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New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

newyorker.com

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Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#31

Post by brookst »

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a book about the American shift from “a hard day’s work for fair pay” to what I’m calling the lottery economy.

Fewer and fewer people can make a decent living with traditional work. Hence, my theory goes, the rise of actual lotteries along with influencers, injury lawyers, and schemes like New Orleans.

Something is seriously wrong when family members hope an elderly relative will die on the hospital so they can get a payout, or when people are crashing into trucks or promoting BS snake oil on instagram.

It’s an indictment of the people involved for sure, but our social and economic systems have created the perverse incentives that these people are betting on. And it seems to be accelerating.

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#32

Post by selimthegrim »

brookst wrote: post #31

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a book about the American shift from “a hard day’s work for fair pay” to what I’m calling the lottery economy. Fewer and fewer people can make a decent living with traditional work. Hence, my theory goes, the rise of actual lotteries along with influencers, injury lawyers, and schemes like New Orleans. Something is seriously wrong when family members hope an elderly relative…

Exactly how many investors do you think are investing in New Orleans East? I drive around and I see signs on telephone poles for people promoting renting cars so you can rent it to other people for income like Uber or something.

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#33

Post by sandworm101 »

dylan604 wrote: post #7
themafia wrote: post #4

> and today’s large trucks are so computerized that they operate almost like airplanes Nonsense. Almost no vehicle even comes with anything like this installed. Some carriers will add driver monitoring computers, and they will emit tones under certain conditions, hard breaking, lane departure, too little following distance; however, to compare these simple alerts to the level of automation in an aircraft is just daff…

> Just finding a GPS that understands vehicle heights and bridge underpass limits is still a significant challenge Apparently for human drivers as well. Just this weekend, an overpass near my house had a rig stuck because the driver failed to realize his load was taller than the overpass.

Might be an incorrect sign. It does happen. A road gets paved and now is a couple inches higher and nobody bothers to change the sign. Any new bump, even one not directly under the bridge, can cause a collision. We cannot expect drivers to get out and measure every underpass ... thats what the signs are for!

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#34

Post by selimthegrim »

fortran77 wrote: post #30

The "three people in car" is a very useful tell for criminal activity. I've seen in home burglar rings (one driver, one lookout, and one person to enter the home), catalytic converter thieves (driver, lookout, and "saw man"), etc. Not sure why they need the same patter of three here, but I guess one person will be the one who goes to the hospital, etc. It's like they all read the same "criminal" forums to learn techn…

Nor should it. You have to be realistic here - if we send everybody who ever did murder two up to Angola for life you would need like two more Angolas. Let’s not even get to kidnapping.

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#35

Post by brookst »

selimthegrim wrote: post #32
brookst wrote: post #31

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a book about the American shift from “a hard day’s work for fair pay” to what I’m calling the lottery economy. Fewer and fewer people can make a decent living with traditional work. Hence, my theory goes, the rise of actual lotteries along with influencers, injury lawyers, and schemes like New Orleans. Something is seriously wrong when family members hope an elderly relative…

Exactly how many investors do you think are investing in New Orleans East? I drive around and I see signs on telephone poles for people promoting renting cars so you can rent it to other people for income like Uber or something.

Probably none? I certainly didn’t mean to imply there is significant investment.

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#37

Post by fortran77 »

selimthegrim wrote: post #2

It sure would be nice if we had an actual economy around here. That being said, I have definitely been given a speeding ticket by state police on that stretch of I-10 well before this all happened, and when I had a car crash under the Claiborne expressway on the Sundays when people drag race under the bridge I assure you these "runners" were nowhere to be found. Possibly because the local biker gang whose bikes the o…

People will do anything but work for a living.

> Tt was surprisingly easy to find locals willing to risk their lives for money. Nearly a quarter of New Orleans residents live in poverty, and the prospect of a substantial windfall for a few hours’ work apparently outweighed any fear of getting into a car that was about to take part in a high-speed accident.

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#39

Post by lotsofpulp »

brookst wrote: post #31

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a book about the American shift from “a hard day’s work for fair pay” to what I’m calling the lottery economy. Fewer and fewer people can make a decent living with traditional work. Hence, my theory goes, the rise of actual lotteries along with influencers, injury lawyers, and schemes like New Orleans. Something is seriously wrong when family members hope an elderly relative…

I do not buy this. There is plenty of money in “traditional” work, and immigrants from all over the world find it and do it. If uneducated people, who may speak English as a second language at best, can move around the US and find their footing, then surely almost all who grew up here with access to the language and public schools can.

And the people in this article are born in the 1960s and 1970s, in the decades that followed, America was booming.

Edit: and of course, there were literal lawyers ordering up these collisions and litigating the fraud. This is just organized crime dangling a lottery payout to poorer people.

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#40

Post by fortran77 »

brookst wrote: post #31

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a book about the American shift from “a hard day’s work for fair pay” to what I’m calling the lottery economy. Fewer and fewer people can make a decent living with traditional work. Hence, my theory goes, the rise of actual lotteries along with influencers, injury lawyers, and schemes like New Orleans. Something is seriously wrong when family members hope an elderly relative…

> Fewer and fewer people can make a decent living with traditional work.

I don't think it's that "fewer people can make a living". It's just that we have too many amoral people who won't work.

It's a shame the New Yorker article didn't talk much about the true victims here: the innocent truck drivers.

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