Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Im fairly sympathetic to the overall aims of this article. I think a transport system more similar to those in the Netherlands makes for better urban landscapes.
But... this habitual style of treating everything as a conspiracy, built around a personified enemy ("They gave legal force to a mind-set—let’s call it automobile supremacy—that kills 40,000 Americans a year)... this way of thinking isn't doing us any favours.
In day-to-day political conversations and articles, it's mostly just formulaic and lazy. Name the conspiracy, point to vested interests that have been influencing policy, find a link to established personifications of evil.. big oil and segregation, in this case.
I'm not saying we should never think in abstractions... but there is a formulaic pattern here that's old, paranoid and harmful.
Except these conspiracies were (and are) generally real, and their effects are real. The pattern isn't journalistic, it's historical.
Spending too many brain cycles in these abstractions makes us formulaic. We no longer see unique & specific examples, just uninteresting specific examples of a greater truth.
We all do it. It's inevitable. It's how we think, especially politically. But, it is worth consiously avoiding, in my opinion.
but we sometimes collectively need to grind through the ruts a number of times before finding a good solution, especially if the solution involves a variable abstracted away by the model.
so why specifically does your noted pitfall need to be avoided? and what alternatives can you offer?
but more to the point, what's the model of car-centric cities you'd advocate?
The problem is that I keep forgetting the secret handshakes. One of these days, I'm going to leave my thumb out rather than in and someone's going to shank me with a shiv. Or shiv me with a shank; I can't remember how that goes either.
I get what you are saying, but isn't it, in this case, a relatively accurate description of what happened? If not all over the US, at least in some big cities.
Unfortuetly this area and "green" in general does I am afraid does tend to attract "hobbyist" / "crank" activists. (I am using these terms in the political sense and not dising peoples hobbys
Eg the green movement needs to concentrate on the present problem (runaway global heating) and not on pious things like banning plastic straws.
That's probably a consequence of both the overcrowding of our roads, and the density of our infrastructure -- I rarely have to drive more than 15 minutes to reach any kind of shop, and by bike I can take shortcuts that my car can't follow, especially in inner cities.
Ultimately, my car has been relegated to recreational purposes only -- everything else in my life (work, shopping, friends) I can do by bike or public transport. For me, it doesn't really feel like a conscious personal choice -- it feels more like the pragmatic consequence of our infrastructure design.
Biking is like running, playing soccer, playing tennis, swimming, many people don't do it because they don't do any sport.
Biking requires skills that normal people usually don't have, but that they believe they have.
It is in fact more dangerous than driving (compared to the driver, not pedestrians)
As soon as older people could not bike anymore, they started buying electric scooters and in Holland they have now more deaths caused by scooter accidents than cars.
France is going to ban them because they are too dangerous.
People than cannot drive anymore because of age or because they had their driving license revoked, started using less "law encumbered" vehicles and the number of accidents began to rise.
People on bikes are less controlled,they are not forced to use safety measures, they are not inside a "secured box", they don't have anti intrusion bars, air bags, safety belts, etc. etc.
Very few wear an helmet, many of them don't follow street rules, they bike on the sidewalk, very fast, they are very quiet and many pedestrian don't hear them coming.
They pay a lot less taxes (and fines), taxes used to implement mobility politics.
In Italy, for example, the money that cities earn from fines, cannot be used for anything else than mobility.
City planning is complicated, you don't solve problems just by changing few rules, you have to carefully plan for them
Changing a model that has been THE model for at least half a century and that have become so popular because freed people from the task of commuting or having to go somewhere, fast, without having to share the ride with other 150 people, just like the washing machine freed women from the task of washing clothes, it's not an easy task.
EDIT
I don't want to give the idea that cities are doomed, but biking is not the solution, biking is just like cars but with different problems, THE solution is walkability.
Walkable cities are for everyone.
Bikeable cities are just for bikers.
The real problem though is what you do in less densly populated areas.
Walkable cities are for everyone.
This is trivially untrue. Cities with lots of steps or staircases are only accessible for pedestrians, but no one else.
Bikeable cities are just for bikers.
I guess it depends a lot on what you consider "bikers". When you think of bikers, do you think of image [1] or [2]?
[1] https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/sightseeing/copen...
[2] https://www.betteshanger-park.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites...
They are the same thing.
Bicycles have wheels, they should be on the streets.
> Cities with lots of steps or staircases are only accessible for pedestrians, but no one else.
And that's good!
BTW, you can walk the bike.
Just like you do when you have to jump on a train or take the subway.
If you're talking about accessibility in general, that's a whole other problem.
Bike lanes on sidewalks aren't accessible either, there are deaf pedestrian, blind pedestrians, handicapped pedestrians, that are put at risk by sharing the same space with bikes.
> I guess it depends a lot on what you consider "bikers"
[1] is very young [2] is expert bikers, people that dresses for biking
the percentage of the population that can bike regularly in a large city is quite small and Copenhagen is a very small city.
The point is that you don't solve anything with bikes, just like you don't solve anything with skates, kick scooters and whatever you are thinking of
You're over optimizing for a small percentage of the population.
You solve a lot by removing cars from the streets (think about underground parking lots) and giving way more space to walking lanes, hardly separated from wheeled vehicles (cars, public transport, motorbikes, bycicles, whatever...)
If you improve the walkability, you also improve the mobility: people can easily switch from bike, walking the bike for a bit on a sidewalk, take the public transport, get off, walk a bit more, jump on the bike again.
If you cannot walk easily, safely and fast, you're packing pedestrian on very small areas, you're making their journey uncomfortable and leaving them at the mercy of wheeled vehicles, because they can be obviously faster and demand precedence.
And those who use a vehicle are encouraged to leave it very close to where they are going, because walking, even a little bit, is painful.
That's how we end up with cars parked in handicapped spots or on double lines or on the sidewalks or bikes chained to school gates or road signs or bus stops as you can see in cities like Milan [1] (where they use the bike a lot)
Ironically the road sign in the picture says "bikes chained here will be removed"
The majority of people in large cities walks, even if you don't notice it, even in cities terrible for walking like Rome, it's what people are good at.
> And that's good!
Even for people with difficulty walking or in wheelchairs?
What part of "if we are talking about accessibility in general that a whole different problem"?
walkable means walkable, not staircaseable.
Stop bikeshedding.
Are streets or bike lanes the right solution for wheelchairs?
I seriously doubt that...
But who is arguing that they shouldn't?
> [1] is very young
No it's not. Photo from 1926: http://www.rijwiel.net/fotos/foto001n.htm
> You're over optimizing for a small percentage of the population.
From the link [1] in my GP post: "Cycling accounts for 24 % of all commuter trips." That doesn't sound like a small percentage.
> You solve a lot by removing cars from the streets (think about underground parking lots) and giving way more space to walking lanes, hardly separated from wheeled vehicles (cars, public transport, motorbikes, bycicles, whatever...)
I'm unsure what you're arguing against. This is the bike-oriented city center of Den Haag: http://www.ditisdenhaag.nl/hofwegspui/
What would you change in that picture?
There are people in their 90s swimming in freezing water
Would you say it is ok for everybody?
What kind of discussion are you trying to have?
> That doesn't sound like a small percentage.
And what accounts for the remaining 76%?
