371–380 of 534 posts
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>Rural >barren wasteland If you're a glass half empty person. Many people see it as freedom to do close to whatever you want without anyone caring.
I can assure you, your suburban HOA is extremely caring about what you do. Heaven forbid you change the colour of your curtains.
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My problem is neighbors. They would call the cops instead of talking to me if they saw my daughter out there biking or playing. Can't they just chill and keep an eye out? I do for their kids and even let them play on my lot. Nope - they all hide behind the drawn in curtains and think there's pedophiles lurking in my backyard bush.
We have been conditioned to appeal to authority in disputes rather than handling them ourselves. Remember, whenever you call the police, you are requesting people with guns to enter into an unknown situation on your behalf. Tragedy happens.
Well that is how a dignity society operates; ignore it, or draw on authority. The alternative is an honour society, and those produce far worse outcomes for almost everyone. The problem here isn't that people appeal to authority in disputes; it's that people's idea of what constitutes a dispute is broken.
I was thinking about this the other day. Ironically this is the safest time in all of history to let kids do this. Crime is historically very low and our kids want to carry around magical devices that lets us know where they are at all times and contact them instantly. This should be a golden age, yet we've turned it into jail. What gives everyone? Edit: And by "what gives" I mean literally, I live in the US and have…
Crime is not the problem, traffic is. I grew up in a blind alley, and the whole town was really low in traffic. I started cruising around with my bike together with the neighbors at age 7, and we met a car every 10 minutes, tops. They slowed down to a stop, mostly, when they saw us. Fast forward, we are living in a city of 30k citizens now, though on the outskirts; there is a major road about 200m away, and although…
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Media is part of it, but the other part is this, taken from the first comment on the linked article: "I can’t help but notice how many freeways and roads are between Sheffield and Rother Valley. We can’t blame parents alone for the loss of childhood freedom. Since 1919 We have purposely designed our cities to maximize vehicle throughput and require car ownership and the result is an environment that is lethal for 8 y…
I see your point, but don't you think it's possible to teach children to cross traffic safely? When I was little, I regularly walked 3 or 4 miles to visit friends. I had to cross at least one "big" road on my way, where I just took extra care, because my parents had reminded me to.
The only large-scale problem was the anxiety suffered by parents who started obsessively worrying about their child, and maintaining tighter control over children is mainly medicine to alleviate their anxiety.
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This is very true in London, unfortunately. Cars destroy the city - both by polluting it, and making walking and biking dangerous. Boris Johnson's goal as mayor was to optimise traffic flow through London, which just encouraged more cars. Going to a city like Cambridge where the center is shut down to cars is quite eye opening - lots of kids and people walking and biking. In London it's just a sea of cars driving and…
"This is very true in London, unfortunately ..." I admire the Dutch. They use the bicycle everywhere and in all weather conditions. The result? Their cities even sound so different. It is calm, very little car noise. Amazing.
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I see your point, but don't you think it's possible to teach children to cross traffic safely? When I was little, I regularly walked 3 or 4 miles to visit friends. I had to cross at least one "big" road on my way, where I just took extra care, because my parents had reminded me to.
It is possible. In fact, we have proof suggesting it's possible (me and millions like me who grew up that way and lived) while we have no proof suggesting otherwise. It's not like children died en masse due to being allowed outside, so people decided it was a bad idea. People just became obsessed with their children's safety and stopped letting them outside just in case. At no point was there some large-scale problem…
Do you know what the rates of accidental death were in the 1970s vs today?
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just interested if you know the data.
EDIT: indeed, most children killed in car accidents were inside the vehicles, so driving kids everywhere may be increasing their risk of death. And a decreasing death rate might just be better car safety features - better car seats; better seatbelts and seatbelt laws.
EDIT2: Something like 12,000 US children die each year from unintentional injury, and 29million have non fatal injuries. Most of these are preventable.
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This is very true in London, unfortunately. Cars destroy the city - both by polluting it, and making walking and biking dangerous. Boris Johnson's goal as mayor was to optimise traffic flow through London, which just encouraged more cars. Going to a city like Cambridge where the center is shut down to cars is quite eye opening - lots of kids and people walking and biking. In London it's just a sea of cars driving and…
I am the USA, in like a suburb-ish area. And uh.. Cars on sidewalks? Is that common in London? How did that become a thing? It sounds super dangerous.
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Really? Have you tried wearing drag in a rural area?
Have you tried plinking cans in your backyard, or cleaning a deer, in a city?
As for deer, does boar count? If so, then definitively.
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This is very true in London, unfortunately. Cars destroy the city - both by polluting it, and making walking and biking dangerous. Boris Johnson's goal as mayor was to optimise traffic flow through London, which just encouraged more cars. Going to a city like Cambridge where the center is shut down to cars is quite eye opening - lots of kids and people walking and biking. In London it's just a sea of cars driving and…
I am the USA, in like a suburb-ish area. And uh.. Cars on sidewalks? Is that common in London? How did that become a thing? It sounds super dangerous.
In places where you have 20 mph zones because you feel like you can't physically get 2 cars past each other in North America, not only do you have traffic flow in both directions, the speed limit is 10 mph faster and everyone is still speeding.
There are places where if you don't park on the sidewalk, there isn't enough space on the actual roadway for traffic to pass... so people park on the sidewalk because "where else am I gonna park?"
This is everyday life in London, and people rarely even give it a second thought or bat an eyelid until someone gets hit, and then there's outrage for a day or two and then everyone shrugs and say "that's just the way it is" and goes back to their everyday lives.
Is this crazy? I guess it is, but that's London... and every other old world town in the country. Streets were built long before there were cars, houses line both sides of streets and so the roads can't be widened without knocking down hundreds or in the occasional place thousands of years of history. We take our heritage more seriously than our need for wider roads.
We all greatly over estimate our ability to drive and we all think we're the next World Rally Championship champion - because we all drive stick. None of those shitty automatics you North Americans love. When we drive, we want to drive, not cruise luxuriously on our floating cloud, cut off from the feeling of the road by soft suspension.
So imagine cars dashing through tight streets, with no room for two way traffic - even though it's a 2 way street, other cars parked close on either side, almost grazing your wing mirrors as you whip through and your only thought is I hope nothing comes the other way, the last place I could've let them pass was 400m back and I'd have to back up this bastard all the way back to there to let them pass.
Ironically, you have one of 2 states when you're driving on the circular road around London, our M25 motorway (that's what we call highways in the UK, motorways). You're either whipping along at 90mph (the speed limit is 70mph) 15ft from the bumper of the guy in front of you and the guy behind you 15ft from your bumper... all the way around the M25, or someone's had an accident and you're crawling along at 20mph wondering if you're ever going to get home. The 3 lanes of the motorway much of the way around is narrower than your 2 lane highways here.
The first time you ever drive in this kind of environment you feel one of two feelings - either trepidation, anxiety and nausea, or a level of indescribable exhilaration.
That's what driving in England is like. It's like an extreme sport compared to driving in North America.
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Or if your city is built vertically, but with lots of forests throughout it.
That's very rare. American cities are built on "free market" principles as distorted by politics. They are not built for livability, beauty, or any other quantitative or qualitative measure. I personally advocate for this type of development, but it's unlikely that I will ever see it built: http://carfree.com/topology.html