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Palo Alto has a lot of these traffic calming measures and roadblocks to prevent traffic through local neighborhoods. Sometimes it can get out of hand. From htt
by kqr2 10y ago
Palo Alto has a lot of these traffic calming measures and roadblocks to prevent traffic through local neighborhoods.
Sometimes it can get out of hand. From http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/pub/nimby.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/pub/nimby.html
Just a few months ago, in Palo Alto, residents near
downtown put up a vicious collection of roadblocks to get
cars off their streets. The folly was exposed when a
thief escaped because the police chasing him were unable
to figure out how to navigate through the warren of
closed streets.
- droopyEyelids 10y agoWe don't actually have any information about whether that was folly or not. Let's say 2 children avoid a trip to the hospital over the next 5 years, but four thieves escape. That would be a perfectly acceptable compromise to me.
- catawbasam 10y agoI disagree. At this point the neighbors have effectively privatized a public facility. They should have to pay 100%. (I'm a U.S. suburban Dad with 2 young kids who do stupid things on their bikes.)
- skiningham 10y agoSuppose the ambulance has the same problem the police had.
- CamperBob2 10y ago(Shrug) When I was a child, I was taught not to play in the street. Meanwhile, access for emergency vehicles can be pretty important for the rest of us.
- knodi123 10y agoYes, all children should be taught not to play in the street. But we should not have a death penalty for children whose parents don't do that correctly...
- jimmywanger 10y agoYou're conflating two notions. One of a "penalty" which is something that is inflicted, and one of "consequences" which just happen. Children who aren't taught money management and nutrition will end up having shorter and worse lives on the average. Is that a consequence or a penalty?
- knodi123 10y agoClearly the children aren't being intentionally murdered in order to punish their parents. That's so far from reality that there's no sense pointing out that I'm wrong. I would have written "death consequence", but that doesn't roll as trippingly off of the tongue. Try not to read the subtext instead of focusing on a legal interpretation. The whole point of my comment was that it's the children who suffer when a parent fails to teach them basic safety, therefore saying "Well when I was a kid, they just taught us not to do this" is kind of disingenuous. That kind of statement seems to be pushing personal responsibility as a superior solution, even though very young children are not responsible for this kind of mistake.
- CamperBob2 10y agoThen, there are those of us who don't want to live (or drive) in a world that's been childproofed to the extent you probably have in mind.
- knodi123 10y agoI was responding to a guy who said "(Shrug) When I was a child, I was taught not to play in the street". I was talking about his attitude of placing responsibility on children, which you would know if you had actually read my comment. Seriously, read it again and show me where I said anything about childproofing the world. Your emotional kneejerk comment that has nothing to do with what I wrote would surely be very popular on reddit, but this isn't that place, so I'll thank you to kindly stop speculating about what is in my mind and focus on what I actually typed.
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoAre cul-de-sacs not a thing in the states?
- hnal943 10y agoThey are, but they aren't universal. Most people live on a through street.
- FireBeyond 10y agoMeanwhile maybe two children die in drowning incidents because fire engines and ambulances aren't able to effectively navigate your makeshift 'traffic abatement' program. How's your compromise now?
- treebeard901 10y agoSuppose the two children were the thieves and the traffic abatement program let them get away from the police.
- rconti 10y agoSuppose a spherical child in a vacuum
- ohazi 10y agoPoor kid...
- tgb 10y agoMoreover, the city planners get to pick one of three doors only one of which has a traffic abatement program. After choosing a door, one of the other doors is revealed to have a goat behind it. Should they switch doors? http://smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=4132 http://smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=4132
- sgnelson 10y agoSuppose that the thieves escaped, and then later that night they killed your Uncle Ben. At that point you realize that with great power comes great responsibility. You go home, design a suit with a spider emblem on it, and then use your newly created powers, brought on by a radioactive spider bite for societal good, not personal gain.