rtlfe

> For instance the fact that a car owner can travel large distances to work or spend money any time they like is a massively beneficial externality.

You shouldn't have to travel long distances to do those things. This is only considered normal in the US because so much was built specifically for the convenience of drivers.

> only the rich should drive.

Alternate ways of saying the same thing include "make driving optional" or "driving should be considered a luxury."

I.e. we should structure our cities and towns so that most people are able to conveniently do most of their activities without driving.

Those could all be less reliant on cars than they currently are too. For example:

* UPS is trying "equad" bikes: https://www.reuters.com/technology/ups-tries-out-equad-elect...

* London has bike paramedics: https://www.londonambulance.nhs.uk/calling-us/who-will-treat...

* Most taxi rides in urban areas could easily be replaced with e-pedicabs

> I simply can't understand how car users impose "true costs" on everyone else, but not themselves, which is what the GP was claiming.

The point is that everybody pays the costs whether they drive or not. If the costs were more directly tied to how much each person drives, there would be a lot less driving overall.

The impact of burning gas isn't the only hidden cost. There are big health effects from air pollution caused by brake dust, tires, and other car components. There are all the people who are disabled and killed in crashes. There's all the space that could be used for parks, flood mitigation, etc if it wasn't dedicated to driving and storing cars. There's noise pollution that has a tangible impact on sleep and stress.

Driving a car is not a requirement for any of those professions.

The link with the actual data is long dead, but the numbers in this image seem plausible.

https://twitter.com/BrentToderian/status/801641590380851200

There are road designs that significantly reduce the consequences of those actions. Narrow lanes with chicanes prevent driving at high speeds. Concrete barriers prevent cars from swerving into cyclists and pedestrians. Roundabouts eliminate left turn conflicts.

> but that’s not the point.

Yes I literally started my comment by explaining that I was ignoring the point to make a different one.

> Most accidents are caused by things that are pretty ordinary forms of irresponsibility

This is a big diversion form the actual point, but it's important. The vast majority of these crashes (the word "accident" is rarely used by news/DOTs/etc anymore) could be prevented by designing streets to control speed and improve visibility. So I'd argue that they're caused by poor design which comes as a result of misplaced societal values.

Re the second item in that list of causes, an interesting article came out a couple days ago: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-21/make-the-...

> (idiotic) workaround for the fact that the state can't do anything about it.

It's sort of the same thing in NYC. The city council resorts to citizen reports because they can't get NYPD to enforce the law.

Lots of examples here for people not in NYC https://twitter.com/placardabuse

That would be much less valuable to the business. You'd probably be looking at 10% the salary of a full time dev who's actually solving business problems.

Understanding the problem and how to solve it is harder and more important than matching code style. Unless you're working on trivial CRUD web apps or something where problems and solutions are obvious.

The comment that started this whole thing said "Meetings and collaboration to figure out what to build, discuss issues etc". I think that covers both categories of good and bad types of collaboration you describe here.

What's the alternative? Have some PM+EM write a perfectly detailed spec for you to implement? That sounds like hell. I can't imagine spending all my time building something that I had no input on designing.

> If you just go through a bachelors CS curriculum, designed to give a survey of all topics in academic computer science, that wouldn't make you a competent engineer.

True, but it's probably not a worse predictor than most interviews.

> Back in the 90s and early 2000s, the interview problems I got were often the actual problem I was meant to solve on the job.

Really? In the early 2000s, half the questions I got for dev jobs were completely irrelevant riddles and nonsense like "which US state would you remove?"

Nice! If you can also make alt+tab select apps instead of all windows, I might try using Windows again.

This article links to some studies. https://www.vox.com/2016/1/11/10729946/breastfeeding-truth

Edit: this one somebody else linked is better. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everybody-calm-down-abo...

That's a pretty different situation than what people who walk around cities for transportation deal with. I have no objections to banning scooters, bikes, etc from recreational pedestrian areas.

> cars operate on roads, while pedestrians operate, largely, on sidewalks.

In theory yes, but in practice most cities do a terrible job of separating cars and pedestrians. Here in NYC a pedestrian dies in a crosswalk almost every day, and on a sidewalk much more often than you'd hope. Here's one from last week: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/02/10/breaking-careless-suv...

> helmet is now required

FYI some context on bike helmet laws: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/04/06/56408419/seattle...

The real problem is that car manufactures have lobbied to give every scrap of space to car storage. If we took back parking lanes to dramatically expand sidewalks, this wouldn't be an issue at all.

> I would be glad to not see scooters as the enemy if they weren't so dangerous for everyone involved.

There's absolutely no comparison between the dangers of scooters and cars. Every person who decides to use a scooter instead of driving or taking a taxi is having a huge positive effect on safety.

Nextdoor infinitely worse. It's such a toxic cesspool.

How do you do that for furnace? I assume you have to bypass the thermostat somehow.

> You really, really don't need to meet each of them weekly.

Somebody needs to. It's important to put in the time building relationships so that people are comfortable coming to you with concerns and so that you can recognize their patterns and notice when there's something they're not telling you.

> I didn't get a chance to tell him about how I saved his job and the jobs of everyone else on the team

Why not tell them?

> I don't take the position that reducing speed is a good answer for every high-risk road situation

Why not? There's clear evidence showing that crashes at higher speeds are much more deadly. IMO any street that allows pedestrians and bicycles should be designed for 20mph car traffic. If you want to drive faster than that, do it on a limited-access highway.