11 ms·

I think that the lesson of the article is not that weirdos or strangers make the world a dangerous and ugly place, but that we, the regular people who vote for

by lsc 9y ago

I think that the lesson of the article is not that weirdos or strangers make the world a dangerous and ugly place, but that we, the regular people who vote for and move to areas with zoning densities that make public transit impractical, who commute long distances in cars, make the world a dangerous and ugly place. Every time we get into a car, we are choosing to take a risk not only with our own life, but with the lives of everyone else near the road. I mean, we kind of choose that by continuing to live in areas where our density makes public transit less practical, but there's a lot to be said for just taking the responsibility of driving a lot more seriously, and treating driving as something risky, and taking steps to drive less.

androck1 9y ago
The lesson of this article is that unfortunate things, that come with a lifetime of grief, happen to good people. And perhaps more importantly, that empathy and understanding are incredibly powerful. It is true that we should take "the responsibility of driving a lot more seriously, and treating driving as something risky" but treating this as a story about driving less broadly misses the point.
- drewm1980 9y ago
  I agree with you about how the article is written, but "bad things happen to good people" isn't an idea that will save lives. "Find a way to stop driving, because it IS your fault if you kill someone with your automobile" is. She chose to drive, killed someone as a direct result of her decision, and then chose to continue driving. She was surround by car culture enablers (her dad immediately fixing the car instead of selling it, the cops asking her to drive more carefully instead of revoking her driver's license permanently, etc...), and is now propagating the "wrong place at the wrong time" myth herself. If she accidentally kills another child will she write up a follow up article to this? Maybe she'll give up something else related to driving the second time?
  - thomastjeffery 9y ago
    This obsession with finding fault is a significant part of the stress this woman has dealt with. It is terrible that a child did not get to live his life, and there is nothing we can do in hindsight to bring that opportunity back to him. It is also terrible to torture this woman over a flaw in the system. She was paying attention, and driving the speed limit. She was not at fault. Her actions could not be changed to lower the likelihood of her accidentally killing another child. Only the surrounding circumstances can be changed.
  - m4x 9y ago
    This is very insensitive. Driving a car is a practical necessity for most people, and genuine accidents do happen. I don't know how you can possibly think it's appropriate to tell somebody who is suffering through the grief of accidentally killing a child that "it IS your fault". Striving to drive less is a great thing to do for many reasons, but the vast majority of people will still be required to drive regularly. Some of those people will have genuine accidents. We don't currently live in a world where it is possible to completely prevent traffic accidents (which, for the record, are also occasionally caused by cyclists and frequently caused by pedestrians) It is inevitable that some people will be involved in tragic accidents, and your comment does nothing to prevent that. It just makes life worse for the people in that situation
  - LocalH 9y ago
    I dispute your notion that the driver of a vehicle is automatically to blame if there is a collision between the vehicle and a pedestrian. https://www.google.com/search?q=insurance+fraud+dash+cam https://www.google.com/search?q=insurance+fraud+dash+cam
  - BrandoElFollito 9y ago
    We live in a world where almost all of our actions have, somewhere, a negayive impact. Wd usebplastic, wrong for ecology. We wear t-shirts, manufactured by poor people in China. We watch TV, whuch uses electricity bad for the environment. We drive i syead of walking, we eat non-sustainable stuff. I could go on, and show how much of our "choices" are wrong and how, everyday, we "decide to make them". So this boils down to either mental sanity or some kind of Amish life.
Aloha 9y ago
I don't think this is the argument the author of the article was trying to send at all. This accident could have just as easily happened in a dense urban core, as it could have in suburbia. The message was something else - sometimes, bad things just happen to people, and there is little you can do about it other than move on, and learn from the experiences.
- jablan 9y ago
  The likelihood of death is proportional to speed [1], and the speed is lower in the urban cores. The math is super simple, and let's stop trying to justify bad urbanistic (essentially, political) decisions blaming it on the bad fate instead. [1] http://www.copenhagenize.com/2012/11/the-85th-percentile-folly.html http://www.copenhagenize.com/2012/11/the-85th-percentile-fol...
  - eveningcoffee 9y ago
    This is simply wrong in the general case. While the speeds might be lower, they are still high enough to kill. In addition the density of the traffic can be so high that just a single wrong step can decide your destiny every minute.
    - jablan 9y ago
      Do you have some numbers to support your claims?
      - todd8 9y ago
        Yes, From CDC: > In large central metro areas, those aged 35–44 years (2.08), 45–54 years (2.60), 55–64 years (2.60), 65–74 years (3.36), 75–84 years (5.19), and ≥85 years (5.24) had statistically higher death rates than those in the same age groups at other urbanization levels. [1] [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6215a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6215a1.htm
        9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
cmurf 9y ago
-s- This is America, where Uncle Bob can legally teach me how to drive, and you can keep your dang ugly government driver's ed schools and regulations outta my life. And I don't have to actually be that competent because insurance makes all wrongs right. -s- It's seriously this stupid. There's no driving test after you're initially licensed, nor any recurrence training required. All you have to do in most states is pay a fee to get a license renewed, and you can do it online. They just want the money. Some states will want your vision retested, in my state that's only once every 10 years. My elderly aunt could teach me how to drive, start to finish, exclusively. That's legal. Her view is that driving is a right, not a privilege. The government's role is only to prove that you're incompetent to hold a license, otherwise it's between you and your insurance company. I don't see this worldview changing very soon. I'm not confident autonomous vehicles will take over any time soon, but whenever I think of the reality of car driver incompetency it makes me wish it could happen much sooner.
- lsc 9y ago
  I personally think that the most realistic way to fix this is to just increase insurance minimums up to a reasonable level, enough to cover a car full of statistical lives. This, if enforced, would internalize the externality of injury into the cost of driving, and probably would make driving dramatically more expensive, which would hopefully create demand for alternate systems.

