Apparently pedestrians should take personal responsibility but not drivers
Kinetic energy scales not just with velocity, but with the square of velocity. Speed makes a BIG FUCKING difference in your ability to avoid an accident.
I do agree that if people weren’t morons there would be less necessity for regulation. However, that is not the case.
It’s common sense to drive slowly in a populated area and yet people need to be told to drive slower in a school zone. We only have ourselves to blame.
It’s classic rightwinger stuff anyway: nothing should be regulated, everything just works, oh my god my car broke my family’s dead my ass is on fire…
More “guns don’t kill people” logic. Blaming victims from the crime, and separating the tool used from the criminal.
having to drive slower than reasonable
Honestly, this only exemplifies why speed limits by themselves don’t work. We have to design the streets so that the lower speed feels reasonable.
I know I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but it’s always worth saying.
The go-to method right now seems to be to enforce it electronically, using the systems that are built into most new cars nowadays. Personally I’m not a fan of that, but it IS preferable to having all the surveillance electronics built into cars and just not doing anything worthwhile with it.
I don’t understand how they want to use cars to enforce this electronically. My car tries to tell me the speed limit, and it’s often wrong. I think you need to have a signal built into the road to tell cars the speed limit, and that sounds expensive and impractical.
But designing roads so lower speed feels reasonable is very effective. You can make the road narrower, curvier and bumpier is various ways, but you can also make it appear or feel narrower, curvier and bumpier without actual making it so.
The electronic solutions are definitely shit shows. They’re probably going to try and use them to enforce it, anyway. If nothing else, it’s cheaper than building speedbumps etc. everywhere.
I shudder to think what will happen when I’m driving on a 120 kph highway and the camera on my windscreen sees a 30 sign on a dirt road next to the highway.
There’s another method using visual design that “calms” traffic. Ex, if you have a wide road, paint the sides of it a notable color that visually corrals people to a tighter space. They have the sides if absolutely needed, but recognize they need to go slower to stay within the lines.
You need forceful enforcement in some situations, but for the most part it pays to inspect the psychology that gets people to behave a certain way.
i’ve long thought that all the rural roads that are like, 1.9 lanes wide should just be repainted so there’s one lane in the middle and generous shoulders, like those bike-first roads in the netherlands on a budget.
It is very possible to make higher speeds seem extremely unreasonable to drivers.
Having the streets be cobblestone instead of asphalt, for one, makes driving faster louder and more difficult for drivers. I’m not rooting for cars, I’m just saying there are so many methods that governments just don’t think are worth implementing because they value corporate lobbying more than citizen safety.
But … that exasperates so many issues that cars already cause. Like noise pollution, street maintenance costs (IDK maybe cobblestone lasts longer, but it’s for sure expensive to change a street into cobblestone vs. leaving it as-is), it compromises road safety for people who will drive fast anyway, and on streets that are too narrow for separate bike lanes they compromise bike safety (if we assume that cars start driving slow enough that it’s reasonably safe to ride a bicycle on that streets).
Sure, speed bumps are better solutions that cobblestone?
One thing that people forget when talking about speed limits is the physical infrastructure.
Feeling reasonable is directly correlated to the designed speed of the road, meaning it’s an engineering problem. If a road isn’t engineered to its specifications the speed limits imposed are merely a suggestion.
Yep, have a highway by me that is three lanes (sometimes 4), has good sized shoulders on both sides, median divider, and it’s pretty much dead straight. Speed limit is 55mph but most people go 70 or more cause you can without issue.
I can’t think of any roads around me that have pedestrians and a speed limit of 50+. All the places pedestrians are 40 at most and have guardrails between the sidewalk and road. Usually 25 is the norm when pedestrians will be present.
I live near a state highway that just recently lowered the local speed limit to 40. No physical barrier and loads of intersections and crosswalks.
I have no clue what this dude’s argument is even trying to be.
As far as I can tell: “My personal freedom is threatened by rules that I didn’t make. How we get to having too many rules is immaterial; my skewed moral compass dictates that my personal freedom comes first.”
Jackass is a brainless ideologue, and engages in performative empathy and/or justice only to save face.
</salty>
“I never killed anyone yet, so I should be allowed to have an opportunity”
“It’s your fault, and even if it the facts say it is my fault - there’s nothing we can do about it, and it’s probably also still your fault.”
I think “I want to drive as fast as possible with no thoughts in my skull whatsoever” but maybe I’m wrong??
It’s as if they’re reflexively doing some sort of magical incantation to absolve themselves of logical inconsistency.
As long as everything works out perfectly in every way, we don’t need safety stuff
And it always works perfectly every time, except those times when things don’t work out, which is often, but they don’t count, so we ignore them
We all just need to act more correctly and then this kind of thing won’t happen! If the guy simply didn’t run over pedestrians, this wouldn’t be a problem! Problem solved!
Every time I’ve been hit by a car, it’s been when I’ve had the right of way. You have to be super defensive as a pedestrian because you can be thoroughly solidly right and follow all the rules… and still end up dead.
How many times have you been hit by a car? To be hit once is a lot.
Not your parent comenter.
I’ve been hit by cars twice and hit a car once and every time I’ve had the right of way. Tho I was on a bike, it just happens if you spend enough time in traffic I think.
I didn’t really get injured on either of these, 2 bikes got destroyed tho.
I have tbf gone down pretty hard trying to overtake other cyclists which is also traffic but there it was certainly my own fault.
Different person: I’ve been struck on a bike. Driver didn’t look while pulling out of a driveway and hit my rear wheel as I passed directly in front of them. They didn’t notice until I was right by their window (having pushed my bike aside) then they stared blankly at me and drove off. Zero awareness or concern. If I had been slower I’m sure they would have lazily driven over me.
