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Re: undefined

#51

Post by schrectacular »

baq wrote: post #10
delichon wrote: post #2

I'm afraid this poor guy will be besieged by people who heard about a vacancy in San Francisco. I've unfortunately had my share of dead friends and relatives. I wish I could say that it somehow has made me stronger, more mature, but I'm afraid that the opposite is more true. Each is a trauma that I never entirely recover from. They make the world more bleak, confusing, cold, scary. And it makes it harder to comfort p…

After getting philosophical one evening I came to the conclusion that 'bleak, scary and just plainly shit' is the default state of any particular person's mood and this is how the whole humanity evolved. Happiness and bliss are what you're chasing after, not what you're supposed to be - if you're permanently happy, you've diverged from the mean and either are an exception or overdue for a mean reversal. That is in it…

I have a feeling you might enjoy this conversation: https://www.econtalk.org/a-users-guide-to-our-emotional-ther...

You are not alone in that path of thought. I think that yes, happiness is fleeting, but I tend to think something like satisfaction or contentedness is within reach for many people. Because people aren't going around being actively sad I don't think either. It seems like most folks (and research backs it up) are "getting by" so to speak. Not elated but also not constantly mopey or whatever.

Anyway I think it's a deep and interesting introspective path you've taken.

Re: undefined

#53

Post by tlunter »

Aeolun wrote: post #49

Traffic in the US is so absurdly deadly. You have one of these posts and people come out of the woodworks everywhere saying they also have a friend that died in a traffic accident. I have zero. I cannot even think of a far off acquaintance ever killed in traffic. Why is traffic such a deadly thing in the US compared to the rest of the world?

I am an American and also don’t have anyone I know, nor far off acquaintance killed, therefore I conclude the US is actually fine with it comes to traffic.

Why are you using an anecdote to define your data here?

Re: undefined

#54

Post by tylerflick »

Aeolun wrote: post #49

Traffic in the US is so absurdly deadly. You have one of these posts and people come out of the woodworks everywhere saying they also have a friend that died in a traffic accident. I have zero. I cannot even think of a far off acquaintance ever killed in traffic. Why is traffic such a deadly thing in the US compared to the rest of the world?

Because we like to blame scary things like guns, rather than confronting the fact that giant SUVs and distracted driving habits are far more dangerous.

Re: undefined

#55

Post by noah_buddy »

squigz wrote: post #45
dylan604 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> oblivious to the indication that the page has been memorialized. to come at this from a different direction, how is any different from the online version of visiting someone's grave? it could just be their way of remembering someone and letting others know they were thinking about them. granted, i'd assume most people are being obedient to the Zuck by click the button, or a bot doing it, or many other fake/insincer…

This sort of inherent distrust of humanity is probably one of the worst effects of social media.

To be fair, inherent distrust of humanity has probably existed since the beginning.

Re: undefined

#56

Post by KennyBlanken »

saulrh wrote: post #42
paulsutter wrote: post #5

Enforcement of traffic offenses is down 95% in the past 10 years in San Francisco. Explains the outcome and the claims that "crime is down" https://x.com/zachcoelius/status/1779373752905589221

SF traffic fatalities have not been increasing year-over-year. You can't cast blame for an outcome that doesn't exist. Data: https://www.chp.ca.gov/programs-services/services-informatio... . SWITRS hasn't published a report since 2020 due to the pandemic, but that works perfectly fine for my purposes because I'd have probably had to discard those years for other reasons, and since we're talking about a ten- or fiftee…

The link you included is not to deaths per mile traveled, it's to miles traveled.

Even if deaths are relatively flat, they should be going down as older, less safe cars age out of the fleet of vehicles on the road. As time goes on, a greater percentage of vehicles have better crash safety, ABS, traction control, better airbag systems, and 'driver assistance' aids.

Make sure any stats you do cite include pedestrian and cyclist injuries, but note that exposure data for them is exceptionally poor, because they are typically not included in traffic survey data collected by contractors hired by the government to do traffic counts.

Overall pedestrian and cyclist deaths have shot up, by the way, and are the highest ever.

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deat...

Re: undefined

#57

Post by stefan_ »

tylerflick wrote: post #54
Aeolun wrote: post #49

Traffic in the US is so absurdly deadly. You have one of these posts and people come out of the woodworks everywhere saying they also have a friend that died in a traffic accident. I have zero. I cannot even think of a far off acquaintance ever killed in traffic. Why is traffic such a deadly thing in the US compared to the rest of the world?

Because we like to blame scary things like guns, rather than confronting the fact that giant SUVs and distracted driving habits are far more dangerous.

Even better, people die at elevated rates from both of these! It is not either or.

Re: undefined

#58

Post by bobthepanda »

Aeolun wrote: post #49

Traffic in the US is so absurdly deadly. You have one of these posts and people come out of the woodworks everywhere saying they also have a friend that died in a traffic accident. I have zero. I cannot even think of a far off acquaintance ever killed in traffic. Why is traffic such a deadly thing in the US compared to the rest of the world?

* everything is far apart, intentionally. US cities used to be denser before the car, but in the postwar era not only were there significant amounts of new areas of car-oriented low density, but a lot of the existing dense areas were destroyed, and now in most of the country building traditional density is illegal.

* because everything is far apart and designed for car usage, public transit, walking and cycling are inversely very bad. this simultaneously makes doing any of that dangerous; and it also puts a lot of people on the roads who probably shouldn't be (drunk drivers, distracted drivers, people with failing vision, etc.)

* in some of the worst affected areas, the transport department has applied road standards meant for interstate highways to local roads with traffic lights and no center barriers, and so these roads in particular are quite dangerous and full of rampant speeding

* Americans have tended towards larger cars, and unlike Europe there is no testing in the US for how safe automobiles are for pedestrian impact, so the cars themselves are actually more deadly to pedestrians

Re: undefined

#59

Post by jeffbee »

Aeolun wrote: post #49

Traffic in the US is so absurdly deadly. You have one of these posts and people come out of the woodworks everywhere saying they also have a friend that died in a traffic accident. I have zero. I cannot even think of a far off acquaintance ever killed in traffic. Why is traffic such a deadly thing in the US compared to the rest of the world?

[flagged]

Re: undefined

#60

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hackernewds wrote: post #31
heyoni wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A news article? Tied to some public blog post? Where’s the exposure?

what value does it add to the discussion? besides preying on a private life

> what value does it add to the discussion?

The cousin was killed in New York around when we implemented Vision Zero [1]. San Francisco appears to have attempted something similar [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero_(New_York_City)

[2] https://sfgov.org/scorecards/transportation/traffic-fataliti...

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