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Mike Ey, Microsoft HoloLens designer, killed in hit and run

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Re: Mike Ey, Microsoft HoloLens designer, killed in hit and run

#131

Post by anon012012 »

bri3d wrote: post #111
Turing_Machine wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The population density in the United States is far too low to support this. Increase the population of the U.S. to a billion or so, then maybe it will work.

The population density in thousands of places in the US is more than high enough to support more sustainable transportation solutions, but yet even those places don't . Do you believe that the existence of exurbs and rural areas is what's preventing cities from pursuing less fragile means of transit? Why?

Because the land is cheap, it is generally easier to expand and drive, and also because the US auto industry is 3 million jobs directly, 13 million indirectly, 2nd biggest auto industry on the planet, and so politically I guess it would cause problems to push for biking cities.

Re: Mike Ey, Microsoft HoloLens designer, killed in hit and run

#132

Post by dilap »

coffeemug wrote: post #104
Chevalier wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that it's any more or less tragic, but I've always been astonished that Silicon Valley is so car-dependent. We've concentrated the most brilliant minds in the world in this small area... and then force everyone to pilot two-ton bullets to pick up groceries? Not all workers can demand decent living conditions, but you'd think the competitive draw for workers in Silicon Valley would entice company towns to, I don't…

> Not all workers can demand decent living conditions You're assuming that car-oriented urban planning is synonymous with poor living conditions, which isn't true. A lot of people (most?) in the U.S. actually prefer it -- for many people the perceived convenience of cars beats public transportation and biking.

I love driving, but man, it sucks to build a city around it. I'm living in SF right now, carless, and skate a lot. It's fun, but holy shit does it suck constantly having to dodge oblivious drivers, asshole taxis, and homicidal MUNI drivers.

I have a fantasy where the whole city is grass and bikepaths. All normal deliveries are by bike, & if you really need to move something big, you get a special permit to rent a truck that goes 10 MPH and beeps.

Re: Mike Ey, Microsoft HoloLens designer, killed in hit and run

#133

Post by joesmo »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #72
spike021 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thought is that if you have the money to spend on multiple drinks, then you should be able to spend at least one drink's cost on Uber, Lyft, etc.

It's not just Uber to get home; It's the logistics of picking up your car in the morning, paying the overnight fees/parking tickets for wherever you left it, and the additional time it's going to take you to get it back. Getting 'home' is not a solved problem with Uber, unless you have some serious foresight.

Take Uber/bus/cab to the bar and back home. If you can't afford any of that, you shouldn't be getting drunk in a place you can't sleep and if you do, you deserve to go to jail if you drive. Logistics problem solved. It's not a lot of foresight and it's certainly not too much to ask of anyone who's going to get drunk.

Re: Mike Ey, Microsoft HoloLens designer, killed in hit and run

#134

Post by seanflyon »

Chevalier wrote: post #91
Turing_Machine wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That said... if someone wants to live in exurbia, he should pay an appropriate amount to access amenities downtown." Wait: downtowns are dying all across the country, and you want to solve that problem by charging people more money to go there?

Downtowns are dying because parasitic exurbs have both removed tax revenue from the urban core while multiplying their infrastructure/services/health costs. It's unsurprising that residents flee cities that become dangerous, dirty highways. Some of these cities are now beyond repair, not least for the overarching national trend of capital concentration in Silicon Valley/Silicon Alley, but these reforms would still he…

Cities get much more revenue from sales tax than from property tax. That means that your notion of parasitic exurbs is backwards.

Re: Mike Ey, Microsoft HoloLens designer, killed in hit and run

#136

Post by ild »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #52
Chevalier wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using SV as shorthand for the tech industry generally -- and Redmond is very much to Seattle what Silicon Valley is to San Francisco. Car-dependent suburbia that threatens the health, safety, and quality-of-life of everyone forced to be there. San Francisco is as walkable as the West Coast gets, which alone testifies to the disgrace of American urban planning. Ey would have been killed long ago if he dared to rid…

I actually agree with this response. Because of Microsoft, Seattle has become Silicon Valley North, just the same as NYC has become the Silicon Alley and Chicago is... whatever they're calling Chicago now. All of them are similar, heavy car usage, not enough walking, and no safety for humans. Google is trying to solve it by making smarter cars. How about we solve it by making our communities smarter instead?

