Amazes me how closely these forms of transportation are policed when the average hood height of pickup trucks I see everywhere equals or surpasses the height of most women I know. If you had to design a machine to optimally kill pedestrians I don't know how you could do better, beyond appending a thresher to the front. The engineers who designed these should be ashamed of themselves. Living in Atlanta generally has really accelerated my deep dislike of car-centered urban design. It will take a lot more than unbanning electric scooters to change things, but at least it's a step.
Not desensitized just different stats and impacting how they are seen as tangible. For example, the auto stats translate into me, a mid-40s adult living in a very car dependent part of the US, having only known of a few people to die my entire life (first hand, actual people I knew - was in high school when I had a much larger social network, so was statistically more likely to encounter this back then.) I don't know many people that have been severely injured either. Yet, those scooters began and instant and constant nuisance that many people across various social groups share. I'm not arguing against your point, just saying how perceptions get skewed based on how frequently you encounter them. It's easy for people to think driving is kind of safe when you and everyone you know drives daily without much consequence. The real statistics and magnitude (death vs annoyance) don't really mean much.
> Yeah, it's pretty crazy how desensitized we collectively are to cars constantly killing people.
A bit hyperbolic, don't you think? The average is 1 for every 100,000,000 miles driven. And more like 1 in 600,000,000 if you are talking about people killed by cars who were not themselves in said car.
We can see by comparing the US to peer nations that most of these deaths are preventable -- Sweden, where Vision Zero originated, has like 80% fewer traffic fatalities. We just don't have the political will to do it.
The very fact that you think this is hyperbolic is what I'm talking about. 40,000 dead in the US each year and the response is a collective shrug.
> The very fact that you think this is hyperbolic is what I'm talking about. 40,000 dead in the US each year and the response is a collective shrug.
Nobody is saying we should not try to improve the statistic. About 1 in 100 deaths are because of a car accident. But it becomes hyperbole when people suggest we should implement draconian measures on what is probably the single most useful appliance in the history of mankind. You perceive as a shrug the fact that most people understand perspective.
Most Americans flip out at things like replacing street parking with bus lanes, or allowing for higher density zoning than detached single family houses in large lots.
We're a million miles away from "draconian" measures. I've been to Sweden a couple times and they're not exactly laboring under the authoritarian boot of multi-modal transport. If anything, the fact that most places in the US de facto mandate car ownership to do anything is far, far more draconian than providing residents with a variety of options.
I don't deny that cars are tremendously useful, but we've nevertheless managed to overuse them.
A speed governor is not draconian. Limiting things to the maximum speed on federal roads would be a start. Further location based speed enforcement would require some investments.
Indeed, if self-driving cars killed 1,000 people a year they would immediately be banned, but 30x that in human-caused fatalities and nobody bats an eye. We have created a culture that idolizes the personal freedom of the automobile while ignoring every externalized cost it dumps onto the general population.
It mostly puts the risk and consequences on the elderly, disabled, and impoverished. Which is evil, but socially acceptable and with many other strong precedents in the US.
Similar results when looking for disability too. Age I'm not following up on right now for time reasons but since the elderly are more likely than average to be either disabled or impoverished it almost doesn't matter.
What's your goal on bringing attention to the BAC of the pedestrians? People are allowed to drink, even be drunk. Is "drinking and walking" to be a crime too? Road safety needs to account for all conditions and decisions likely to be encountered by drivers, including drunk pedestrians just as much as children and wheelchair users.
I could only access the one article you linked https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta... which mentions: “With miles of broken or missing sidewalks, inadequate outdoor lighting, distracted drivers and wide streets that facilitate speeding, Gulfton could also be Exhibit A in what has become an alarming nationwide increase in pedestrian fatalities in recent years, disproportionately concentrated in the neighborhoods of people of color with low incomes.”
On reflection, I wonder whether there is any component of cause and effect because black people could be harder to see at night: “Pedestrian fatalities occur mostly in urban areas, at night in dark lighting conditions”, “In 2015, 74 percent of pedestrian crashes happened in the dark”.
I also assume survivability is strongly affected by age and disability.
> I do kind of question your intent or at least motivation here.
In this case I simply used poor search terms. You are violating the site guideline to “Assume good faith” when you write that. I had thought that my examples supported your paraphrased point of discriminatory death. For anti-discrimination, sometimes men and drunk people (as you rightfully reiterate) are not seen as targets.
I am generally curious about causes and effects. It is difficult to tease out the underlying reasons why we measure some clearly unfair and biased outcomes.
I heartily agree we should aim for streets to be safe for all pedestrians, whether: drunk, impoverished, man or woman, PoC, children, etcetera.
> You are violating the site guideline to “Assume good faith” when you write that.
Call the hall monitors then because I'm about to do it again.
Neighborhoods where minorities and the impoverished live are dramatically under-resourced and this has been widely understood for decades now. You can see it by just walking through the black neighborhood in any city I've lived in and comparing the physical streets and sidewalks! Lights and crosswalks are fewer and less maintained, sidewalks are more busted or not even there, forcing people into the street.
But instead of considering, or even looking into, any of that you go straight to "hm maybe black people are just hard to see." What the shit man seriously.
I am listening and agreeing with you. Attacking others is a poor way to help others learn your point of view.
I thought I was https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/steelmanning but maybe not. Trying to look for facts even should I dislike them, and trying to avoid unfair bias (which is very hard to do).
> hall monitors
We are each responsible for writing comments that create an ambiance on this site which encourages civil discourse. I only use the hall monitors for truely offensive material. For minor communication difficulties, the idea is that we all politely help each other. Conflict is fine, and it is difficult to offend me.
Is about 55 inches for a current HD pickup, or 9 inches shorter than the average female human. The hood height is a bit lower for the more common half-ton pickups.
I tried to google scooter accidents in Atlanta. I didn’t find anything about the scooter rider hitting pedestrians, instead I found examples of people on scooters being run over by cars.
Of course, you bring this up and people will start talking about all the times they were "buzzed" by someone on a scooter, an event which might have led to some bruises or, at worst, a broken wrist. Never mind being buzzed by a car when on a bicycle - a ubiquitous event which can easily end with you losing your balance, falling under the rear wheels, and getting turned into strawberry jam.