You are trying to force Netherlands way as if it is the only one.
But Netherlands is a very _uncommon_ place.
> What would you change in that picture?
Why would I want to change anything?
Can you see that there are vast areas for walking in that picture?
Do you think there aren't other small cities in the World where bike is the preferred vehicle?
This is Ferrara, Italy [1] [2]
This is Bologna, Italy [3] [4] [5] [6]
Can you see the large pedestrian areas?
I think they're even more beautiful then Deen Haag.
I've lived in Bologna for 2 years, I never had to drive a car or ride a bike, because I could walk.
Because they're also also very small (the size of Deen Haag) and everything is close.
Now let's talk about big cities:
Large areas for walking means that other vehicles have their spaces as well
Small areas for walking means that ONLY vehicles have their own spaces (streets have to be big enough for cars, but sidewalks can be reduced to a bare minimum or eliminated completely [7] <- this is in Rome) which make moving painful for the majority of citizens, especially the low income ones that cannot afford to own a car or to live near the workplace or people with kids or people with reduce mobility, that's why they then switch to using cars, because streets are not safe for them and bike lanes wouldn't change a thing.
[1] https://italoamericano.org/sites/default/files/styles/crop_s... [2] https://www.lautomobile.aci.it/fileadmin/_processed_/6/1/csm... [3] https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/15/d6/28/b2/... [4] https://cdn.civitatis.com/italia/bolonia/tour-bicicleta-bolo... [5] https://media.audleytravel.com/-/media/images/home/europe/it... [6] https://www.bolognawelcome.com/imageserver/gallery_big/files... [7] https://www.larena.it/image/policy:1.5942827:1504744507/imag...
91 km2
Counter-counterexample
Rome, 1,285 km2
I'm from Rome
Rome is particularly bad regarding cars (we are probably the western city with the highest number of cars per capita, 73 every 100 inhabitants, if I remember correctly), but it is also a very complicated city for biking.
For two reasons
- hills: they are not a problem for the majority of expert bikers, they are if the average age of the citizens is 45 years, most of them are not expert bikers and there are hills everywhere. Add to it the road surface which is less than optimal for biking in large areas of the city, including the city center (for many reasons, historical in primis, but also political, even more so lately that we have the worst major in the world).
- distances: many people live very far from where they work, 1.5 million people everyday come to Rome for working, but live outside of it, most likely in the range 30-50 kms from the city, not counting the distances you have to cover when in the city (it's easily around 10kms, or 20kms total in a day). How many people can bike 100kms a day and make it alive? How long would it take?
Contrary to a slope the wind can also hinder you on the way there and on the way back (when you stayed long enough for the wind to turn). Yay.
But hills are always in the same place, so you just leave a little earlier and shift to a lower gear. It's slower, but no more difficult, and you have the downhill return journey to look forward to.
I am from Denmark who also have plenty of bikes and it's a thing. The reality is however that thats fine as long as you live in the cities, it's not way to get around if you live in the suburbs and have to drive 30 miles to work and take care of your picking up the kids and drive 20 miles to the nearest grocery store etc.
Biking is possible in small cities but you can't build infrastructure around a giant continent like the US on bikes and trucks.
The car is the perfect combination of flexibility, scale, speed, utility and so on.
Sprawls are a byproduct of what the car made possible, they where not created to promote the car they where created because the car made it possible and gave a number of benefits for the individual families.
Again even in Denmark and other places that are extremely pro-public-transportation and anti-car, cars are still used by the majority of people because its the base means of transportation which provides the most benefits when you boil it down.
Forcing people to live in big cities with public transportation makes no sense on a continent like America.
Public transportation is only good for very dense areas and becomes extremely expensive once you need to cover less dense areas. This is true even in countries like Denmark which are geographically pretty small.
Denser cities mean more expensive real-estate which means less money for yourself and your family.
The sprawls and laws came after the cars, not the other way around.
Based on what metrics?
Sure, the space is there, but there are real costs to using it the way we do. It is a choice we have made as a society. But, there's no natural law that required us to choose cars or stopping us from reconsidering.
As I see it: - cars and the sprawl they allowed made sense at the time
- entrenched interested worked to codify the car-based lifestyle
- it is likely time to reconsider the path we took, given what we now know about pollution, the time wasted in traffic, and other factors.
- those entrenched interests have done such a good job of selling the car as a fundamental (and "free") part of the American Dream that many people are unwilling to consider anything else (see sibling comments about freedom and flexibility).
Edit - a few links that discuss the costs of maintaining suburban sprawl: 1 - https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ... 2 - https://www.citylab.com/equity/2013/05/quantifying-cost-spra... 3 - https://fee.org/articles/the-unbearable-truth-about-infrastr...
Plenty more to read through, if you want to spend the time.
The discussion is what allowed cars to take over i.e. in the past not what might happen in the future.
Urbanization is a reality ex. because of the way the job market evolves, but the claim that there was some big conspiracy to make the cars take over is simply unfounded and based on very sloppy thinking.
Cars took over because they allowed us to live further away from the big cities which was cheaper and gave us more room and allowed us to build sprawl because the land was plentiful.
It's a combination of things not just some single reason that obviously isn't true which you will see the second you look at other countries who also need cars but doesn't have a legal system that helps.
Urbanization is taking over because of the benefits it offers today. Just because cars might not make sense in the future it doesn't mean that it didn't make sense in the past.
And no matter what, it's not something anyone of us decide to do just because it'something that we do once it makes sense and the benefits outweigh the negatives.
That's a consequence of cars not the other way around. If cars were never invented, you wouldn't have the problem of traveling 30 miles to work and driving 20 miles to a store. Those things are possible because of cars and now it chains us to those kinds of design.
The reason why people choose to live further out is among other things to get more nature for their children, it is to get cheaper houses, it used to be safer etc.
The car took over because the car was the optimal vehicle compared to the alternatives not because of some law which is easy to show since it's the same in other countries like Denmark where the opposite was the case and yet cars are still hugely popular.
I do love Amsterdam, but there's no way I could live there.
What freedom and flexibility? Being forced to drive everywhere is not flexibility. Being forced to subsidize massive parking lots and highways is not freedom.
You can't ignore the politics of this.
* USA * Japan
Countries out of the first list, with policies favouring cars:
1/2
Conclusion:
Insufficient data.
* In many US cities, businesses are required by law to have certain amounts of parking for employees and customers. This makes car use more convenient and takes up space, making walking less viable.
* German taxes on gasoline and diesel are over 100%.
* Most areas of larger German cities are zoned for high-density housing; it's typical for street-level businesses to have several floors of apartments above them.
* They may be high but motorists still pay less in taxes than the general public contributes to the upkeep of their infrastructure, even when excluding externalised costs (healthcare, climate change accommodation etc).
* The same is true for e.g. New York, whereas (e.g.) London has a fair amount of low-density housing. Not quite sure how this is an argument if the vast majority of space in cities is still reserved for cars (either parking or driving).
the one thing they have in common is no substantial domestic car industry
Of course, GM really did conspire to put the trolleys out of business.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
However, this is the kind of thing organizations (companies, government agencies, non profits) do when they get to a certain size or have accomplished initial goals and are looking to conquer that next frontier. Just look at the overreach of the SV titans, for example.
