Today is one of the days everyone will talk about how many people died in car accidents last night, and nothing will be done about it.
Today is one of the days everyone will talk about how many people died in car accidents last night, and nothing will be done about it.
At least in the US. Hopefully other countries do better.
According to NHTSA numbers, New Years Day (and New Years Eve) are no longer in the top 10 most deadly holidays for drunk driving fatalities, or driving fatalities generally. Strong police presence and strict DUI enforcement has done a lot to cut down on the loss of life in this particular case.
Canada does not do better. We are really good at blaming the victim and allowing drunk drivers to be repeat offenders. Shit, where I moved away from there were people lobbying to increase the legal BH limit.
This is why driving should be by profession only and very regulated IMO.
Any other heavy machinery generally needs a license and regular recertification that requires you to basically take the test again. And anywhere you'd be operating generally has other people who have also undergone their own safety trsining. But giant 1-ton metal machines that go on public roads co-occupied by random pedestrians? Just come round every so often so we can give you a new ID.
dude, .04 is a joke and an excuse for police to harass. MADD ceased being about safety and has been money generation for decades now. This all has been a classic case of imposing new laws instead of simply enforcing the old ones, like gun control and some other things i can think of.
Yup it's rampant here, thinking I might move to Montreal.
Speeding, drunk driving, lack of transit options, lack of enforcement.... All preventable factors
These deaths are not accidents
My ex's mom never stopped driving when she developed a medical condition that has her randomly passing out multiple times a day. She never stopped, the doctor never took it, and the inevitable happened.
She passed out, killed a pedestrian. Did like 2.5 years and ~6 Mo of that was time served IIRC.
Motorists aren't REALLY punished for crimes, and pedestrian murder is just victim blaming advertising for car ownership "if they hadn't been on their bike they would have survived" "that's what you get for walking on the side of the road"
War famine disease these are all preventable!
Everything bad that happens to anyone is because someone decided to have sex a few decades ago. So really, there are no accidents whatsoever
So many accidents in Romania could be avoided if freight trucks were on rail, but now freight rail is garbage and nobody says anything
How would you get freight to places other than train stations?
To these places the only option would be (maybe smaller) trucks, from the station. I am not talking about in city transport, but about transport between cities, or even internationally
I'll never forget one of the dumbest things I've heard. Person in charge of the "orientation meeting" for exchange students at UCSB said with a straight face to the group of about 30 foreigners:
It's important that you don't drink and driver, as you can get a big fine.
Are you sure that's the reason?
Living in Norway, It's been 15 years since I heard of someone I know, know someone who drunk drove. Likely a very different experience in other social circles, or other parts of the country (coughFinnmarkcough) , but I would say it's definitely a cultural difference.
Please elaborate on how nothing has been done?
What should be done about it?
I know there are some obvious answers on there and really im for anything that has less cars.
But "what should be done about it?" If someone ran a political party of "fuckcars" and got into power what would the ideal solutions be?
It's easy to say more rail but that isn't enough to make change.
Some politician saying " I want a highway through that black neighbourhood" was enough to evict countless people, destroy their homes, divide communities, and create urban freeways. We could certainly do the same with public transit but without the racism, just take the space from the cars this time.
Yes, more rails, and denser cities. „Walkable cities“ they’re called in the US, for me they’re just „normal cities“.
I live in one, right in the middle. I have, in walking distance, more than half a dozen supermarkets (not bodegas/delis/whatever, we have those on top), four pharmacies, two drugstores. I have two tramlines and a light rail in walking distance that can carry me all over town. When I want to have a drink I just take one of those. Or walk to my friends who live near.
When I do need a car (of course that happens) I rent one. That probably amounts to 14 d/y.
This has more to do with idiots.
Blaming individuals for systems failures is the oldest trick in the book for avoiding fixing things. Google "The nut that holds the wheel" if you want to learn more, eg this article
only twelve of the twentyfour states which require licenses to drive insist on an examination of the applicant
Wait what? Is this for real? I’m in BC in Canada and it takes a written and two practical tests over 2 years before you can drive normally.
No one thinks they're the idiot, but idiots exist. Which are you?
Cars have been made safer and drunk driving laws are more enforced then ever. But sure, "nothing will be done" whatever makes you feel self-satisfied in your weirdo anti-car cult.
This motherfucker has a DUI guaranteed.