And I know a dude who was intentionally hit by a car at speed (also cycling) and has permanent injuries.
And I know another guy who was hit by a drunk driver at a crosswalk.
It’s not that uncommon.
Oh, and one of my sister’s childhood friends was killed by an inattentive driver. It’s way too easy to get, and keep, a license.
Twice. Once by someone turning right on a red, head turned to see if the traffic cleared and who didn’t bother looking straight ahead before moving and I was in the crosswalk; and once by someone who drove through a crosswalk, stopped to park, I believe realized they weren’t in a parking spot, and backed into the crosswalk after I had started crossing. Both times I was in the centre of their car and thankfully a soild whump of the hand made them stop.
Twice more than I would have liked to.
Very fortunate nobody was hurt
0 x 2 = 0
I got hit once. He ran over my toe, when I had the green crosswalk, and then yelled at me and sped off. Old timer and his wife. Yay
Personal responsibility is driving below 40kmph when in high pedestrian area, fancy that.
Any time “personal responsibility” comes up, ask who is getting the bulk of the consequences when it fails. Is it the person failing at personal responsibility, or did it fall on someone else?
In this case, the personal responsibility was on the driver to not run a red light. However, it’s the pedestrian who risks major injury or death. The driver may suffer a damaged vehicle, or possibly trauma leading to PTSD, but they will mostly likely be OK physically. It’s clear that the consequences to the driver are vastly outweighed by the consequences to the pedestrian. However, the pedestrian can do everything right and still get hit.
This is why we have safety rules. Your lack of personal responsibility can hurt me. If you feel that there are too many rules around how to safely drive a car, maybe that’s an indication that the idea of using it on a mass scale is fundamentally flawed in the first place.
A person who pipes up on Facebook to champion “personal responsibility” as an argument against common-sense safety regulations does NOT have the intellectual ability to process what you’ve just typed.
So the point of view is Pedestrians should evolve superhero reflexes so cars can do whatever they want?
A more charitable interpretation is that they are arguing that we don’t need to impose any new traffic regulations to stop that specific incident from happening because running red lights is already against the law. Not that I agree
I’m thinking more the scene from Constantine.
Arguments on the internet used to be ridiculous. Arguments on social media are simply childish. #EverybodyIs12
I’m very sure that this person or (“person”) would also complain if the article was demanding or celebrating severe penalties for drivers who do this kind of thing. Constant goalpost moving.
They want “personal responsibility”, but definitely it isn’t murder to kill someone with a car. It can’t be murder if I was so happy and comfy and distracted the whole time I was violently ending a human life!
Correct! It’s just manslaughter :)
Anyways off to jail with you
The lack of self awareness is at maximum speed.
Quite literally braindead, full zombiemode
It’s been decades since I started driving but wasn’t 25 MPH taught as when most accidents with pedestrians became fatal? 50 kmph is much faster.
I think the math is a little confusing. 50 km/h is about 31 mph, which is very close to the number you’re thinking of
Edit: the person knew the math and was commenting that it is a big difference in speed, my bad.
That’s beyond 20%, which is the rule I use for speeding. I never go more than 20% faster than the posted speed limit, except on the New Jersey Turnpike, where all bets are off.
Did you just admit to speeding on Fuck Cars? May god have mercy on your soul
Oh Jesus, what have I done.
Not the speed limit apparently
You were in NJ and keeping up with traffic is important
I’m not debating that 31mph is over 20% faster, which is certainly more likely to get a speeding ticket. The context I was replying to was “25mph is the speed when it’s fatal to a pedestrian, and 50km/h is
somuch faster.” In the context of life and death, considering both would be potentially fatal to a pedestrian, those numbers are not substantially far apart.I took that original statement to be an honest mistake in not realizing those two numbers used two different measurements.
Edited to fix the paraphrased quote
Yeah, I meant that anything above the 20% threshold is too fast! But below is within the Goldilocks zone.
Yeah I get that. I try to stay close to the speed limit myself, but try more often to take the train or to walk whenever possible. I wish it was more widely available in the States and not a horrible chore to try and use transit in most states.
Also just dangerous…my local train system is simply not safe to use once it starts getting late as a woman. I truly wish I could use it more often, but the safety factor makes it very difficult for me.
It’s such a sad reality, and I’m sorry that you experience that.
I think part of it is the mandatory driving culture - if you can afford a car you will drive, so you only take public transit if you can’t afford to drive yourself. That, plus public transit in the US is typically only available in high population cities, and it feels like there’s little law enforcement around transit locations.
I’m sure there’s other reasons as well but it’s a really unfortunate situation altogether.
“much faster” not “so much faster” and IMO 25% is a sizable difference.
Thanks for the correction. I’ll edit it, though i was intending to paraphrase and not provide a direct word for word quote.
It’s a bit of a semantic debate at this point as to what constitutes a substantial difference in the context of competing scientific studies, but in a casual conversation.
I was under the impression that the original person did a mistake in the mental math. I’m not trying to critique how people feel about differences in speed.
i am the original person. the point of my comment was to explain why I thought that.
I’m tired and missed that, thank you for the clarification.
Ah, the American brain.
Literally any amount of increase in speed increases fatality risk.
25mpg is about 40 kph. 50 is moderately faster.
As long as it’s not so low my cruise control won’t work. (j/k)
When Fayetteville started switching to 20mph for capillary streets, my “complaint” was that my cruise control only works down to 24mph, but I still welcomed the change. Public safety needs to be a bigger focus and should be the primary driver of regulation.