For better or worse, we have a car based society now, and pining for the good old days is backwards looking. The next thing should preserve the immense freedom and flexibility that cars brought. Prescribing a top down solution that gives even more power to the state at the expense of the people is a non starter.
The coaches have the benefit to be able to go anywhere and modify your routes as suits you, while the trolleys need a fixed infrastructure. Both have their own pros and cons, so i don't see the need for a conspiracy.
The only thing the city can do (and that's what they're working on) is to upgrade from bus to streetcar. Dresden has some of the longest trams in the world, at 45 meters (50 yards), and these carry 3-4 bus loads at once.
Probably related, I doubt we have a bus line with anywhere near that ridership.
https://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/6/Monthly_Ridership_...
People have been complaining about the 38 for years, but I don't want to criticize the SFMTA (local agency that runs buses/trolley buses and light rail) because it does seem to get the job done without much expensive investment (cost of most recent underground metro in SF was $1.6B for 1.7 miles [2]).
[1] https://sf.curbed.com/2017/9/19/16302396/sf-worst-bus-transi...
In a certain (much softer) sense, I think this is an example of the type of thinking I was complaining about in the original comment.
I do it myself, most people do it.. especially us "rational" thinkers. But, it is taking a particular and instinctively fitting it into a story that we're used to. Maybe the story is regulatory capture, maybe it's corporatism, overeaching governments and unintended consequences, patriarchy, empire, globalism... Whatever story we're used to refering to.
In any case, I think the next transportation revolution will be related to autonomous vehicles, so this particular conversation is probably moot.. AVs might just dissolve lines between public and private transport. It will, however, probably remain very impacted by both consumer choice and government (generally municipal) choices.
> The next thing should preserve the immense freedom and flexibility that cars brought.
In addition to stimulating sprawl and it's enormous costs, this limits the actual freedom and choices of people who can't or won't drive.
Even ex-burb homeowners whose every trip begins and ends in a parking spot eventually get pissed as the only way for a city to grow is then to pave more and more highways, and spread out in distance making automobile commutes a daily misery literally spanning oceans of asphalt.
Did the car bring freedom? A car is expensive for people to purchase, maintain, and operate. In many regions individuals are also compelled to purchase insurance because they are dangerous. They also drive up the cost of living since the expensive infrastructure must be paid through taxation, construction is more expensive because a certain amount of space must be allocated to parking, land is more expensive since infrastructure reduces the supply. The cost of cars pretty much dictates a particular way of living, even before factors such as urban sprawl are even considered.
Perhaps there were elements of freedom and flexibility when the automobile first gained traction, but the social geography mutated. Workplaces became more centralized, then decentralized, as the automobile facilitated large and dedicated zoning regulations. The shifting of workplaces necessitated the shifting of shopping and recreation, typically following patterns of consolidation in a spatial and business sense. With cities no longer being walkable, there were fewer reasons for housing to stay put. It too drifted outwards, often with little consideration to schools and medical care. The end result is that people are often stuck owning a vehicle or making very serious compromises to live without one.
I didn't mean to paint such a bleak picture, and it is likely more harsh than it rightfully deserves to be, but the reality is that the family car (and, later, personal car) ended up being more of a trade-off than a liberator. It is difficult to deny that more is within reach because of it, yet it is also undeniable that less is within immediate reach.
Can you give me an example that doesn't involve driving to the middle of nowhere, that isn't solved by a good public transportation system, and doesn't involve bringing home large amounts of groceries, or furniture, etc?
It just so happens that most of the public transit in the states royally sucks -- even in the city centers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM
Most of these are also laws passed by groups of people deciding to control others for a mix of perceived altruistic and selfish reasons. It's not secret but there's people conspiring.
(FWIW, Robert Anton Wilson once pointed out that, of regime changes in the 20th century, over half of them were the result of some sort of coup. In other words, conspiracy is normal. Make of that what you will.)
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/06/the_psycholog...
FWIW, you identified the reason(s) why I'm personally not concerned about general erosion of privacy, while bring very concerned about differential erosion of privacy.
- - - -
A though, can animals conspire? It's something that almost seems to require intelligence and "higher level" communication. Do chimpanzees conspire?
Would there be an adaptive advantage to conspiracy skepticism? Is that why conspiracy skepticism is so common? Most people are followers and a few are... tricky?... leaders?
Maybe rampant conspiracy is a phase between the moment of evolution of intelligence and the time when "fake news" forces fidelity to reality? It's trivial to show that conspiracy is only ever a local optimum. Multiple competing "truths" incur caloric cost to maintain, but honesty is maximally efficient.
Maybe we all get a clue, become scrupulously truthful, solve all our problems, and go on to live in a new Golden Age...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(sociology)
Context is important.
The population of cities has grown. For example, the Chicago metro area has 70% more people now than in 1950. Population growth has impacted car ownership and use. We shouldn't use today's context against the past. Things were different and that's worth considering.
Urban areas are about 3% of the US physical space. The design of transportation for dense cities (and they are getting denser) is different from that of suburban or rural spaces. There is no one size fits all.
See LLNL's 2018 energy flow chart:
https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/images/energy/us/... (PDF: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/docs/2018_United-...)
Of 101 quads, 28 go to transport. Industrial use. is dominated by relatively clean natural gas (methane), with a large chunk likely being ammonia and other chemical production (I'd like to see breakouts).
Dense and local-first construction enables public. transit, walking and cycling, localised services, shared facilities, and numerous other mechanisms of increased efficience
Denser residential spaces and more cimate-appropriate construction hugely reduces
Also, do you mean that places like Japan, or the central, older parts of European cities are more efficient?
Archives online at the link or its parent.
It is only this short sliver of time that is today that this land should be developed into their dream city. That will somehow miraculously withstand the test of time.
No, it won't, that's just greed and narcissism – thinking that we're so special today that we deserve to have that land unprotected for us but doing that for either future or past generations is a mistake.
If you make your comment at econlib, he's not unlikely to respond.
If "thinking that" are trigger words now, replace it with "acting as if" to same effect.
[Edit] The Williamson Act? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williamson_Act) "The Williamson Act of the US state of California (officially, the California Land Conservation Act of 1965) is a California law that provides relief of property tax to owners of farmland and open-space land in exchange for a ten-year agreement that the land will not be developed or otherwise converted to another use."
"The property is under the Williamson Act, meaning the land will not be developed or otherwise converted to another use for a number of years." (https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/article23239941...)
I wonder what the biomass used for transportation is?
https://energycultures.org/2014/07/rejected-energy-much-ener...
But focusing the blame on car companies and the wealthy one-percenters is historical revisionism. It undercuts the fact that these policies were eagerly supported by lower-middle class and middle class people like my family, as well as by many working class people from the countryside. It expanded our agency. It allowed us to vacation to beaches and parks. It allowed us to visit faraway families and pursue work in faraway places. In short, it provided us physical and economic mobility.
We didn't know the damage we were doing. And even if we did know, we probably would have done the same thing. But passing the blame doesn't solve anything.
If you want systemic change you need to approach systemic levers. Focusing on individual action is much less effective than focusing on the people who have power to change laws and reach the minds of consumers.
Car support was pretty ubiquitous in rural areas where you really needed a horse to get around anyway and it really did radically improve life to get a car.
