211–220 of 443 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference is in the need for a shower and change of clothes afterwards.
you really don't need to shower and change your clothes. You can if you want to ride your bike fast and push your physical limits, but generally casual biking won't make you sweat more than if you were walking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll bite, what are my options for moving distances that are too far to walk, too short to fly, and don't involve vehicles?
You can use a vehicle that is small and slow enough that it won't kill pedestrians on a collision. For example, a bicycle or a segway. There is also mass transit, which can go over rails away from pedestrians or even underground.
This is also a point for automobiles.
Now is an opportunity, perhaps first in ~100 years, perhaps last, to recover the streets for unaugmented humans: slow down cars in urban areas, increase qualifications for humans to drive, eventually ban human drivers entirely, leaving only automated vehicles with enough sensors and going slowly enough to reduce auto-related deaths for pedestrians and passengers alike to zero.
I think the answer to pedestrians versus cars is the same as for cars versus trains: grade separation. Turn the sidewalks into elevated walkways. Or use pedestrian tunnels underneath the road surface. Pedestrian crosswalks are a money-saving measure, ignoring one of the many externalities involved in automobile manufacture. Cars simply should not be driving on pedestrian walkways, and pedestrians should not be walkin…
1. http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/controlled-chaos...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We could end up with roads dedicated to cars being separated from roads dedicated to pedestrians or cyclists. You could imagine if a city was designed from scratch the vehicles could move around almost in tunnel-like back-alleys, with periodic embarkation points into pedestrianized open plazas and boulevards. If Musk's reduction in cost of tunnelling is more than just a pipe-dream, then you might be able to retrofit…
This is the future of cities. Doing this would open the door for massive efficiency gains. Within these controlled "back-alleys," you could lay down metallic guides for the cars to glide down (dramatically reduced rolling friction losses), and couple vehicles moving in the same direction (dramatically reduced aerodynamic losses). Eventually you could electrify the whole thing so that cars wouldn't have to carry fuel…
But with a difference of point to point rather than line-based. Autonomous technology will probably mean a kind of union between private and public transport, and between road and metro rail.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sidewalks found in suburban sprawl are purely decorative. Only the very unfortunate walk there because everything is miles apart from each other, making a car mandatory. Meanwhile, even super-dense cities, where walking is obvious, have to fight the ridiculous notion that cars deserve 80% of the street right of way and stupendously subsidized street parking.
No, sidewalks in suburbia are super useful for walking between houses. They're not useful for shopping or commuting, but they let kids walk to their friend's house to play. Not every trip is a commute downtown.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are no better alternatives. Sure there are, cities in the US are starting to build better alternatives already. > The article makes it seem like the only reason the rules exist as they do now is because some industry players forced us into this situation. True, the article does make it seem like that. Because that's what happened, it's a fact that US auto industry propaganda led to the establishment of jaywal…
Of course the propaganda was a part of the laws being created, that is clear. But the article is trying to say they are the sole reason. That is not clear and is up for debate. Sometimes people dont follow accepted standards unless that standard is legislated. If the standard is important enough, it should be legislated. This standard will vary from person to person, but eventually we resolve the issue and either leg…
Logic and speculation doesn't explain history. If you think the propaganda wasn't the only reason, then bring some historical evidence rather than opinion.
The fact that some other countries don't have jaywalking laws, even though everyone everywhere agrees that walking in the street can be dangerous is already evidence that jaywalking laws are not a given.
> I think enough people would have agreed that jaywalking should be legislated about to have it actually written into law with or without auto industry marketing.
Someone else already mentioned this here, but that is not how US traffic laws are created. The public doesn't have to agree or disagree with it. It can sometimes influence the process, but public opinion doesn't usually make or break traffic laws.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's only a matter of time before some stupid kids start jumping in the way of self-driving cars to make them brake hard. That's when we'll see the anti-pedestrian regulations appear, by my estimation.
Your comment reminded me of a Sci-Fi novel I read when I was a kid, it was a mystery with the background being a fully automated world, a fairly central point was that all vehicles were self-driving. Standing in front of cars to stop them was somewhere between a fad and a minor rebellion against the status quo. Ever since self-driving cars started being a thing I keep being reminded of this book, and am half-waiting…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same, or that we have to dodge or wait for pedestrians when we're trying to get somewhere. I mean we do but only rarely if people abide by the laws / common sense.
As a frequent pedestrian who also pays road taxes, I am also trying to get somewhere, and I don't appreciate all the times I've had to dodge cars while using a crosswalk. The stakes for me are much higher.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If someone ate an orange or banana and left the peel on a park bench, I'd still consider that littering.
and? obviously I don't want heaps of chamber pot contents on the sidewalk either. The point I was making is that, yes all littering is bad, but why does the consumer shoulder the burden when a huge majority of packaging can be avoided?
They ended up discontinuing that attempt.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm going to assume this is a good-faith argument and not a "bury them in BS" reply: > This is the same United States where just about everyone already carries a tracking device by choice. Sure, that's a very reasonable counter-point, however not everyone does. > where lots of people have installed 24/7 network-connected microphones in their homes Plenty of folks find asking a wiretap for pancake recipes fine, and th…
> every conversation would be recorded and store in Amazon's data centers I agree with everything else you wrote (I think?), but I thought that the Echo only transmitted things it recognized directly following the activation phrase?