this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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Fuck Cars

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From this article about several cities lowering the speed limit of certain rods by 5mph.

This commenter always complains on any article about transportation.

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[–] x00z 35 points 2 days ago (6 children)

I once got stopped by the police because I was driving too perfect. They found it suspicious I was driving the speed limit when it was safe to drive faster. I was only driving the speed limit because I spotted them.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 days ago

@x00z @talzag Traffic engineers often consider themselves much more expert than they actually are on a lot of things and their traditional methods of setting speed limits are little more than astrology which all but ignore the needs of non-car road users, but if there’s one group less expert than traffic engineers on safe driving speed, it’s cops.

[–] talzag 16 points 2 days ago

Following the laws is suspicious? 🤔

It really does seem like driving is the only activity in which laws are mostly optional. Every driver complains about cyclists not following the rules of the road, but they do things that are illegal or fail to take require actions all the time: speeding, rolling stops, switching lanes or turning without blinkers, illegal u-turns, etc. But if confronted it’s just “eh, it’s not a big deal, who cares?”

[–] enkille 15 points 2 days ago

This happened to my sister because she was near a "bad neighborhood" and they needed some reason to search her car for drugs.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yep, I had the same happen to me shortly after I got my liscense.

Overfunded, extremely bored police department...

... I went back to that shitty, exurb town 20 years after moving out and they are still, still, completely tearing out and then rebuilding the exact same major intersection every 5 years.

In those 20 years, they now have... one bus line.

That goes to the city that this town is an exurb of.

Still no way to actually get around the extremely non dense 'city', which consists of basically 2 small commercial areas, almost 10 miles apart, and then tons of houses either out in the boonies or in suburbs... without a car.

[–] Retrograde 7 points 2 days ago

This is the type of thing my subconscious tells me to worry about, to which my consciousness says: There's no chance that would ever actually happen, but apparently it can indeed happen..?

[–] [email protected] -4 points 2 days ago

I would sue them for kidnapping because that's exactly what that is

[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I'm up to two family members lost in two different car crashes, every single one was not their fault. Another couple have been severely hurt in car on bike crashes. One of my kids has been hit twice while walking by giant SUVs that just didn't bother to stop for red lights, fortunately not seriously hurt (yet). I have been knocked over a couple of times off my bike by cars driving into the painted bike lane and backed into one time because they felt like driving their car backwards into a bike lane because fuck cyclists and their safety, right?

Fuck every car centric place on this planet. No argument you can make about why we should be continuing our destructive car centric infrastructure will gain any traction with me.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I'm sorry you've experienced so much harm because of cars. I don't understand how there's so much evidence showing how destructive cars are, and people still advocate for bigger cars and more lanes

I know someone that doesn't drive at all, he bikes everywhere even in -40 temps. And he still protests against public transport because "taxes bad". Some people will get halfway there and still not see what benefits there would be.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

I don’t understand how there’s so much evidence showing how destructive cars are, and people still advocate for bigger cars and more lanes

Because it's easier to convince someone based on what they'll lose, rather than convince them of what they have to gain.

There are many fallacies at play when it comes to carbrain, but when you throw industry influence and political corruption into the mix, it only serves as fuel to continue this maddening dependency.

[–] slaacaa 0 points 2 days ago

Carbrains seem to take every critique of our car centric society as a personal attack to the core of their identity.

[–] talzag 6 points 2 days ago

It’s such a weird phenomenon that people can be presented information and data about how awful private vehicles are on so many levels, and yet people won’t change their habits. It does seem like people are unwilling to give up even the tiniest bit of convenience for their own sake (or at least the illusion of convenience).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

20mph speed limits almost certainly would have saved that user's brother. Every 5mph decrease from 50mph would make it roughly 10% more likely to survive. Assuming the brother is not merely a figment of the imagination.

https://aaafoundation.org/impact-speed-pedestrians-risk-severe-injury-death/

The proportional relationship still applies for drivers and passengers of a vehicle: https://www.motorbiscuit.com/speed-die-car-crash/

Even with the argument that people would flaunt the limit and go the speed they feel like, it only takes one person following the rule to keep everyone else behind in line.