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Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

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Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#961

Post by stjohnswarts »

bsder wrote: post #320
wrycoder wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, those solutions don't really work because of the contagiousness, so they are going out of favor. What is needed is effective prophylactics (beyond mRNA vaccines) and effective treatment. But the effort spent on that is, sadly, minimal.

Exactly. For example, how many buildings have UV sterilized return air, now? A tiny, tiny fraction. And this would benefit us for way more than just Covid.

I don't want UV sterilized air. The war on germs is one we can't win. If everything is sterilized then our immune systems will only weaken and when we do come across a flu virus outdoors it will us 10x harder and potentially kill us.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#962

Post by hunterb123 »

Nition wrote: post #880
hunterb123 wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what the government says when they fail, they blame the people. It's your fault for not following orders, not our fault.

Our government was pretty careful not to put blame on the people honestly, it's really me that's blaming the people (I'm not the one that's downvoted you though).

No post body was provided.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#963

Post by kieselguhr_kid »

treeman79 wrote: post #743
kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No city can adequately fund these programs, and San Francisco certainly doesn't build housing for the homeless, have an enlightened drugs policy or have adequate mental health care. San Francisco and other coastal cities mainly differentiate their policies by treating the homeless populations there with malignant neglect instead of outright hostility, which leads to the phenomenon you see where 10-12 cities bear the…

https://www.hoover.org/research/only-san-francisco-61000-ten... Spending for homeless is 61,000 per person

It's misallocated through an enormous network of private contractors, ineffectual nonprofits and government bureaucracies. The unaffordable expenditure (public housing or at least publicly funded housing) is completely out of that budget, while the rest of the programs are so watered down and so much have been leeched out of them that they're completely ineffectual. Rebuilding capacity for direct state action, without farming out to all of these parasitic middlemen is a key component, as is reducing or eliminating wasteful and top-heavy bureaucracies.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#964

Post by ErikVandeWater »

toss1 wrote: post #482
ErikVandeWater wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition, the extra expense associated with regulation to make planes ultra-safe makes it unaffordable for some people. Those people then go on to use a vastly less safe form of transportation.

This is confusing. You seem to be suggesting that we should let the kind of barely-competent people who typically operate & maintain automobiles with a minimum of attention also operate aircraft systems with a similarly casual approach in order to make it more affordable? The nature of aviation, where unplanned problems result in unplanned non-optional landings in random locations (instead of just pulling off the sid…

> The nature of aviation, where unplanned problems result in unplanned non-optional landings in random locations (instead of just pulling off the side of the road), would rapidly turn aviation into the most dangerous transport mode. Aviation would soon become unsustainable, and available to no one.

I didn't argue for no regulation. I argued for less regulation.

There is regulation that provides almost no safety benefit (because there is already plenty of regulation), while increasing cost noticeably.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#965

Post by MichaelCollins »

bostonpete wrote: post #925
MichaelCollins wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a careless driver crashes into me, I've been wronged by an individual who made some bad decisions. If a self-driving car hits me, I've been wronged by a corporation that probably cut corners and sold a shitty product for profit. I have some sliver of sympathy for the culprit in the first case, but zero sympathy in the second.

10-15% of car accidents are cause by mechanical failure. Some of those could certainly be blamed on large corporations cutting corners, so my question still stands.

> Some of those could certainly be blamed on large corporations cutting corners

I think most of them are probably caused by deferred maintenance, which may either be the result of the owner making poor decisions, or a circumstance forced on them by poverty. In cases where the car is defective as manufactured, I have no sympathy for the company that made it. If that happens, I want the car company to pay for it. Which I believe generally happens. Car airbags blow up in your face because of a detective design? The car company has to pay to fix that. So your question has a false premise; we don't ignore deaths caused by faulty manufacturing. Usually anyway, some car companies seem to get away with more than others..

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#966

Post by MichaelCollins »

Thlom wrote: post #781
MichaelCollins wrote: post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes there isn't much you can do. One I grew up near is a T intersection, between three farm fields. The road that butts into the other crests a hill, and the other road is right behind the crest of that hill, about 20-30 meters. There is a T intersection sign on the hill before you reach the top, but some people didn't see it or heed it. If you're following the speed limit with a dry road, it's probably safe ev…

Replace the T with a roundabout and reduce the speed limit significantly 200 meters before the roundabout.

> Replace the T with a roundabout

On the side of a hill? That's a ton of earthwork.

Country lanes don't get roundabouts. There's no money for that.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#967

Post by MichaelCollins »

diordiderot wrote: post #789
MichaelCollins wrote: post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes there isn't much you can do. One I grew up near is a T intersection, between three farm fields. The road that butts into the other crests a hill, and the other road is right behind the crest of that hill, about 20-30 meters. There is a T intersection sign on the hill before you reach the top, but some people didn't see it or heed it. If you're following the speed limit with a dry road, it's probably safe ev…

Speedbumps are inexpensive and last a very long time.

I don't think anybody would be able to differentiate the speedbumps from the condition of all the roads in that area.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#968

Post by sangnoir »

Doxin wrote: post #889
sandworm101 wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A surprise chicane, without even a sign, on a road with a history of speeding cars. What could possibly go wrong? This also seems to be farm country. Converting productive fields to non-productive traffic calming structures would be about as popular as banning pickup trucks.

It'd not be a surprise chicane. It'd be an obviously visible one. If you're driving in a way where that'd cause accidents you should have your license revoked.

Additional benefit: isolating accidents to only reckless drivers hitting trees rather than t-boning someone else

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#969

Post by scoofy »

rootusrootus wrote: post #504
cityofdelusion wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real issue is that people are just incredibly lazy. My area isn't "walkable", but its what I could call "walkable enough" -- you can get a meal and a hair cut and lots of kids could walk to school. Of course, the sidewalks are empty here. Just an occasional cyclist. Even areas around here that are much more walkable like a grouping of shops, people all seem to prefer driving shop to shop! We're talking li…

It just comes down to time. I can drive to the store in 5 minutes, or walk there in 20. Then I have to carry it home. You can call that lazy, but there are only 24 hours a day and a third of them are spent sleeping, a third working, and so that last third is precious.

The reason it takes 20 minutes to walk to a store is because of the automobile. I live in SF, and very few areas of the city are more than a 5 minute walk away from a grocery store. The problem of the automobile is a problem of development and saturation.

The automobile is ideal when few have them. This is exactly why the proliferated widely, now that we have 1.8 automobiles/household, the problems of automobile culture are inescapable unless we revert areas of our cities to pre-automobile urban design.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#970

Post by robswc »

vineyardmike wrote: post #946
robswc wrote: post #911

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its rather arrogant to think that we have perfected government to the point that we can willingly disarm ourselves of one of the most effective forms of defense...

I think it’s arrogant to think a few privately owned guns can actually compare to the massive armory of the US government. Also, it’s funny that when people actually fight back against government abuse (George Floyd protests) the gun owning demographic seems to find it wrong to be violent despite claiming guns are meant to be used against the government.

It's been shown time and time again that you do not need to, nor do you go toe to toe with the "entire armory of the US government."

It's possible to want to ability to defend yourself while also thinking violence for the sake of violence isn't right. The issue most people had with the protests were that so many innocent people got caught in the cross hairs.

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