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Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

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Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#451

Post by Grimblewald »

pantalaimon wrote: post #224
crooked-v wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My particular bugbear here is the absolutely insanity of truck and SUV heights, to the point that even full-grown adults are no longer clearly visible from inside new vehicles ( https://i.imgur.com/1dHWVxn.png ).

There was a case recently where a little girl was crushed by a SUV making a right turn at a pedestrian crossing. She was walking right behind her parents, but the driver could not see her because the vehicle was too high, so thought the road was free when the parents had passed through. The court decided that the driver was at no fault as it was impossible to see the girl from his position.

but they banned that type of car for being unsafe right?.... right?

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#452

Post by hombre_fatal »

downut wrote: post #249
thayne wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what the percentage is, but having a school within walking or biking distance is definitely not uncommon in US suburbs. At least in the areas I've lived (in multiple parts of the country), schools are generally built close to large neighborhoods, and have dedicated infrastructure to help kids walk to school. Grocery stores are less likely to be within walking distance. But then, even if I could walk to a…

None of the US comments are true in the large areas of Georgia and Arizona that I'm familiar with. Sidewalks are very uncommon. One side of street only, if even there. Which is problematic at multilane intersections. Then the kid has to cross twice on each side. I actually managed to get a crossing light installed on my kid's bike route to school by complaining to a city council member. There are traffic jams at ever…

Yeah, the American comments here seem to boil down to "technically I could walk to a school/store/cafe if I wanted to (but it's quite shit so nobody does) so it's basically Europe and Japan" and think that's comparable to a town of people who walk around daily and bump into neighbors while fetching milk from the local shop. Even Mexico is like that.

If we swapped some of this cope energy with a push to change things, maybe we wouldn't have to burn our vacation time to fly across the world to walk to a cafe on a pedestrianized street.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#453

Post by [deleted] »

HideousKojima wrote: post #425
denkmoon wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People's desires are the direct driver of gigantification of vehicles. I assure you nobody buying a RAM or F150 gives two shits about EPA or fuel efficiency.

Nonsense, I'd much rather drive a Tacoma but my F-150 was far cheaper. My ultimate preference would be a more modern (and safer) version of those Japanese trucks a lot of people import, but that's a legal/political issue. My super ultimate preference is a Hilux with a .50 cal mounted in the bed but I can't get the CIA to fund my organization yet.

[deleted]

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#454

Post by eru »

immibis wrote: post #418
eru wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, are you saying American internet it telling people that it's safe, or that it's unsafe?

American internet wants you to think you can only be safe in a car, with a gun, around other white cis people.

Interesting perspective.

As far as I can tell, American Internet mostly wants you to think that their own culture war is important and relevant universally, including for you. And that their own particular division of issues between their political poles is also somehow universal and important; and that you should get riled up about it.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#455

Post by Anotheroneagain »

complaintdept wrote: post #137
crooked-v wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My particular bugbear here is the absolutely insanity of truck and SUV heights, to the point that even full-grown adults are no longer clearly visible from inside new vehicles ( https://i.imgur.com/1dHWVxn.png ).

Actually, you'd want to get rid of those in car displays that require you to take your eyes off the road to do almost anything now, and will also spoil your night vision. There was an episode of Radiolab that was talking about this, and they made a very compelling case for it, along with those super bright headlamps that ruin your night vision when they're equipped on an oncoming vehicle. Tellingly, almost all increa…

People are getting more and more night blind.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#456

Post by eru »

hellojesus wrote: post #432
scruple wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really agree anymore. These massive vehicles on the road means that suddenly everyone has developed a very real intuition for F=ma and they're all competing in a sort of arms race to survive car crashes. Wanna improve your odds of surviving? Get the biggest fucking thing you can.

This was actually my father's arguement when I turned 16. He hypothesized that I was a new driver and therefore more likely to be involved in a crash, but if I wanted to survive a crash I needed a larger vehicle than the other one involved in the collision. I didn't much care either way, but I do still consider this when comparing new vehicles.

Better to kill than be killed?

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#457

Post by eru »

umvi wrote: post #361
erikw wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you can legally sell a new small vehicle in the US, so the root cause is legislation that prevents this. I believe that if you could legally produce kei sized vehicles in the US, there would be a massive market for it, especially in urban environments. And I'm sure US manufacturers would be happy to sell them to all comers. Edit: Basically any car from Suzuki would be a hit in the US: https://www.suzuki…

I thought it was just that you get hit with fines if your vehicle doesn't have a minimum mpg fuel efficiency and it's hard to make smaller trucks and SUVs with enough efficiency to avoid the fines

SUVs get a special carve-out, and the law mandates less fuel efficiency for them than for regular cars (or what used to be regular cars). Even wonder why station wagons fell out of favour in the US?

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#458

Post by eru »

hiatus wrote: post #370
eru wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mitsubishi Mirage might be a small car by American standards, but it seems quite a few weight classes above Kei cars. (I don't know about erikw's claims about small cars being illegal in the US. So I don't want to express an opinion on that.)

The Honda N-box is listed as an example of a Kei car and is larger than a Mirage in some dimensions and also heavier.

Thanks!

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#459

Post by Anotheroneagain »

The cause is that they started poisoning food with iron according to the wrong numbers haphazardly patched together for the war effort (and uncritically copied everywhere else). Actual iron deficiency is virtually nonexistent, there is always enough.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#460

Post by Moldoteck »

thepasswordis wrote: post #440
Moldoteck wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so you didn't care to provide stats? about 40k ppl are killed by cars per year, about 20k are killed by guns. Among those 40k, about 1200 are kids younger than 14 and about 3k teenagers of age 13-19 (sadly a bit of intersection in stats). Maybe you personally can avoid deaths by cars, but about 40k ppl per year in us alone can't

What is your argument here? We should destroy the parks because cars are also a problem? No. We should make cars safer. We should make guns safer. But not the parks? Those need to be drug dens and open air homeless shelters?

making cars safer means reducing by design speeds to <30km/h in cities + traffic calming infra(speed bumps, bollards, curbs etc), and including pedestrian fatality risk in evaluating car safety so that bigger cars will be deprioritized
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