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Comment by michael_vo | Hacker News Reader

"You cannot see the wood for trees"

I'd argue there is so much good that the tradeoff of trees killing a few humans is worth it.

The biological diversity that returns - birds, carbon soil. The air quality. Less chance that the heat will kill our senior citizens. Trees prevent floods.

From NotJustBikes channel, trees and bushes can be used to obscure road visibility, which naturally forces drivers to slow down at a curve, which makes streets safer for pedestrians (43k deaths a year in USA from cars)

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>From NotJustBikes channel, trees and bushes can be used to obscure road visibility, which naturally forces drivers to slow down at a curve, which makes streets safer for pedestrians

This is dumb. The same way wrapping cars in bubble wrap would be dumb but also make the cars safer. Most of the ideas in that channel are just insane emotional propaganda that make everyones lives worse because people don't understand geography or refuse to build properly.

>43k deaths a year in USA from cars

Not from people being ran over on the sidewalk...

American suburban streets are built like literal highways and then people are surprised people don't respect the speed limit.

It's not dumb, the easier to drive fast, the more people will do.

It's dumb. They're not built like highways. The highways are built like highways.

What do you propose for reducing car fatalities and accidents?

Things that only reduce car fatalities and accidents. Not things that reduce something beneficial and have the benefit of removing instances of harm since the benefit came with risks.

> This is dumb. The same way wrapping cars in bubble wrap would be dumb but also make the cars safer.

I doubt that would work, but if it did, why exactly would it be "dumb"?

> Most of the ideas in that channel are just insane emotional propaganda

Nah, most the ideas in that channel are the output of decades of empirical research on road/street safety by Dutch government agencies.

This video [1] from another channel describes how Dutch legal reforms in the early 90's enabled this evidence-based planning by correcting incentives and dramatically simplifying the regulatory framework.

1. https://youtu.be/b4ya3V-s4I0

>I doubt that would work, but if it did, why exactly would it be "dumb"?

You don't see why bubble wrapping cars would be dumb? Lol.

>Nah, most the ideas in that channel are the output of decades of empirical research on road/street safety by Dutch government agencies.

Yes, and the channel targets the US... not the Netherlands. They're not even remotely similar. Emotional propaganda is all it is.

I don't really care about what the Dutch are doing when discussing the US.

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