161–170 of 192 posts
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Airbags and ABS and crumple zones don't weigh much. The cars are just bigger.
Are you sure about that? I read about people stripping all the airbags out of new Civics and getting dramatically better gas mileage.
The issue with cars is that the vehicle that is best for highways (capable of speeds up to at least 80 mph) is not great for city driving. Automatic transmissions make it even worse, because there are now idiots who have no idea how fast they're driving (yeah, I'm a stick snob).
Second, the car did a great job of something in the 1950s. It was a rent/house-price control mechanism that actually worked-- without causing a shortage. It scaled back the power of landlords by allowing development of low-value land. Suburbia turned into something ugly-- racist, detached, gluttonous, environmentally harmful, and ultimately (paradoxically?) expensive-- for a variety of reasons, including increased specialization in the economy (more driving, more scaling problems with traffic) and a Parkinson's Law effect of consumer capitalism. Isolated people turned out to be more needy, confused, and liable to overspend, making a market for gigantic houses, ridiculous cars, and tons of low-quality consumer dreck (bought on credit) that no one really needed. Slowly, the tyranny of the landlords crept back in, and things people actually needed (healthcare, education, and finally housing) became again expensive, then extortionate. That's where we are now.
The car is actually a huge money-hole for most working families, and auto loans a "gateway drug" to yet more unnecessary consumer debt. The car was supposed to liberate them from landlords. Now, it's a white elephant they can only afford because they have no choice: the jobs are all 10-50 miles away, public transportation is expensive and emasculated in most places-- even Amtrak is unaffordable for most; and the roads are unsafe to bike or walk (highways and ghettos, both products of suburbanization). So people drop hundreds of dollars per month on car payments, fuel, insurance, parking, tolls, and repairs (plus the involuntary payment through taxes, but that could be argued to be a win for most; if you eat, you use the roads). For people out of cities, the car has become the new landlord.
In the 1930s to '50s, however, no one saw all these unintended consequences. Now, it's an open question whether the benefits of widespread automobile usage merit the risk to public safety and the slashing of public spaces. I'd say "no". On the other hand, if you were a working-class person in the 1940s and this new invention had the promise of liberating you from the landlord so you could send your kids to school and actually retire, you might think differently. They didn't have the foresight to see all the negative unintended consequences or car-reliance.
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"So what if a few more people die every year...freedom!" is the emotional and clearly-wrong argument I'm referring to. As to your question, it depends on the road and 15mph is an unusually large number. I'm used to things more like '70-72 in a 65 zone' and '39 in a 35 zone'. On a straight freeway 90 is probably safe. But my point was that the current system is broken in such a way that rigorous enforcement of the exa…
Do you go to Canada often? There speed limits are more strict than ours and they have pretty sophisticated enforcement (speed cameras). The world didn't come to an end there. It is even worse in Europe and Japan; I think our American ideas of "broken" is a bit warped, but I actually like going 90 mph to get from Seattle to Spokane; once you get across the mountains it is a boring trip. Europe and Canada annoy me. But…
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That big comfy car that protects you from highway collisions accomplishes that by shifting the impact toward the smaller car. It doesn't increase overall highway safety, just steals it from others in your favor.
What about all the safety features found in larger cars? What about single-vehicle accidents? I don't need to drive a logging truck to feel safe, but I'd much rather drive a new corolla than an 80s model. Solid pillars and increased crumple zones and multiple airbags make a car bulkier, but the safety improvement is much greater than a simple function of weight.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"So what if a few more people die every year...freedom!" is the emotional and clearly-wrong argument I'm referring to. As to your question, it depends on the road and 15mph is an unusually large number. I'm used to things more like '70-72 in a 65 zone' and '39 in a 35 zone'. On a straight freeway 90 is probably safe. But my point was that the current system is broken in such a way that rigorous enforcement of the exa…
Do you go to Canada often? There speed limits are more strict than ours and they have pretty sophisticated enforcement (speed cameras). The world didn't come to an end there. It is even worse in Europe and Japan; I think our American ideas of "broken" is a bit warped, but I actually like going 90 mph to get from Seattle to Spokane; once you get across the mountains it is a boring trip. Europe and Canada annoy me. But…
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Weight is also an overwhelming factor in the OTHER person's survival in an accident. We do not make the general public safer by encouraging an arms race of heavier and heavier vehicles.
The problem is, that there are always going to be heavier vehicles than ours on the road. Even if we make everyone drive Volkswagen Ups or Minis, there are always going to be trucks on roads which will literally ride over such a small vehicle. Not saying that you would necessarily survive in an SUV, but chances are probably better. Also - people will always drive pickups and vans because they need them for work. Even…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you go to Canada often? There speed limits are more strict than ours and they have pretty sophisticated enforcement (speed cameras). The world didn't come to an end there. It is even worse in Europe and Japan; I think our American ideas of "broken" is a bit warped, but I actually like going 90 mph to get from Seattle to Spokane; once you get across the mountains it is a boring trip. Europe and Canada annoy me. But…
You don't drive, and yet you make a lot of claims about how driving should be.
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I don't think the solution to unsafe roads is to throw everyone that is at-fault in an accident in jail. I understand the frustration cyclists have with auto traffic, but we've seen a million times that harsher penalties don't always have the intended outcome. And we have a habit in the US of using prison as the answer for every malady. Instead, I think the answer is better road design, separating cars and cyclists u…
When people decry using the prison system as a cure-all, it's usually for things like drugs or mental illness. In essence, why punish people for things that either don't harm others, or aren't their fault? You're applying this to a serious crime, at least manslaughter if not murder. If prison isn't appropriate for that, what is prison appropriate for? I imagine an argument could be made that prison is never the right…
But as a cyclist, you realise how basically selfish people are and how unfair traffic accidents are. Motorists have an unrealistic idea of "fairness" and would feel that excessive penalties would be "unfair" when they made an honest mistake that is commonly made.
Personally I think that the penalties of bad driving should match the unfairness of the effects. Do not punish 99% of people who get a ticket. The other 1% are picked at random and get a very large fine (say $10,000).
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What about things like Toyota's unintended acceleration debacle? Just because driver's actions count for a lot of accidents doesn't mean that car manufacturer are absolved from doing anything. Considering how many accidents there are, cars need to be designed with that in mind , much like how touch keyboards work around our fat finger inputs. User error is a design consideration (or else we wouldn't have undo command…
The Toyota debacle where they had buggy code but no evidence of anything other than driver error?