakland, in which pedestrians have right of way (in some cases legally, in others just culturally/in expectation). It makes driving pretty stressful because it makes people much less predictable. When I commuted to Berkeley I would often joke/not joke that Berkeley pedestrians were trying to m…

It may feel super cozy and normal when driving a car around– but the reality is that it's a metal multi-ton piece of heavy machinery. I'm sympathetic to your plight but.. really it _should be stressful._

Especially in a pedestrian-heavy center where walking should be (and thankfully is!) the norm like in Berkeley.

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

#430

Post by jakelazaroff »

afiori wrote: post #405
jakelazaroff wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like an equivocation. Do you think more drivers or pedestrians are harmed by incidents involving both?

I do not understand what you are referring to. > Do you think more drivers or pedestrians are harmed by incidents involving both? pedestrian obviously. This implies to me that regardless of the law, pedestrian should be careful when crossing the streets. From the legal side I believe we should adopt the regulations that are more likely to decrease the number and gravity of incidents, this is heavily dependent of loca…

I'm saying we shouldn't be satisfied with "that behavior should be illegal for both parties" when one party is much more likely to be injured or killed than the other. Pedestrians should be careful regardless of the law, but the law should focus on drivers, specifically.
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