Chicago is Chicago; not much going on there, for its size.

Re: Mike Ey, Microsoft HoloLens designer, killed in hit and run

#137

Post by aaronem »

munificent wrote: post #26
jstalin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to minimize drunk driving deaths, but it's hardly "rampant." About 10,000 people are killed each year in drunk driving accidents in the US. 30,000 a year die from falls. http://responsibility.org/drunk-driving/drunk-driving-fatali... http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_02.pdf

> About 10,000 people are killed each year in drunk driving accidents in the US. 30,000 a year die from falls. That number is highly biased towards the elderly. "Falls" are basically another kind of "died of old age". If you exclude people over 55, you get about: - ~6,700 deaths from drunk driving - 2,459 from falls If you look at all driving fatalities (because we fleshy humans can be impaired by more than alcohol a…

> Cars are deathtraps.

The population of the US is roughly 310 million people. Using your figure for driving fatalities, 3.1x10^8 / 2.5x10^4 = 1/12400 chance of dying in a car accident. This tracks reasonably well with the admittedly outdated information in [1], which gives the odds of dying at home as 1/7875.

By your reasoning, then, my apartment is about 33% more deathtrap-y than my car, and I should probably consider living out of doors, as well as giving up my car and staying away from roads.

Except that, from the same data, my odds of dying at the hand of another person are about one in sixteen thousand. I live in a large city, so my options are starting to look pretty limited! Subsistence farming may be the only way. (Or perhaps hunting and gathering -- this is prime whitetail country, and there are few enough hunters for deer to've become a serious pest through overbreeding.)

All life is risk, and the outcome is known ahead of time - the probability of dying of something, given long enough, eventually reaches unity. Maintaining a healthy sense of perspective seems warranted.

[1] http://www.riskcomm.com/visualaids/riskscale/datasources.php

Re: Mike Ey, Microsoft HoloLens designer, killed in hit and run

#139

Post by DiabloD3 »

guiambros wrote: post #110
DiabloD3 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually agree with this response. Because of Microsoft, Seattle has become Silicon Valley North, just the same as NYC has become the Silicon Alley and Chicago is... whatever they're calling Chicago now. All of them are similar, heavy car usage, not enough walking, and no safety for humans. Google is trying to solve it by making smarter cars. How about we solve it by making our communities smarter instead?

"Heavy car usage" , in NYC? After decades living in real car-only cities (Atlanta, Miami, Sao Paulo), I'm glad to live car-free in NYC. And considering family and small child. While gentrification continues to push people away from Manhattan, you still have decent options of public transportation to everywhere around here. We can criticize NY for many things, but being a 'car city' is not one of them. Anyway, I reall…

I've never been to NYC, but every depiction I've seen of it grid lock and seas of yellow cabs, and cabs have been known to hit people too.

Re: Mike Ey, Microsoft HoloLens designer, killed in hit and run

#140

Post by Arainach »

techsupporter wrote: post #71
Chevalier wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using SV as shorthand for the tech industry generally -- and Redmond is very much to Seattle what Silicon Valley is to San Francisco. Car-dependent suburbia that threatens the health, safety, and quality-of-life of everyone forced to be there. San Francisco is as walkable as the West Coast gets, which alone testifies to the disgrace of American urban planning. Ey would have been killed long ago if he dared to rid…

I live in Seattle and work in Redmond and do both solely via public transit and walking. Redmond has a large number of bike lane miles (as does Seattle, and many of Seattle's are protected, separated bike lanes) along with fast, frequent, and long span-of-service transit to places like Seattle and Kirkland and Bellevue. Microsoft has even helped with that by funding things like Overlake Transit Center, a street and p…

To be clear, there are actual costs involved that affect these dynamics. Property values anywhere near a transit line go way up. For many years I rented and biked to work, but when looking for a house it was massively more expensive to get anywhere within a reasonable bus ride of Redmond. I ended up to the north, where it's still not a bad bike commute (an hour, but mostly on dedicated bike trails instead of roads), but the fastest bus ride is to go west above the lake to downtown Seattle and then east back across the lake to Redmond.
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