this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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Fuck Cars

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A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Accidents are rare, sure, and fatalities are rare because the relatively low speed impact. We can nevertheless aspire to create more inclusive infrastructure where pedestrians and cyclists can feel a sense of belonging. The car-centric roads we have in the US today could be better for everyone.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (5 children)

And banning right in red ain't it. It'll be ineffective, piss off drivers, and have little to no meaningful effect. If you want to blow political capital in this worthless shit more power to us but I'll prefer a pragmatic approach that has a chance of being effective.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

If making people feel safer walking and biking in cities = "worthless shit" to you then why are you even here? I can't tell you how many times I've been honked at or yelled at or nearly run over while walking or on my bike by drivers who refuse to stop at red lights at all because of the right on red rule.

Cars don't belong in cities at all, with the possible exception of delivery/commercial vehicles and vehicles for disabled people. Banning right on red is just one part of a multi-pronged approach to get us there, together with better bicycle infrastructure and public transit, etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think the general point people are making to you is that, in many municipalities where right on red would be bad, there are enough voters in the pedestrian base alone that nobody has to "appeal to drivers" in order to win a majority. The issue itself has validity on the basis that the health of the pedestrians should be a higher priority than the feeling that drivers are being impacted negatively by not being able to perform this maneuver. You could maybe make a counterargument comprised of economic impacts, as a couple people have tried to do, or a counterargument about how it saves emissions, but I'm sort of inclined to think that caving and giving it over to cars is sort of an approach that has diminishing returns in both of those directions, compared to the alternative.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You absolutely do not have numbers and do need to consider what hills to die on. Otherwise you'd have basic crap like bike infrastructure in those cities.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ehh, lot of "those cities" are getting better, if you wanna get more specific as to which one, you know, less general terms, we might get into it and how there are different, you know, ruling party apparatuses that people have to maneuver around and population demographics, I dunno. Mistakes into miracles of covid was that a lot of streets could get shut down and turned into temporary pedestrian streets for limited run studies, or for some amount of days of the week or what have you, so that's kind of shown people what's possible.

A lot of it is also that people who live within city limits and benefit from public services/would benefit from stuff like this kind of lack political will. The drive among most urbanists is less to compromise with drivers and is more to educate/appeal to the population who lives in these cities, is what I'm saying. Which, you know, it's a safer strategy, those are easier people to convince, you're having to compromise less on goals. I'd generally agree that maybe things like larger traffic engineering standards in these cities need to change, because standard practice is what tends to shape the built environment rather than one-off projects or even kind of broad legislation like banning right on red, but you're seeing those happen rather than changing standards becaude one of those tends to be much easier.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes. Getting better. Because, and this will shock you, local politicians and people voting for them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

yeah that's what I said

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

Being pissed is the wrong framing of the issue. There's a legitimate issues with gimping our infrastructure. Nobody would die if we all drove 5mph, but the personal and economic losses to millions of people would be catestrophic.