Video of 1 week before and soon after 1904 San Francisco earthquake | Hacker News Reader

Video of 1 week before and soon after 1904 San Francisco earthquake

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27 pointsfnazeeri9 comments

amazing how much more vibrant it was before the quake than it is today. Traffic flowed in all directions all at once and somehow it all worked.

There's some recent thinking about removing all of the traffic signs and signals actually making a street safer.

often we build up these systems with incremental steps that seem to make sense to somebody, but put all together actually produce a worse result.

but don't expect it to change quickly. its only the users that have the information. the planners will take a lot longer to figure it out.

there is also thinking to close streets to traffic, even if just for a few days a month. people love it. but they used to flow pretty freely, on foot and on bikes before all the traffic management

Two different models of travel: One up which everyone is equally opportunistic (or kindhearted) and the system solves itself bottom-up. The other in which people are protected from their worst instincts (or those of others, who may be stupid or malevolent) by a rigid set of rules and signals. Of course this is a dialectic not just for traffic flow but political systems, public/private class variables...

very true. "we'll tell everyone what to do and when" seems a good model in the abstract but in practice its not as good as everybody making their best judgements based on the signals available where they are, while broadcasting their own intent.

There are good reasons why human intelligence is naturally distributed.

Interestingly, the traffic move much slower. Perhaps, a cacophony of traffic promote more alertness and caution than it would be otherwise in a faster but more orderly traffic.

People have been told there is order and you can rely upon that order.

I once an old driver misinterpret a green light for a green arrow and he slowly turns left while the rest of us continued to wait. I mean, very, very slowly.

Coming in the opposite direction is another, also moving clowly, maybe 10 miles below the speed limit.

The guy turning left is moving slow, the oncoming car moving slow. Everybody else can see whats about to happen. Everybody else taps out a text regarding how they are able to predict the future.

Eventually, the guy making the left turn crosses the median. Some time after this, the other car enters the intersection. I get a reply to my text. Then the collision finally occurs.

Clearly, neither driver ever drove in pre-quake downtown sf. Or maybe they did. :-) What is clear is that both were lulled asleep to such a degree that couldn't see what they were driving into.

I believe it was in 1906.

You're right. It was 1906 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1906_San_Francisco_earthquake April 18, 1906 at 5:12AM.

Wasn't anyone else annoyed by the ultra high pitched beep, I thought my ears were going to bleed

mean the fire of 1904 caused by the quake?

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