Interestingly, the US is going in the opposite direction to everyone else with road fatalities. Since the mid 2010's their numbers have stopped declining and increased slightly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year
"Hanging out in communities you sharply disagree with to run defense for pedestrian murder" sounds WAY more culty than "cars should not be the only possible method of getting around," friendo. 🤷
I don't even think anyone here is anti-car. All I've ever heard said is that it needs to stop being the default (and only) option.
This is pretty reasonable when you consider it's the only way we can meet emissions targets to continue living on this planet.
I could see alternative options being implemented in some cities, but in many it's simply not an option, especially when you consider some of the commutes. There will never be a series of bus rides that would bring my spouse to work, which is only 25 minute drive. I like the idea, just really need remote work to take off in a huge way to support it.
Not the person you commented on but, don't know if I agree with that, I am on the side of cars are needed but they should be supplemented with better alternatives as will to dissuade their usage unless actually required for the trip(for many of the reasons this community has stated).
it's why I joined the community because I do like the posts demonstrating why this is required, and the posts that give information about potential alternatives. That being said I've been on edge whether to stay as of late because I'm no longer seeing posts like that, and when I read the comments there's so much toxicity and always someone flaming another. Sometimes it's called for, others I do agree feel very cult like in behavior of "oh they are indicating cars might have usage? burn the witch!"
Note I'm not saying this specific instance qualifies as that, just saying what I've noticed in the past posts I've looked at.
note note: realized I skipped your emissions target part... fully agree changing the defacto tech for current day cars are a hard requirement if we want to meet goals as the current ones just aren't cutting it
This is pretty reasonable when you consider it's the only way we can meet emissions targets to continue living on this planet.
Reminder that claiming individual action can have any meaningful impact compared to corporate action is journalistic malpractice/misinformation.
Having trouble posting the image directly, so here is a link.
Brave of you to post this in a community litteraly named "Fuck Cars"
Cars are safer? What are you talking about?
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deaths-high-traffic-car
I've joined this instance for a reason, because I agree with it's message. But what you've posted here is misleading. Cars have gotten safer over the years. Seatbelts, airbags, drive by wire, etc have all helped do that. The link you've posted refers to the US, which does matter in this case. Cos, globally, there has been a 5% drop in road user deaths since 2010 (and some countries have had some huge drops, over 50% isn't super rare), partly cos of these increased safety measures. So, yeah, cars have objectively gotten safer. The US' problem stems more from other issues like culture, infrastructure, individual attitudes etc.
Yeah that's why pedestrian death rates have been increasing since 2008.
Edit: to be clear, it's because cars are needlessly getting bigger and actively more dangerous to pedestrians.
Yes, because making laws means people will follow them. And cars have only been made safer for the people inside them not whatever or whom ever they hit. Maybe you should live in reality and realize that we are absolutely destroying our planet in the name of cars, their infrastructure, and their fuel. Fuck off with your weird car cult.
"safer" still isn't as safe as any system that can get driving-age people around without expecting 90% of them to spend most of their travel time...
- behind the steering wheel of a 2 ton machine at an average speed of 45mph/70kph
- driving on roads that we literally paved over cities to have and now bleed funding from the surviving towns to maintain
- bound by the authoritarian system that is necessary to ensure any amount of safety in doing the aforementioned.
In fact, the industry had to push a lot of propaganda and laws by anti-democratic means to make the public accept the death toll of cars. They achieved this by a) shifting all blame for excess deaths away from those producing and selling the cars as they actively destroyed all other means of transport, and b) making roads as "safe" and convenient as they are by making them hostile to all road users other than cars. All of that just so you can feel so confident in the number of people being killed and maimed by cars as to be here in a community literally called fuckcars talking like any number of road deaths is a normal and good thing, actually.
You can read about the propaganda and other methods used by the auto industry here (section 1.5) if you actually care to learn at all. Highly recommend reading the rest while you're at it too. Genuinely good and compelling read. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7325856/#s0030title
People got around before cars, they still get around without cars in many places. Fewer cars on the road means less traffic and fewer road deaths. Car-centric infrastructure is expensive to maintain, encourages blight, kills small business, and discourages community engagement. In contrast, people and businesses and communities alike all thrive when infrastructure prioritizes pedestrian transport. There simply needs to be more alternatives to driving; especially in high density areas where people go out to eat, drink, and be merry; so nobody has to put themselves and others in danger just to get from a to b.
Edit: fixed some grammar errors and changed formatting for clarity