Enemy of car culture and cisheteropatriarchy
Profile & banner image: bad so-called pedestrian safety campaigns. Profile pic is a poster saying “WALK SAFE most pedestrian crashes are the pedestrian’s fault” & banner is a cartoon crab on a lifeguard stand holding flags that say “save yourself” and “use crosswalks”.
@FireRetardant @LifeInMultipleChoice If you have to drive regularly you should also write to your local politicians that your needs are not being met safely because it’s too difficult for you to travel in ways that are safer and more efficient.
@huginn @vividspecter It’s not like the potential for another Trump administration wasn’t foreseeable. Hochul and her allies should have considered that and Pete Buttigieg and others at USDOT should have reminded them. Then again, when I started urban planning school in 2005, the potential for congestion pricing in New York was the talk of the town so it’s not like these centrist cowards are the first to delay it.
@beefbot @TheTechnician27 Firetrucks are inanimate objects. Humans make decisions about how to design, deploy, market, and accommodate them. A local fire chief just parroting industry dogma may be less responsible than someone with more power who chose not to sell reasonably sized fire trucks for suburbs and small towns in the US, but the trucks aren’t buying themselves or testifying against safe street designs at the planning board.
@SqueakyBeaver @ji17br Funny how such items enter chats a lot more frequently than they enter the bed of the typical suburban driver’s pickup truck.
@PapaStevesy IMO active voice includes focusing the sentence on the subject that did the action, not the one that was acted upon but by all means let’s argue about grammatical definitions instead of the problem of motorists killing people and journalists normalizing it. 🙄
@MacGuffin94 @ByteOnBikes Drivers can be unfit &/or negligent at any age. The focus should be on a safe system: streets that naturally limit speed so that crashes that do happen are less severe, vehicles that are appropriately sized and simple to operate, required features like automatic braking and speed limiters, and attractive options like walkable destinations and efficient transit.
@apfelwoiSchoppen But functionally, the victim didn’t die on her own, she died as the direct result of the driver hitting her. For the purpose of accurately portraying who took an action and who was acted upon, it should emphasize the driving, not the dying.
@apfelwoiSchoppen @ByteOnBikes Active voice would be, “A driver killed…”
@fruitycoder @Leviathan Not as harrowing as being stuck in a traffic jam with reckless monster truck drivers trying to weave through the traffic at high speed while livestreaming on Facebook.
@Leviathan @DrunkEngineer The American political class lives primarily in car-oriented suburbs and those who live in cities are so rich they can afford to use a car even where it’s woefully inefficient. Our urban policy is run by suburbanites who white flighted out of the cities last century through various state, federal, and local mechanisms (like MPOs) and even city politicians live in fear of the mythical stroad-loving suburban swing voter.
@Humanius @praise_idleness That and shared car ownership is an important part of the picture. When everybody owns a private car, everyone has taken on the sunk costs of ownership and feels an urge to drive more to justify it, plus cars dominate the landscape. Having to walk a few blocks to pick up a Zipcar and then pay a rate that to some degree reflects the cost of the trip significantly reduce discretionary driving by those who can walk/bike/use transit.
@FireRetardant @Zoot In fact, narrowing roads and reducing speeding makes it easier for seniors to keep driving as their vision and reaction time decline. Older drivers tend not to feel very comfortable driving on 5 or 6 lane wide stroads.
@FatLegTed @DrCake When I went to driver’s ed, the instructors repeatedly reminded us that we had to be prepared to stop at any time because the driver in front of us could brake for a squirrel or encounter debris in the road or stop for any reason. Most drivers don’t seem to understand the basic physics that stopping distance increases with speed. A key feature of driver assistance systems should be speed-based tailgating prevention.
@TheSambassador @FollyDolly He was never super liberal or conservative. He’s a centrist with strong views on individual issues. Those familiar with his work in PA knew him as willing to stand up and fight in a way that’s refreshing coming from a Democrat on certain issues (marijuana, LGBTQ+ rights) but deeply problematic on others (police, fracking). His overall politics have probably shifted a bit to the right since the stroke, but the change is more in people’s awareness of him.
@DrunkEngineer It’s a terrible example to the public and a potential conflict of interest. How is someone who’s used to getting away with driving like that (& having wide roads that allow him to) supposed to cast unbiased votes on transportation bills?
@DrunkEngineer 34 & “at least” 24 mph over the limit are some pretty serious speeding tickets, and the frequent reports of distracted driving are a serious problem too. Senators who support Vision Zero programs or care about traffic safety at all need to speak up about this and hold him and other negligently driving colleagues accountable. Especially after his stroke & related health problems, he should be extra careful, not distracted & 34 mph over the limit!
@norimee @Gradually_Adjusting Another problem of the politics of austerity and obsession with low taxes at any cost. We’ve defunded water infrastructure almost as much as we’ve defunded public transit. There’s no excuse for a wealthy society to create an environment where many of its residents don’t feel safe drinking tap water and access to any tap water in major cities is periodically cut off by 100 year old pipes predictably breaking.
@usualsuspect191 @perviouslyiner Uh… people who eat fruit or vegetables or fresh baked goods?
It’s not that you get them every day, but that you have the ability to get them whenever you want them instead of having to plan an excursion.
@NarrativeBear @lnxtx No, people have a right to use legally owned weapons in self-defense, so a driver has no right to drive recklessly and endanger random people and can only use their car as a weapon if their life is in imminent danger from someone else’s assault, such as a pedestrian standing in front of their car firing a gun at them.