by lsc 9y ago

androck1 9y ago

The lesson of this article is that unfortunate things, that come with a lifetime of grief, happen to good people. And perhaps more importantly, that empathy and understanding are incredibly powerful. It is true that we should take "the responsibility of driving a lot more seriously, and treating driving as something risky" but treating this as a story about driving less broadly misses the point.

drewm1980 9y ago
I agree with you about how the article is written, but "bad things happen to good people" isn't an idea that will save lives. "Find a way to stop driving, because it IS your fault if you kill someone with your automobile" is. She chose to drive, killed someone as a direct result of her decision, and then chose to continue driving. She was surround by car culture enablers (her dad immediately fixing the car instead of selling it, the cops asking her to drive more carefully instead of revoking her driver's license permanently, etc...), and is now propagating the "wrong place at the wrong time" myth herself. If she accidentally kills another child will she write up a follow up article to this? Maybe she'll give up something else related to driving the second time?
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  This obsession with finding fault is a significant part of the stress this woman has dealt with. It is terrible that a child did not get to live his life, and there is nothing we can do in hindsight to bring that opportunity back to him. It is also terrible to torture this woman over a flaw in the system. She was paying attention, and driving the speed limit. She was not at fault. Her actions could not be changed to lower the likelihood of her accidentally killing another child. Only the surrounding circumstances can be changed.
- m4x 9y ago
  This is very insensitive. Driving a car is a practical necessity for most people, and genuine accidents do happen. I don't know how you can possibly think it's appropriate to tell somebody who is suffering through the grief of accidentally killing a child that "it IS your fault". Striving to drive less is a great thing to do for many reasons, but the vast majority of people will still be required to drive regularly. Some of those people will have genuine accidents. We don't currently live in a world where it is possible to completely prevent traffic accidents (which, for the record, are also occasionally caused by cyclists and frequently caused by pedestrians) It is inevitable that some people will be involved in tragic accidents, and your comment does nothing to prevent that. It just makes life worse for the people in that situation
- LocalH 9y ago
  I dispute your notion that the driver of a vehicle is automatically to blame if there is a collision between the vehicle and a pedestrian. https://www.google.com/search?q=insurance+fraud+dash+cam https://www.google.com/search?q=insurance+fraud+dash+cam
- BrandoElFollito 9y ago
  We live in a world where almost all of our actions have, somewhere, a negayive impact. Wd usebplastic, wrong for ecology. We wear t-shirts, manufactured by poor people in China. We watch TV, whuch uses electricity bad for the environment. We drive i syead of walking, we eat non-sustainable stuff. I could go on, and show how much of our "choices" are wrong and how, everyday, we "decide to make them". So this boils down to either mental sanity or some kind of Amish life.

Aloha 9y ago

I don't think this is the argument the author of the article was trying to send at all. This accident could have just as easily happened in a dense urban core, as it could have in suburbia. The message was something else - sometimes, bad things just happen to people, and there is little you can do about it other than move on, and learn from the experiences.

jablan 9y ago
The likelihood of death is proportional to speed [1], and the speed is lower in the urban cores. The math is super simple, and let's stop trying to justify bad urbanistic (essentially, political) decisions blaming it on the bad fate instead. [1] http://www.copenhagenize.com/2012/11/the-85th-percentile-folly.html http://www.copenhagenize.com/2012/11/the-85th-percentile-fol...
- eveningcoffee 9y ago
  This is simply wrong in the general case. While the speeds might be lower, they are still high enough to kill. In addition the density of the traffic can be so high that just a single wrong step can decide your destiny every minute.
  - jablan 9y ago
    Do you have some numbers to support your claims?
    - todd8 9y ago
      Yes, From CDC: > In large central metro areas, those aged 35–44 years (2.08), 45–54 years (2.60), 55–64 years (2.60), 65–74 years (3.36), 75–84 years (5.19), and ≥85 years (5.24) had statistically higher death rates than those in the same age groups at other urbanization levels. [1] [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6215a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6215a1.htm
      - 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

cmurf 9y ago

-s- This is America, where Uncle Bob can legally teach me how to drive, and you can keep your dang ugly government driver's ed schools and regulations outta my life. And I don't have to actually be that competent because insurance makes all wrongs right. -s- It's seriously this stupid. There's no driving test after you're initially licensed, nor any recurrence training required. All you have to do in most states is pay a fee to get a license renewed, and you can do it online. They just want the money. Some states will want your vision retested, in my state that's only once every 10 years. My elderly aunt could teach me how to drive, start to finish, exclusively. That's legal. Her view is that driving is a right, not a privilege. The government's role is only to prove that you're incompetent to hold a license, otherwise it's between you and your insurance company. I don't see this worldview changing very soon. I'm not confident autonomous vehicles will take over any time soon, but whenever I think of the reality of car driver incompetency it makes me wish it could happen much sooner.

lsc 9y ago
I personally think that the most realistic way to fix this is to just increase insurance minimums up to a reasonable level, enough to cover a car full of statistical lives. This, if enforced, would internalize the externality of injury into the cost of driving, and probably would make driving dramatically more expensive, which would hopefully create demand for alternate systems.