But car support in cities was quite tepid before the late 20’s, and a significant concerted effort of government and industry together ramrodded them in and sold it through a long propaganda campaign that eventually was accepted.
There’s a book about this early history called Fighting Traffic, by Peter Norton. The US came fairly close to banning cars in a number of cities, and to requiring mechanical governors to a 20mph limit in many others. A bunch of places installed memorials and monuments to “all the children slain by drivers” and so on.
It’s really interesting history that the auto lobby has worked hard to obscure.
Now, having lived in the U.S. for many years, I still hate driving, but I’m basically crippled if I don’t drive.
Also society shifted, cars meant larger but further shopping centers, and job areas.
BUT, i managed to get an apartment 10 minutes walking from the office. this was in san diego, of all places, a city which is very spread out. a few months later i moved in with friends and we found a place far north. most of my roommates had a car, but i took care that i had a bus going directly to work. it ran only once in 30 minutes, so missing it occasionally was a pain, but it was fine otherwise. it also provided for some memorable displays of humanity. another few months later the company moved to los angeles, and again i found a place with a direct bus to work.
i figured that if i can manage to live in sandiego and LA without a car, then i can do that anywhere. sure enough, a few years later i achieved the same in auckland. another city that is quite spread out and has a lackluster public transport system that rivals the US in lack of options.
not everyone is going to be able to achieve this. as a young programmer i could afford the higher rent in the areas close to the office. (i was a stone throw from hollywood boulevard, and crossed it every day on my way to the office :-)
What surprised me though is how overall passable public transport in San Francisco was. MUNI and BART are pretty okay for getting around even if locals don't believe so. Unsurprisingly whenever I was in trams, they were full of other European tourists.
Moving around the most urban cores outside of rush hour, you typically won't see the worst of the warts.
i can't think of any places like that in europe. european cities are simply not that spread out. so unless you live on a farm far from everywhere, you should be fine.
Imagine if every city was San Francisco, especially in realtion to income.
In the end, I can live somewhat comfortably if I commute, essentially trading my time for lower crime rates and nicer surroundings.
Also consider that if you are reading HN, you are likely to work in IT, which gives you a skewed idea on average income levels.
berlin is indeed interesting, one would think that with it being the capital city, the demand would rise, but i guess that east berlin is less popular, and that berlin also suffers from the overall reputation of east germany.
Iceland has 824 cars/1000, Finland, 494 and Norway, 616.) The US overall has 811. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...)
i don't remember ever to having had to take a taxi. i got a few rides, but then it was friends who went to the same place anyways (like a linux user group meetup)
The vast majority of drivers seem to be ignorant of this law, or they just don't care. Enforcement is nonexistent. When I step out into the road, I'm sure most of the drivers think I'm "jaywalking". More often than not they do not stop. I am not "jumping" into the road, nor am I generally walking about in low-visibility conditions.
Maybe fancy urban planning can help, but it's a band-aid on a deeper problem, at least where I live: drivers are ignorant and have bad attitudes not suited for the responsibility of operating motor vehicles. I guess it makes sense that enforcement is nonexistent, because "ignorant and have bad attitudes" is also an apt descriptor of police in America in general. Of course, I have been stopped for jaywalking... because obviously that is so much worse!
Which is more likely?
a) everyone is irresponsible
b) your definition of "responsible" is not in line with everyone else's
I'm not interested in hearing the word "anecdotal", either. Check out DUI statistics if you want bite-size proof that vast swaths of the population are fundamentally unfit to be driving, or show me data to back up your own point that the roads are not full of irresponsible drivers.
Oh, here's another good one: "In 2017 alone, 3,166 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes involving distracted drivers." (from NHTSA: https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving)
Average people can drive in an average manner and go years or often decade, sometimes entire lifetimes without screwing up badly enough to attract law enforcement attention or get in a crash. We as a society have determined that is mostly good enough. Most people are satisfied with the current level of risk/reward of driving and unless improvements come with minimal trade-offs people are for the most part not interested. Society at large does not demand the same religious adherence to traffic rules as you do.
More people were killed by fires (a hazard that most people would not consider to be a Big Problem(TM)) in 2016 than in crashes related to distracted drivers.
https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/fire_death_rates.h...
> religious
Nice.
Your point has regressed from "most drivers aren't irresponsible" to "most drivers are irresponsible but it's fine". If you can support the former with hard data, great, let's see it. The latter is an opinion; it's one I do not share, and it's not something I'm interested in discussing because there is zero chance of that discussion bearing any sort of fruit.
I am telling you, your definition of "responsible" (and by implication irresponsible) is not shared by society at large. I have told you this in several ways. Since apparently my last way of phrasing it wasn't easy to deflect now you're trying to straw-man me.
What sort of citation do you want? You said ~3k people are killed by distracted drivers and implied that it's a regular occurrence and a Problem(TM). I pointed out (with citation) that that's about the same number killed in fires, something infrequent enough that it's generally considered Not A Problem(TM).
Make no mistake, preventable deaths are tragic but preventable deaths as a result of motor vehicles are not the epidemic you portray them to be.
Of course further discussion will bear no fruit. Your mind is made up and will not be changed.
It is my sincere recommendation that you work on the latter three, or possibly on your ability to simulate them when you aren't arguing in good faith.
And while the legal system may have been of some help, I rather suspect the main reason cars took over is because they give the user a tremendous amount of freedom and agency.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
And that doesn’t account for the deaths and health costs caused by road pollution, by inactive lifestyles forced on communities due to car-centered infrastructure, etc...
Given the car-oriented status quo, perhaps it’s true that cars give owners tremendous freedom and agency (at the costs outlined above, plus tremendous financial cost). But it’s also true that many of the most desirable and productive parts of our cities are that way despite cars and not because of them.
True. But for comparison, if we live in this small town of 100k people, then 192 people will die from Heart Disease, 178 people will die of Cancer, 47 people will die of Respiratory diseases, 43 people will die of Stroke, and 16 will die from the flu (influenza or pneumonia) every single year, according to the CDC. "Motor vehicle accidents" are not even in the top 10 causes of death (they're 13th, using 2016's data).
> the most desirable and productive parts of our cities are that way despite cars and not because of them.
Which is a strong argument for cars. Cars make things drastically more affordable for people. If you remove them, you increase the costs for everything (food, transportation, housing, healthcare, education, etc), to heights no regular person could ever afford. That also carries tremendous costs and even carries it's own death toll.
Paradoxically, making things "more desirable and productive" makes them worst for real people (because that value will be captured in a pricetag, and real people will never be able to afford it). Paradoxically, too much safety can actually be less safe overall (that safety will be captured in a pricetag, and real people will never be able to afford it, and will be forced into less safe alternatives) - https://local.theonion.com/neighborhood-starting-to-get-too-...
More people died from suicide (45k in 2016) in the US, than died from all automobile accidents nationwide (37k in 2016). The tradeoff here is not as simple as people often imagine it to be.
To your point of bringing up suicide, there is "accidental" death; where it's 1. Opioid overdoses 2. Suicide 3. Car Accidents
So why is it that the US has the most expensive healthcare costs in the world, and also extremely high food and housing costs?
In "Energy and Civilization A History" by Vaclav Smil he points out that, once you factor in the time spent earning money to pay for the costs of car transport, you are doing no better than if you walked.
