181–190 of 192 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Toyota debacle where they had buggy code but no evidence of anything other than driver error?
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319897 http://www.edn.com/design/automotive/4423428/Toyota-s-killer...
Even if the code failed in some situations I would comfortably bet that most cases were user error.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
and you are at fault That's the tricky phrase. How do you prove fault in a car collision, to the same degree that's required for a charge and conviction of manslaughter or murder? In New Jersey, we have "no-fault" laws for insurance, which basically means that when there is an accident there's no way to prove that either party is more at-fault than the other, so legally neither is at fault. In practice, both parties…
All reckless driving citations should carry with them a minimum 1-5 year loss in driving privilege that no lawyer can get you out of.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Europe generally resisted the authoritarianism of the car, and lashed back against it fairly strongly. In the US, many cities were literally gutted in favor of making sure cars could move fast. Then we started designing with the assumption that anyone worth caring about had a car.
I wonder to what extent some of that is a fortunate combination of circumstances. Many European countries were quite positive on highways in the mid 20th century. But city centers mostly escaped having American-style freeways bulldozed through them, I think out of urban-preservation reasons more than anti-car or pro-transit sentiment. Same reason NYC ended up finally pushing back on Robert Moses's plans. So the freew…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Only a tiny majority of drivers will ever wilfully put cyclists at risk. Most people will genuinely believe that they are good drivers and nice people because that is exactly how everyone they know also behaves. There is simply no strong social pressure to be careful beyond a basic minimum standards. Cyclists are seen as breaking a basic social convention. But as a cyclist, you realise how basically selfish people ar…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Instead, I think the answer is better road design, separating cars and cyclists using dedicated lanes, and automated vehicles. One way of keeping the status quo is to suggest things that are incredibly expensive and time consuming will never be done. Making driving more expensive however, does reduce traffic and fatalities.
"Making driving more expensive however, does reduce traffic and fatalities."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
get back to me after you've been driving every day for ten years and we will see what your interpretation of "full attention"means. you can't be 100% vigilante 100% of the time.
Get back to me after you've been cycling around autos every day for 10 years and we will see what your interpretation of "full attention" means.
But on the note of your bike, full attention includes things other than you. It includes the opposite lane, the speed limit, people behind them that might not stop if he hits his brakes and so on.
As a side note, there's a lot of sharp emotions directed at what people are saying and the verbage people are choosing is, I think, unnecessarily harsh and in some cases mocking. We need to tone that back.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd love to see some numbers on how many deaths are due to bad pedestrian behavior like that. Anecdotally, I've never encountered that sort of thing from a pedestrian while driving, but I've almost been run down several times by drivers not obeying the law while I was legally crossing the street with the right of way. All it would take is crossing the street at the wrong time with a walk signal without checking both…
> Anecdotally, I've never encountered that sort of thing from a pedestrian while driving, You must not live anywhere near Seattle. Even after fourteen years of dealing with attention-not-paying pedestrians who believe it to be their deity-given right to walk into the street at any moment without even a sideways glance at traffic conditions, I'm still amazed that more of them don't bounce off of car hoods. > All it wo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The automobile is built as a requirement to live in society rather than something that complement and argumented our lifestyle."
Which is a problem precisely because cars are so dangerous.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Can we climb down from the overheated rhetoric? It smells like propaganda. And your comment smells like shilling. If we're making baseless accusations.
Shilling for who? I think you're being ridiculous. And if you're being ridiculous on purpose, you're not making whatever point you think you are and need to stop posting.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure about that? I read about people stripping all the airbags out of new Civics and getting dramatically better gas mileage.
An airbag weighs 10 lbs max, usually 5-8 lbs. Anybody who removes this for "performance" or "fuel savings" is a blithering idiot who should not be allowed near a motor vehicle.