It's a runaway process of prioritizing safety over convenience -- and it's wrecking their road base just before self-driving cars would allow them to have both.
> An evaluation of 20 mph zones in the UK demonstrated that the zones were effective both in reducing traffic speed and in reducing RTIs. In particular child pedestrian injuries were reduced by 70 per cent from 1.24 per year in each area before to 0.37 per year after the zones were introduced
https://www.rospa.com/siteassets/images/road-safety/road-saf...
The "Vision Zero" program was started in Sweden, and is becoming more widely adopted.
Acknowledging life has risk tradeoffs doesn't make you an American, but denying it can make you a self-righteous jerk.
Taken literally, that's clearly not true.
For example you can easily drive 150mph in the flat desert where there is nothing for a hundred miles and you can see many miles ahead. You have zero risk of hurting anyone else unless they somehow teleport in front of you.
But driving 5mph in tight street full of elementary school kids running around can be extremely dangerous.
It's all about context.
There’s this techbro utopia mindset leaking through as well, just like it does for climate change topics, that pragmatic solutions that work for us today are deprioritized because some incredible technology is right around the corner. This is also distinctly American, specifically Silicon Valley, culture.
this sounds like exactly the right tradeoff, especially since these decisions actually increase convenience for those not in cars
It is possible to go too far in either direction.
And it’s not “runaway”, it’s exactly the right prioritisation. I’d encourage you to spend some time on Not Just Bikes and the say whether you’d like to live in a Nordic or an American neighbourhood. The Nordic style is also about convenience because car centric infrastructure makes a lot of things less accessible and convenient.