The time that the car seems to save is spent working to pay for the car.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31850765-energy-and-civi...
If you look at the population-wide stats, things are dominated by diseases of aging because more old folks are dying overall.
Every death at age 25 has robbed us of more than double the number of years of life than a death at 50.
As for the rumination about productivity, desirability and cost - I really don’t understand your argument.
How do cars make life more affordable in communities that are well-equipped to live a car-free life? (Well-equipped meaning with density of services, walkability and transit.)
The paradox you describe is just a function of how rare these dense, people-friendly communities are in our landscape of endless exurban development crisscrossed by 6-lane expressways where you have to wait 5 minutes to cross the street while walking your dog. If we built more of these high-demand, people-centered communities, the price differential would not be so great.
or would you prefer to live in a city where the job and housing market develops near a handful main connected roads and everywhere else you travel more than you work?
> [safety concerns]
on a side note, imagine the amount of deaths from not having ambulances or fire trucks and the price gouging of transit company to reach major productivity center.
if someone invented car today those would still be great selling points for them
No. If someone invented cars today, he'd be considered a hero. We'd talk about him in history books.
I doubt your groceries would be more than 10 minutes away even if no cars had been invented. Zoning practices would change to allow more shops distributed across residential areas. That would make more sense than requiring people to ride an hour on horseback.
But yes, the supermarket would be much less 'super' with a much smaller selection of goods.
What could possibly go wrong?
It's nearly forgotten how much anger and resentment that Americans had against the railroad companies back in the day. Back then, railroads could decide if they would build a stop at your town, or even decide to build a new town on land that they owned somewhere along the line. Railroads were perceived as a vast private taking from the commons.
The car on the other hand involves public ownership of the roads and distributed ownership of the vehicles. That leaves a strong majority of the population feeling that the status quo benefits them and encourages them to keep it that way.
We have designed our living spaces to be ideal for cars, not humans. It is hard to acknowledge because it has been that way all our lives but it is a trade-off we are making.
It’s really sad. Kids nature is to want to run around and burn off energy, and right outside our door it’s safe for adults to do that, but it’s still not safe for young children because you still have to stay in the limited pedestrian zone and carefully cross streets.
I’ve wondered a lot about trying to build a car-free neighborhood with a commuter bus to downtown. I wish that existed, I’d move there.
Its all about incentives. And the government is in the driver's seat. I would love to get paid to bike around - that is a brilliant idea. Not to mention the health benefits of having a population exercise to get to work.
I live in NYC where the city was designed for cars. I find it a travesty that prime waterfront property on both sides of Manhattan - really all around the island - is a highway. If Robert Moses had prioritized non-car means of transport, we would have a very different city.
This statement causes me to question the veracity of the rest of the article.
Practically every municipality bends over backward to slow traffic near places where children, the elderly, the blind, or even just where too many accidents occur.
"Operating-speed method" is only really used for high-speed, high-throughput, limited access roadways.
This is sufficiently common that I could use road humps as a proxy for "Am I going the correct direction?" back before nav systems. Maybe you weren't going the completely right direction, but a road hump (or traffic circle) meant you were on a road sufficiently useful that it needed a traffic calming measure.
Cities with winter have extra considerations, though.
...Even so, 85 to 90 percent of toxic vehicle emissions in traffic come from tire wear and other non-tailpipe sources,...
So electric cars will mitigate only 10-15% of the environmental problems of the ICE cars?
PM2.5 emissions were only 1-3% lower for EVs compared to modern ICEVs. Therefore, it could be concluded that the increased popularity of electric vehicles will likely not have a great effect on PM levels. Non-exhaust emissions already account for over 90% of PM10 and 85% of PM2.5 emissions from traffic. These proportions will continue to increase as exhaust standards improve and average vehicle weight increases. Future policy should consequently focus on setting standards for non-exhaust emissions and encouraging weight reduction of all vehicles to significantly reduce PM emissions from traffic.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297889793_Non-exhau...
It's said that cars "produce" PMs this way even though they don't per se.
What I'm getting at is that if we reduced the amount of particulates added to the system, then surely there would be less to resuspend?
Unless there's some other, non-car related source of these. If so, why not address it instead?
If you follow the link to the actual research paper you find that it's 90% of PM10 and 85% of PM2.5
That is, not "emissions" in general but particle matter specifically.
This makes sense because modern cars have efficient engines and particle filters so that few particles are emitted from the combustion engine itself. The remaining sources are the tyres and the brakes.
But doesn't the point still stays that contrary to the popular belief electric cars would not bring about much change?
Research paper: ..it could be concluded that the increased popularity of electric vehicles will likely not have a great effect on PM levels.
As said, and as your quote highlights, this focusses on particles. But the main emission of internal combustion engines is CO2, and other nasty stuff like CO, NOx, hydrocarbons, etc. These are eliminated by electric vehicles.
Claiming that electric vehicles only move emissions to the electric plant is unfair at best.
Are there any emissions associated with that additional 125kWh of consumed electricity? If so, where? If not, why not?
First of all, this person meant to say "particulates" [1] and so we are not talking about CO2 at all. Secondly, the source that he links to has this table in it for PM10 (the table for PM2.5 would be analogous) [2]. Almost all of this argument is based on "resuspension". Basically, the car's slip stream. Seriously?
By the way, these values are (virtually) calculated all on acount of EVs being heavier. Well done I guess for assuming that braking in EVs won't have PM emissions <nod to regenerative breaking>.
It's a pity that an argument based on traffic accidents and cars has to reference such a random and irrelevant article. I agree that Americans like cars too much.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates
[2] Table 5
Comparison between expected PM 10 emissions of EVs, gasoline and diesel ICEVs (mg/vkm)
(Vehicle technology) (Exhaust) (Tyre wear) (Brake wear) (Road wear) (Resuspension) (Total)
EV 0 7.2 0 8.9 49.6 65.7
Gasoline ICEV 3.1 6.1 9.3 7.5 40 66.0
Diesel ICEV 2.4 6.1 9.3 7.5 40 65.3
Figuring out whether it's sub 1% or >= 2% probably doesn't.
That's a huge cost.
The legal and political and taxation system in Denmark is anti car and pro public transportation and have been for decades.
We are talking 200% taxes on the cars and constant reduction of roads in the big cities, constant expanision of public transportation.
Yet cars for most people in Denmark is very important.
Cars are the perfect balance between flexibility, scaleability, speed, utility etc.
This is why cars win, not because of some conspiracy.
It was written in 1975 so doesn't speculate on the future of self driving vehicles but part of what made that book interesting is it took an oil shock to really get some attention on the problems.
(let's not forget that one enormous benefit of automobiles was that they cleaned up the cities which used to be full of horse manure. Of course we know now that they pollute in other, destructive, ways).
Let's just take the two examples in the article. First single family zoning. I would argue that before cars (and cities) people lived on farms and ranches. Cars were not to blame. The trend has been towards smaller living areas, not larger. Second, parking requirements. I think parking requirements came after cars, not the other way around.
False. It’s possible to pay for mass transit with pretax dollars.
> automobile supremacy
The language of this article just makes me cringe.
Other than that, it's really quite reasonable though.
For example if you wear lycra, you will probably find that a percentage of people will regularly try to "punish" you because they think you "look funny".
