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Book Review: Road to Nowhere by Paris Marx

1 points by dotcoma 4y ago

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
> The cruel irony of it all is that the electric vehicle’s ecological impact is only marginally better than internal combustion cars, and its implementation does not solve the atomisation and alienation emerging from car-centric infrastructure. Why do people need to do this? It's incredibly common across a range of domains to attack alternative solutions as not being perfect and magnify their flaws. From small things like tech decisions in companies, up to very important things, it seems it's very hard to talk about multiple competing options as if they all have compromises and drawbacks. Instead, one must be perfect and all others must be flawed. Which clearly doesn't reflect reality, but perhaps reflects some inner human psychology instead. It's entirely logical to say "EVs are much better than ICE, but we should also be getting more people onto bikes or making cities livable or x, or y or z" but seems very difficult, both for people trying to attract eyeballs and views (who have a reason to seek conflict and drama) and for people trying to genuinely solve small problems, like what programming language to use. Like Fuel Cell cars are better than ICE. But not as good as EVs. Does this make EVs worse somehow to admit that? Or is it just some tribal impulse because "there can only be one replacement for ICE", so EVs have to battle FCEVs almost as strongly, if not more so than ICE, and electric cars need to battle electric busses and electric bikes? I honestly don't get it.
- dotcoma 4y ago
  EVs are heavier than ICE cars; have a much faster acceleration; and they are silent, which is great, sure, but this also means you don't hear them coming. How many MORE people than the current 50k/year (!) -- and I have no idea about how many are left crippled, and/or unable to provide for themselves and their families -- are going to die in the US alone due to "accidents" with cars?
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    The reduction in air pollution from vehicles between 2008 and 2017 is estimated to have saved 30,000 American lives that year, while still killing about 20,000 and causing disease in many more. And that's just more efficient ICE. You could say, see cars actually kill twice as many people as I thought, we definately need to ban cars. Or you could say, we should be encouraging people to use smaller, safer, less polluting cars, and other modes of transport.

1 points by dotcoma 4y ago

> The cruel irony of it all is that the electric vehicle’s ecological impact is only marginally better than internal combustion cars, and its implementation does not solve the atomisation and alienation emerging from car-centric infrastructure. Why do people need to do this? It's incredibly common across a range of domains to attack alternative solutions as not being perfect and magnify their flaws. From small things like tech decisions in companies, up to very important things, it seems it's very hard to talk about multiple competing options as if they all have compromises and drawbacks. Instead, one must be perfect and all others must be flawed. Which clearly doesn't reflect reality, but perhaps reflects some inner human psychology instead. It's entirely logical to say "EVs are much better than ICE, but we should also be getting more people onto bikes or making cities livable or x, or y or z" but seems very difficult, both for people trying to attract eyeballs and views (who have a reason to seek conflict and drama) and for people trying to genuinely solve small problems, like what programming language to use. Like Fuel Cell cars are better than ICE. But not as good as EVs. Does this make EVs worse somehow to admit that? Or is it just some tribal impulse because "there can only be one replacement for ICE", so EVs have to battle FCEVs almost as strongly, if not more so than ICE, and electric cars need to battle electric busses and electric bikes? I honestly don't get it.

dotcoma 4y ago
EVs are heavier than ICE cars; have a much faster acceleration; and they are silent, which is great, sure, but this also means you don't hear them coming. How many MORE people than the current 50k/year (!) -- and I have no idea about how many are left crippled, and/or unable to provide for themselves and their families -- are going to die in the US alone due to "accidents" with cars?
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  The reduction in air pollution from vehicles between 2008 and 2017 is estimated to have saved 30,000 American lives that year, while still killing about 20,000 and causing disease in many more. And that's just more efficient ICE. You could say, see cars actually kill twice as many people as I thought, we definately need to ban cars. Or you could say, we should be encouraging people to use smaller, safer, less polluting cars, and other modes of transport.