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Comment by vvpan | Hacker News Reader

I suspect that the lack of comments means that most people agree with the sentiment but put off watching the video for later. If true - it says something about the relative ease of consumption of textual content. I follow a political scientist who says she never views videos (of official statements for example) because the transcripts are so much more efficient, and makes sure to post transcripts of her video appearances.

EDIT: and oh yeah, hate the goddam trucks of course.

View on HN

GPT-4 summary, since I also found the narrator annoying and went straight to the transcript:

> The growth of SUVs and light trucks presents a challenge to creating walkable cities due to their size, poor visibility, and negative impact on safety and the environment. The popularity of these vehicles has been driven by marketing from the auto industry, which has promoted their supposed safety and versatility. However, their size and design make them more dangerous for pedestrians and other road users, and they contribute significantly to carbon emissions. Cities need to take steps to regulate SUVs and light trucks, such as taxing them by weight, limiting vehicles with high bumpers, and increasing fees for parking permits and insurance.

I feel like Youtube vidoes are a massively annoying format for digesting information. It's so slow compared to text and it's full of fillers and introductions and flowery language. I'm surprised this is so upvoted on HN, especially because in my brief scanning the video format doesn't add anything

I typically watch at 1.75x speed, sometimes 2x. Same (sometimes faster) for podcasts.

Of course there’s a one sentence bottom line to a majority of YouTube content, but I appreciate the artform, adjacent color commentary, and evidence-based rigor from these higher quality creators. Albeit at a ridiculous speed lol.

I watched this video before it showed up here. I am delighted to see it make the front page of HN (though Slaughter already has plenty of notoriety) and upvoted without saying much, because the urbanism fight is just... tiring. At least when talking to North Americans.

Maybe the urbanism fight is tiring because people realize what they would have to give up in order to achieve the urbanist vision -- especially their trucks and SUVs.

Selling a positive vision rather than shaming people and trying to take things away from them would help.

But what if the SUV is the positive vision being sold? Do SUV owners want to live in a world where they drive smaller cars?

I love trucks. They're a lot of fun to drive (I have two 1990 JDM SUV for offroad camping. Especially to modify and add things like CB radios for convoys, bull bars for protection from trees and assholes who won't let you merge. My favourite modification was a turbo. At night in the bush, navigating some track, the turbo diesel whistle sounds so good, and gives more torque for the mud.

I think it's quite weird to hate a type of vehicle and want to prevent other people from accessing it. Just live and let live.

Maybe you should watch the video and realize that it can't be live and let live. By you living with your truck, we die.

Yea, no, I challenge the narrative pushed in the video as flawed at best.

Well I'll be first to admit that my thing against trucks is a bit of knee jerk. To me they are big, loud, scary and expensive. I'm uncomfortable being around roads full of trucks, especially biking. Yet I know that a Mazda Miata will kill be just as well. And I can see the utility in a lot of situations. I've looked at them for camping in wilderness of western US too, I'll be honest, but realized that I would not be able to stretch out in any of them and quickly passed. Yet at the same time I just moved to a little city that identifies hard (to an unhealthy degree imho) with cowboy and military culture and it seems most vehicles are trucks. I honestly think this contributes to this city being universally looked down upon and ridiculed. Although the symbolism of the truck in this context is probably tightly enmashed with the real physical properties.

Utility depends on context. Emotions matter. Urbanism consists of emotional responses. Camping in wilderness is different.

I'm good with live and let live. But my SO's Honda Fit was just demolished by a modern truck who "didn't see her" despite having a clear line of sight down the road--but due to the relative slope, I suspect the Fit was obscured by the truck hood. She was in pain for 6 weeks. So where is live and let live?

> I suspect that the lack of comments means that most people agree with the sentiment but put off watching the video for later

This was me. Video is rather hard for me, because I need to be in the right time and place for it.

I am trying to avoid videos and podcasts too. But it is an uphill battle. Text, while easier to produce, would give the platform only 10 minutes of engagement at best instead of 30, and won't generate comparable number of subscriptions. Also text is easier to copy and harder to monetize. So, there is either zero or a negative incentive for authors to go text.

It depends on the context. When I’m cruising HN, I have no interest in watching a video. When I’m watching TV, the same video might be perfect.

Yep, I even gave the video a chance but I wasn't going to sit through the whole thing. Of course, it was also preaching to the choir.

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