The mildest form of punishment will be them driving as close to you as they dare. That could be 50mph 12"s away. That's like standing on the other side of the do not cross line in the subway as a train comes past.
That's my anecdotal experience but a quick search Youtube will turn up many examples of this. Action camera manufacturers specifically design products to document this.
Worse though, you'll probably eventually have someone be more directly aggressive to you. Maybe throwing something at you or trying to drive you off the road.
In that context I think that the phrase traffic violence is fitting. If someone is using a vehicle as a weapon what else would you call it?
Is it just location? Is it the type of bike or the clothes we wear?
There was this study https://helmets.org/walkerstudy.htm which has some interesting conclusions but the sample size is a bit small to be statistically valid IMHO.
Oh and I'd add, if it's not clear already, that most drivers seem to be very nice and considerate people. It's just that there are percentage of aggressive people and when they're in cars they drive aggressively.
> Aster Ryan, 25, of Wingate, said “this summer has felt especially dangerous.” In addition to the three cycling deaths that took place within a week, Ryan said she was hit while riding her bike a little more than a week ago on Dean Street, and also watched another rider get hit by an opening car door recently.
https://www.amny.com/transit/cyclist-die-in-washington-squar...
I had two drivers within the last 12 hours taking my right of way by illegally driving onto a cycle path when turning from a side street into a main street.
Both claimed that they couldn't see into the main street if they didn't drive over the cycle path first, but somehow while both of them were perfectly happy taking cyclists right of way, they did not want to take other motorists right of way by driving directly onto the main street.
Southern Germany too, although at least they usually don't put hedges/fences right up to the edge of the road.
I would hate to walk or bike on those roads, despite the beautiful landscapes on display.
Initially I thought there was a pressing need to widen the roads, but then I realized that the real problem is the size of modern cars and how fast most people drive.
While car ownership and driving is currently vital to a lot of rural communities, we need to reclaim the roads for shared usage, and break the imagined car/driver ownership and privilege over them.
Judge Doom: Several months ago I had the good providence to stumble upon this plan of the city council's. A construction plan of epic proportions. They're calling it a freeway.
Eddie Valiant: Freeway? What the hell's a freeway?
Judge Doom: Eight lanes of shimmering cement running from here to Pasadena. Smooth, safe, fast. Traffic jams will be a thing of the past.
Eddie Valiant: So that's why you killed Acme and Maroon? For this freeway? I don't get it.
Judge Doom: Of course not. You lack vision. I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on all day, all night. Soon, where Toontown once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful.
Eddie Valiant: Come on! Nobody's going to drive this lousy freeway when they can take the Red Car for a nickel.
Judge Doom: Oh, they'll drive. They'll have to. You see, I bought the Red Car so I could dismantle it.
> ...as SF's rail network was removed or replaced with bus lines in the mid-century, it went from 16 rail lines to five...
The reason we still have the trains we do is because they were the lines that used tunnels, so they couldn't easily be replaced by buses.
The World's Fair, which also brought us the Palace of Fine Arts, spurred the construction of many of those train routes. You used to be able to get to the Presidio by train! Imagine if, instead of spending effort digging up the tracks to replace them with buses, they buried the tracks and built an actual metro system: you could get around the city without a vehicle.
https://www.sfmta.com/blog/how-munis-streetcar-lines-got-the...
Today, San Francisco only has trains along Market Street
> along Market Street, fingering out into a half dozen neighborhoods
At least that's what I've worked out from Cities: Skylines.
Skyways are significantly cheaper than bridges. It would still be cheaper to make the ground level of your city a building, but not having to support the mass of cars and trucks means skyways can be significantly cheaper.
In the modern world trucks and buses are far too useful to ban completely from cities where people live. People need their stuff delivered, and need to get longer distances once in a while. Thus I'm saying reserve the ground for those uses and get humans away from them. It is a compromise, but I think it is a good one.
In my country (India), there is hardly any planning -- empty land == lets buy and build a building. No regulation even on buying cars, keep on piling and spend an hour or two for a 8 KM ride home from your office.
There is no incentive to use public transport. There is no special lanes for public transport. No one follows the "lane rules" either. They(us) got enough money to buy a car but no sense on how to use them properly.
And note that cars much costlier in India if you consider PPP. Its horrible.
Public transportation is the backbone of India. I can only agree to the point is that it’s uncomfortable and overcrowded to use.
There isn't a single person in India who will not buy a car if they have the money to. How many of these 'rich' people really use the Mumbai local and Delhi Metros?
The vast majority of people get there by public transport, not driving.
I was driving in Oakland when the car in front of me didn’t slow down for a pedestrian in the crosswalk. The pedestrian disappeared in front of the car. I stopped my car, got out, found the struck young woman trembling and bleeding in the street.
The speed limit was 30 miles per hour. I don’t think the driver was going quite that fast — maybe 20, 25 at most.
The woman driving the car was elderly. It’s tough to gauge her age — pushing late 70s, maybe 80? She said she didn’t notice the girl in the crosswalk.
I was upset. I stayed the entire time, talked with the cops at length, gave a statement. I wanted to see the lady’s license taken away. Or a ticket at least. Or heck, even a talking to about if maybe she’s no longer fit to drive.
The cops let the old lady drive away. No ticket. No talk. I was stunned. Surely if you hit someone with your car at that speed, in fucking crosswalk, you at the very least need to prove to the DMV that you’re safe to drive. Especially if you’re an elderly person. But nope. They said they had no grounds with which to take any action at all.
Still bothers me. I hope that lady hasn’t killed anyone.
In Europe if you strike a pedestrian on the crosswalk you'll definitely loose your license and be looking at manslaughter charges too while your insurance company will murder you after paying the victim's medical/disability/court bills.
It was night time, rainy and the victim popped out from the space between two parked cars and ran just in front of the motorbike to quickly cross the road.
There was automatically a trial anyway for manslaughter and my relative was not found guilty of anything. I think it's a good thing to automatically have a trial anyway. The rule here is "the driver must be in full control of its vehicle at anytime". It basically means that if you could have physically avoided a pedestrian (factoring in response and braking times..), you'll be found guilty even if the pedestrian was outside of a crosswalk for instance.
For example, consider a situation where the driver has to correct understeer, or lift-off oversteer, both relatively easy to achieve in cold, wet conditions.
The unfortunate truth is that people are human and humans make mistakes. You could drive to work on the same back road every day. Except one day it's particularly cold and you don't see the ice patch on the sharp right hand corner you've taken 100s of times before. The rear of the car steps out, but you don't know what to do as you have never encountered this before. You panic, naturally stamping on the brakes and end up off the road in a ditch.
The alternative: drivers must complete separate examinations for front wheel drive and rear driven cars, like how automatic and manual are separate licenses.
As part of that drivers must learn how the drivetrain affects how the car breaks traction both under power and under non-power conditions (i.e. coasting), and the appropriate corrections for both.
Let's come back to our scenario. We can assume the driver is operating a front wheel drive vehicle. Instead of slamming on the brakes, the driver has experience of lift off oversteer from their test. They apply 1/4 turn of opposite lock, then unwind the lock. The driver then applies power to the front wheels to straighten the rear.
Thanks to good training and examination driver has successfully avoided ending up the ditch.
