3 ms·

Fear of "Drug dealers and sex offenders" isn't a car culture problem. A rapist can follow you to your apartment door.

• woodruffw 4y ago
  This is exactly my point: "drug dealers and sex offenders" are on your mind, despite the US being an overwhelmingly safe and criminally uneventful place. Car culture encourages fixation on crime and risk, even when all available evidence points to the US being a radically safer place than it was even 30 years ago[1]. We're still not a safe country on an absolute scale (relative to our economic and social peers), but our cultural histrionics around crime are unsupported by the actual trendline. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/57581270 https://www.bbc.com/news/57581270
  • insane_dreamer 4y ago
    I agree our social histronics around crime are quite irrational. But I think the problem is primarily rooted in the media, not car culture.
    • woodruffw 4y ago
      The two are intertwined! "If it bleeds, it leads" works especially well on low-trust societies, and car culture enables and enforces low-trust social growth. Put another way: the media might be a primary driver of the problem, but American culture is uniquely susceptible to it because of car dependence and the cultural/demographic structures that dependence incentivizes.
  • Tade0 4y ago
    > US being an overwhelmingly safe and criminally uneventful place. Just the homicide rate in the US is unbecoming of a developed country.
    • wyager 4y ago
      Worth noting that US homicide is highly localized. Certain cities/regions represent a vastly disproportionate fraction.