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Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

economist.com

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Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#331

Post by dgfitz »

PsylentKnight wrote: post #323
dgfitz wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had groceries delivered today actually… a car drove them from the store to my home. What the fuck are you on about?

I walked to get groceries today, so I guess we're even on the anecdata In cities that aren't completely car-centric and have mixed-use development, you don't need a car to get groceries, because everything is close enough to walk. Again, plenty of countries do this just fine, proving it is not impossible.

Never said it was impossible.

It’s not the reality that we live in. Most of the world is not a town or city of temperate climate where everything is within a half hour walk or bike ride.

I will never understand how this point is just glossed over and excused away. Ignoring the boundaries of reality doesn’t make said boundaries magically go away.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#332

Post by amrocha »

bradfox2 wrote: post #329
amrocha wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, I'll respond. >Not every person is able-bodied enough to walk and bike And the same goes for cars, except kids can ride bikes, so car accessibility is actually just worse. >Also, people happen to need to get from A to B when it is cold, dark, raining, extremely hot, snowing, or just some kind of shitty outside You can walk or cycle in all of those conditions. In fact, I have walked or cycled in all of those…

And where I live it's 110F+ for three months of the year. No one sane is biking or walking anywhere as it's too dangerous. Not everyone lives in some temperate small European city.

First off, you're exaggerating. There is no place on earth that averages 40C for 3 months.

Second,I live in Tokyo, where the summer has been miserable with average temperatures of 32C, with regular highs of 36+ with 80% humidity. And yet I walked and biked everywhere and was just fine, and that's true for most of the 40M people that live here as well.

Third, it sounds like you live in a place that's not suitable for humans, you should probably move instead of making the planet even hotter for everyone else by living in your steel boxes with AC.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#333

Post by amrocha »

dgfitz wrote: post #291
amrocha wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, I'll respond. >Not every person is able-bodied enough to walk and bike And the same goes for cars, except kids can ride bikes, so car accessibility is actually just worse. >Also, people happen to need to get from A to B when it is cold, dark, raining, extremely hot, snowing, or just some kind of shitty outside You can walk or cycle in all of those conditions. In fact, I have walked or cycled in all of those…

> You can walk or cycle in all of those conditions. YOU can do that, sure. You need to look past your own nose to objectively weigh in on these topics.

The vast majority of trips are taken by foot or bicycle where I am. Statistically speaking, YOU can do it too.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#334

Post by dgfitz »

amrocha wrote: post #333
dgfitz wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can walk or cycle in all of those conditions. YOU can do that, sure. You need to look past your own nose to objectively weigh in on these topics.

The vast majority of trips are taken by foot or bicycle where I am. Statistically speaking, YOU can do it too.

The fuck do you think “statistically speaking” actually means? Your anecdote of 1 does not a statistic make.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#335

Post by rasz »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #81
thot_experiment wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars damage infrastructure in proportion to the fourth power of axle load. Not only are people in big cars killing people in little cars, they're also HEAVILY subsidized by the people they kill. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

Because that function is so convex, almost all of the cumulative damage to roads is done by lorries, buses and fuel trucks. Cars, even big ones, are negligible compared to the fourth power of bus weight.

> lorries, buses and fuel trucks

None of those drive on small local roads, but mom trucks do.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#336

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

yyyk wrote: post #237
Groxx wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only we had other technologies for moving heavy things without using concrete roads

Horses? I don't see how you really solve last mile.

Huh? I've had horses in my basement. The last mile was solved centuries ago.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#337

Post by amrocha »

dgfitz wrote: post #334
amrocha wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of trips are taken by foot or bicycle where I am. Statistically speaking, YOU can do it too.

The fuck do you think “statistically speaking” actually means? Your anecdote of 1 does not a statistic make.

My "anecdote" is the fact that I live in Tokyo where we get extreme weather regularly and yet the vast majority of trips are taken by public transport, walking or biking.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#338

Post by milch »

Spooky23 wrote: post #102
roughly wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Key Ideas: Heavier vehicles are safer for their occupants but more dangerous for others: The weight of a vehicle is a critical factor in car crashes, with heavier vehicles causing more fatalities in other cars, pedestrians, and cyclists. I'm actually curious how much of this danger is primarily to pedestrians and cyclists. On the margins, I'd expect in a crash a 6000lb vehicle with modern safety equipment to be saf…

I think a lot of this is details lost in the stats. Every car is heavier due to safety standards. A 2024 Civic is bigger than a 1994 Accord. The pickups are less safe for all stakeholders and are a dominant category. They have poor safety features, handle poorly and have comically bad visibility. That plus the abandonment of speed enforcement drives death. 2000lb or 8000lb car, if you get hit at 45mph, you’re dead. V…

> That plus the abandonment of speed enforcement drives death

I don't think they need enforcement as much as traffic calming features. It simply shouldn't be possible to speed as much as people do... I live between a middle school, a special ed school and a bus stop, on a 30mph road which is 43ft wide. Basically this is what it looks like: https://streetmix.net/-/2685748 and this is probably what it should look like to reduce average speeds: https://streetmix.net/-/2685753. There are children walking and biking along this road all day. I frequently see people speeding, easily going 40, 50 even 60mph. Note that this isn't a very high traffic road either, I just looked up the average traffic counts and it gets 8-12k of vehicles in both directions PER DAY, so traffic calming would barely have an impact. If anything it might drive more people to take the highway or one of the other high-speed roads nearby instead, which would be a good thing too.

The other problem is people coming out of cross streets, and immediately pulling forward as much as possible without looking. You have a kid crossing the street who maybe doesn't know any better, or is distracted because they are on their phone or chatting with their friends, and you got a perfect recipe for an "accident" right there ... I've also watched close calls like that so many times in this area. You simply can't put a cop on every corner to do enforcement of that - maybe some automated camera systems would do it, but so does daylighting the intersections like they do in Hoboken.

And the other problem is that any time you do something that even vaguely could cause an increase in driving time, people will rage. I've seen public comment sessions where the planners literally showed the data that adding a bike lane wouldn't increase travel times during peak and actually decrease traffic and people were like "well, I don't believe it, my commute is going to slow down for sure". Same with even simpler things like speed cameras ("cash grab"), heck even increased police activity (also "cash grab"). You can show data that it will save people's lives, even children's lives, and people (even on HN) will say "but the economy... and efficiency...".

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#339

Post by dgfitz »

amrocha wrote: post #332
bradfox2 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where I live it's 110F+ for three months of the year. No one sane is biking or walking anywhere as it's too dangerous. Not everyone lives in some temperate small European city.

First off, you're exaggerating. There is no place on earth that averages 40C for 3 months. Second,I live in Tokyo, where the summer has been miserable with average temperatures of 32C, with regular highs of 36+ with 80% humidity. And yet I walked and biked everywhere and was just fine, and that's true for most of the 40M people that live here as well. Third, it sounds like you live in a place that's not suitable for…

> Second,I live in Tokyo

And this is where you need to remember that the rest of the world is not Tokyo. I have faith you’ll get there.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#340

Post by dgfitz »

amrocha wrote: post #337
dgfitz wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fuck do you think “statistically speaking” actually means? Your anecdote of 1 does not a statistic make.

My "anecdote" is the fact that I live in Tokyo where we get extreme weather regularly and yet the vast majority of trips are taken by public transport, walking or biking.

Stop pretending the rest of the world is like Tokyo, it isn’t.
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