That's true, it's also going to stay true no matter the amount of training. That isn't to say that I'm advocating against more training, but I think the training is prohibitively more expensive (even in a context where driving isn't as much of a necessity as it is here) for a gain that I perceive to be largely negligible unless linked to stricter training and re-certification in general (which is certainly prohibitively expensive).
So step number 1. is not to drive as fast that you exceed the limits of your full control.
There is no step 2.
We also get taught to inspect the car before getting in in case (for example) the exhaust pipe is blocked.
More training is needed in most countries.
I won't pretend that I've always been a perfect driver, quite far from it actually, but I don't think the law should find me excuses. If I drive too fast and find myself unable to avoid a collision I definitely don't expect to get a pass for my reckless driving because it was at night and raining.
Hopefully in the not-so-far future we'll finally get those self-driving cars we were promised and we'll be able to leave all of that to the past.
Most people drive to their limits, or their comfort. Some people do stupid things and drive beyond what is safe, but dependent on where you live this may or may not be in the minority.
What fascinates me is that we are not giving drivers the skills they need to be able to avoid accidents should the worst happen. Instead we say you shouldn't drive at speed X or in condition Y.
My argument is that we should be teaching drivers these skills not only so they can correct their mistakes, because at the end of the day we are all human and make mistakes, but if we also show drivers how easy it is to lose control of a vehicle they may just respect the road a little more than they do already.
This all sounds ok in theory, but as the article makes a great case for, this is totally impossible in America because it's impossible to get around in most places without a car. You can't just not drive when the weather is a little wet, for instance; you'll lose your job, you won't be able to get home, etc.
One big problem is that most people just have no training for bad conditions. How many people even here on HN know what "lift off oversteer" is? Or how to correct for it? I do, but most don't and would wreck. The regular barely-educated driver? Forget about it. Drivers should get far more training than they do. But even then, many people wouldn't be able to master this stuff; they just don't have the aptitude.
In Germany, people have to pay thousands to take driver training that does cover much more than what Americans are required to learn. However, it's not that hard to get around in western Europe without a car if you suck at driving or can't afford car ownership.
If you're going to use something that can kill people if mishandled, you take on a lot of responsibilities, one of which is to maintain attention / control.
Same goes for many such objects, really: power tools, guns, industrial machinery, medical equipment, etc.
* https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chinese-drivers-kill-pedes...
There was an article a while back (I can't find) where San Francisco's transit agency (SFMTA) joked about the same to save the city money.
It probably makes sense... a fatality pay out is $2M (using FAA standards). Long term medical care in the US? Easily over that...
Older people losing their cars is often the start of a decline unto death because there’s so little you can do with driving in many neighborhoods (which commonly won’t even have sidewalks) and relatively few people have the resources to hire someone to replace that lost autonomy. I remember when an older driver killed someone by backing over them in the church parking lot near here and so many people framed it in those terms when talking about whether she should lose her license, largely ignoring the person who no longer had to worry about it.
I'm not sure this is just because of the way neighborhoods are set up. It's also a lack of social structures to catch this. The richest country one earth, has Uber, yet can't keep healthcare costs low enough to keep the elderly alive longer.
That's the point of the article: currently, large parts of the United States are setup assuming that everyone has their own car and drives to perform each of those functions. For many people, there's a huge hit in convenience and budget if they switch transportation modes — e.g. where I live in DC, many of the suburbs were intentionally designed after Brown v. Board not to support pedestrians or transit users (presumed to be poor and brown), so there are no sidewalks and significant distances to get to anything other than houses even if you do take your chances on foot / bike. Someone who can't drive might find they have a 40+ minute walk to get to a library, pool, shopping center, etc. when you add up all of the street crossings and circuitous routes.
The solution is to replace their car with a vehicle that's less dangerous for others like an electrically assisted tricycle. That can serve their local transportation needs and won't cause nearly as much damage if they hit someone or something.
These lead to significant problems at intersections. It's best to keep vehicles of all types on roads where they obey the same set of rules.
Second, these intersections place a much higher burden on cyclists. That is, they have to check for traffic coming from behind to see if they're going to make a right turn and avoid getting hit. They have to watch for traffic coming from the side to make sure they don't get hit. And they have to watch for left turning traffic far to the left to make sure they don't get hit.
If they're riding in the standard road position (center of the lane) instead, then it's much easier to see traffic and it's easier for traffic to see them as they approach an intersection.
This is why I specified correctly designed: what you're saying is an artifact of a poorly-designed intersection which does not have good visibility or clear traffic flows.
Even the NACTO (National Association of City Transportation Officials) design guide states:
>> Driveways and minor street crossings are a unique challenge to cycle track design. A review of crossing facilities and design practice has shown that the following guidance may improve safety at crossings of driveways and minor intersections:
>>
>> * If the cycle track is parking protected, parking should be prohibited near the intersection to improve visibility. The desirable no parking area is 30 feet from each side of the crossing. >>
>> * For motor vehicles attempting to cross the cycle track from the side street or driveway, street and sidewalk furnishings and/or other features should accommodate a sight triangle of 20 feet to the cycle track from the minor street crossings and 10 feet from driveway crossing.
The distances quoted should make it evident that, at least in the US, even the guidelines aren't going to lead to "correctly designed" intersections.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicle
Some retirement communities are specifically designed to handle those, and they work fine in many urban and suburban areas.
I was 16 at the time. Really shaken up about what had happened. But after collecting myself and fixing the dangling headlight I was able to drive home. I got a ticket for not giving way to the pedestrian (€45 I believe) and insurance covered everything regarding the woman. Didn't even get a letter other than one that they would take of everything.
So yes it happens here too (The Netherlands)
I.e. you weren't driving a car and you were underage.
I'm not saying that the legal system in The Netherlands is unreasonable or anything, but I feel like your case doesn't really represent the kind of case people are thinking of in this thread.
Be aware though that this is not always the case. For instance if you are driving next to a playing field you are expected to watch out and brake for children who can always show up on the road and not doing so has consequences.
If you ask a person on the street why they don't exchange a quick car ride with riding a bike or walking, they may tell you that they're scared of getting hit by a car - and this is probably before getting hit by a car.
I can't really quantify the emotional stress riding bikes costs me now each, and every time a car almost hits me (which is a regular basis), but it's something I have to now live with. And I friggin' love riding bikes.
[1]https://www.montlick.com/montlick-blog/auto-accidents/333-el...
The GPs comments were implying it wouldn’t happen in Europe without manslaughter charges and the US it they wouldn’t be charged. It can happen in the US with similar charges, vehicular homicide. My comment is valid.
How often do I think what happens? I live in Boston. So depending on what you are asking, the answer is probably too damn often, which is the point. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20403831
> My comment is valid.
Oh okay.
Nope, you're wrong, this is largely untrue unless the driver fled the scene or the driver was drunk. "Whoops I didn't see them" is usually a completely valid defense and everyone shrugs and says "Oh well, accidents happen" rather than "slow down, pay attention, and learn to control your car."
http://www.startribune.com/in-crashes-that-kill-pedestrians-...
>The majority of drivers who killed pedestrians between 2010 and 2014 were not charged, according to Star Tribune analysis of metro area crash data. Those who were charged often faced misdemeanors — from speeding to careless driving — with minimal penalties, unless the driver knowingly fled or was intoxicated at the time of the crash.
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/11/06/no-charges-for-driver...
>Lenient laws and a culture of tolerance for traffic violence means that unless you were intoxicated when the crash occurred, the official word is most likely “accidents happen.” Even an investigation into a collision that caused life-threatening injuries might be too much to ask in a lot of jurisdictions. Streetsblog recently found that fewer than 1 percent of drivers who kill or injure pedestrians and cyclists in New York City are ticketed for careless driving, much less charged with a crime.
https://www.revealnews.org/article/bay-area-drivers-who-kill...
>Sixty percent of the 238 motorists found to be at fault or suspected of a crime faced no criminal charges during the five-year period, CIR found in its analysis of thousands of pages of police and court records from Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco counties.
Also the young lady who was struck turned down an ambulance ride and got a ride home from another bystander. Injuries were not apparently life threatening. (I’m also betting the girl didn’t have health insurance.)
In most parts of the country, I doubt this story would have played out this way
It seems to me, probably naively, that the easiest way around this would be to require yearly tests for everyone. You're driving a huge honking piece of metal at 60+ miles an hour down the street; a yearly verification of your ability to do so doesn't seem excessive.
Hopefully, self-driving cars will eventually render these discussions redundant. But that still seems to be decades away at this rate.
I reiterate that we're driving huge pieces of metal at nearly a hundred miles per hour. Let's stop sacrificing people's lives for the privilege, and start sacrificing time and money.
I don't care if that's "ageist". It's a biological fact that older people suffer from cognitive decline, slowed reaction times, etc.
Is it also "sexist" to claim that only women are able to get pregnant?
It isn't unreasonable but it is clearly a matter of power given the uneven application. Guess who has an interest in not being restricted now or in the future? Those who pass the laws and judge them.
In my old state they had a machine you looked into. I had a harder time with that one, I'm guessing due to my mild astigmatism. But no chance to memorize it, because you don't see it until your face is in the machine; and all the lines were the same size, so you could have gotten any of them.
We should do this based on facts, not anecdotes.
This data suggests we should first be concerned with the training and testing of new drivers. https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuri...
According to this, people 60-69 are the best drivers. 70+ are decent across the categories ("All crashes", "Injury crashes" and "Fatal crashes") except those 80+ kill themselves at an exceptional rate (but not passengers or others for some reason).
Eyewitnesses suck at trial, and defending the elderly is pretty easy.
For example, In many states, you can lose a license without being prosecuted. Indiana is one of them.
Alternatively, a prudent measure would be to require the driver to get a medical clearance to drive again. This, in my opinion, would be the wise choice.
Headline will be "Police target minority driver licenses for minor traffic infractions."
I chose where to live because of a desire to be able to commute easily - the bus is 10 minutes, walking is about 25 - but I paid for it, both literally and figuratively.
Don't build new roads to the core, maybe even take out, restrict, or slap huge tolls on the existing roads, and you'll keep people from wanting to commute in by car. Also remove rules requiring parking spaces, and even encourage replacing parking lots with buildings or parks or anything else, to make car driving the most miserable experience it can possibly be
There's lots a government can do to make people stop driving cars so much, and stop moving out to the suburbs. There just isn't political will (in America) to do so.
Just because you can raze entire cities, displace their populations, and embark on "clean slate" urban planning projects doesn't mean you should. That's the civil engineering equivalent of rewriting the entire codebase from scratch.
And yet, "refactoring" is definitely a real thing in software engineering and is not uncommon, for good reason: many times you really do need to throw everything out and start from scratch.
It is hard, but it's mostly hard due to a population of motorists who have confused the privileges granted to them by the state with rights.
And if ridership increases enough, then bus commute times will be reduced a great deal.
Could we just use existing roads, and try to replace every 30 cars on the road with a bus?
It is unrealistic to expect pedestrians and bicyclists to avoid automobiles by yielding to them.
EDIT: spelling; more spelling
It makes driving pretty stressful because it makes people much less predictable. When I commuted to Berkeley I would often joke/not joke that Berkeley pedestrians were trying to make me kill them with my car.
But a different weird thing is that being a pedestrian in Berkeley turns you into one of those people who is trying to die by car. I was more cautious than average (read: acting like a normal pedestrian somewhere else), and it was annoying and maybe dangerous for everyone else.
That may not seem clear, but it's analogous to someone being "nice" at a 4-way stop and letting everyone else go even if it's your turn. It's not "nice," because it delays and confuses everyone who now has to cautiously navigate a potentially dangerous situation instead of just following a simple procedure.
Similarly, cars stop for people in Berkeley. That's how it goes. If you act like they don't, then you get awkward standoffs between people and cars each not trusting the other to go first, all while traffic piles up behind the cars, and other pedestrians are now interleaving in between the cars in the jam. If you're on foot, you should just step out into road and cross it, after a perfunctory check, otherwise you're gumming up the works.
I don't like it, on either side, but it's not possible to unilaterally do better. You just have to go with it.
Especially in a pedestrian-heavy center where walking should be (and thankfully is!) the norm like in Berkeley.
Sure enough, I went to cross and my cousin tried to grab my arm and not let me cross. The light was green, but the timer on the crosswalk light was going down from 5. I figured I was good to go.
The light turned green for the cars and I was just about across the street when two cars who clearly had seen me, raced into the intersection. I had to nearly dive to the curb to get to safety and in the process both drivers shouted at me to get the F out of the street.
I turned around petrified and saw my cousin and uncle were laughing hilariously at my introduction to being a pedestrian in Chicago.
I'm sure there are still many cities where cars will (wrongly) always have the right of way; regardless of whether there are people in the crosswalk or not and don't care if someone gets clipped or run over in the process.
https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuri...
From this, 60s is peak age range for driving safety.
In the 70s people are still good.
80+ are still pretty good in the "All crashes" and "Injury crashes" categories (a little better than people 25-29, a little worse than people 30-39), but they are really bad in "Fatal crashes" -- even a little worse than 16-17yo.
Digging into the fatalities, the spike in deaths caused by old people are themselves and not passengers or others.
So I guess the motivation for driving tests for old people would be to protect them from themselves and should apply to people 80+.
If we want to protect people from bad drivers generally, we should really want to do something about 16-17yos (just pushing back the driving age might not do it because inexperience is probably a significant factor). Actually something like more monitoring/training/tests for drivers, say, 16-24 would be the best place to start. (Drivers 25-29 are also a problem, but presumably if you improve younger drivers the older age range will take care of itself as the good young drivers age.)
So the parent established that, in his case, a crash took place but was not recorded by the police. Police are known to give the benefit of the doubt to certain classes of people, leaving incidents that they cause outside of formal records and review. Is this a widespread phenomenon that could skew the data presented in your citation? I think that's worth investigating.
And of course, trains don't use roads. What other public transport is there?
[1] https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-bus-industry-in-the-united-s...
It isn't clear if bicycles or cars drove paved roads in the early days though: both need smooth surfaces to be useful. Bicycles started it first, but it isn't clear how much success they had.
The army's needs of roads came last. The Civil War was fought around railroads (and boats) for long distance travel, and horses for the rest. Only after WWII did the army really realize the advantages of cars and switch to that mode in their plans.