6 ms·

As long as safety for people is not prioritized over car speed, no amount of spending will make streets substantially more safe. Cars are the problem, they caus

As long as safety for people is not prioritized over car speed, no amount of spending will make streets substantially more safe. Cars are the problem, they cause all the deaths.

rootusrootus 4y ago
> they cause all the deaths And have all the utility, too. It's not a simple problem.
- zamzoid 4y ago
  The problem is simpler than your framing alludes. There are other modes of transit that are much safer with far fewer negative externalities than private cars, like walking, bike, bus, and rail. We repeatedly make a political decision in the US not to prioritize them. This spending for street safety is a step in the other direction, but by and large does very little to change the dominance of public spending on private cars in the US.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    That political decision is due to a lack of support. Preferences have to change. One major factor standing in the way is the overwhelmingly poor service by most cities. So it's a bit of a catch-22 since service can't improve without money. I'm not even going to bring up places like rural or lower density suburbs as the service there is almost non-existent.
    - zamzoid 4y ago
      I agree with everything you said in this comment, except for the lack of support. It's kind of a meme in online urbanist circles at this point that in the US you can pick either walkable or affordable. There's incredible demand for walkable places where you don't have to use a car, to the point where these places are not affordable for most people (I'm not saying all the demand for these dense places comes from walkability, but there is good research saying it's a strong factor). Your comment is also sort of based on the view that "whatever the (federal) government is doing is what the public ultimately demanded", which is clearly not true. Federal government agencies like USDOT act with a certain degree of autonomy, and their actions are very much open to public criticism as we are doing in this thread. To bring up one more thing related to your point on rural and suburban areas, the low-density car-dependent development across the vast majority of the US is a deeply ingrained problem here. That is changing with more dense transit-oriented development happening across the country, but it will probably take decades for the needle to move significantly. And unfortunately the street safety measures that this money is going to are not going to help very much with this, which is sort of the point of the original comment. These issues are all intertwined, but I don't understand the arguments in these comments that point out the problems are intertwined and stop there, as if that's a death knell for change (for example, political support for transit service is tied to the quality of that service). Yes, no one is denying they are intertwined, that is even why urbanists have started using terms like "car culture" that encapsulate the messy ball of issues. The more we discuss these issues, even online, the more consciousness arises in the public about how things can change; and things eventually do change. Hence the use of attention-grabbing call to action phrases like "cars are the problem" that started this thread, which provide an alternate framing.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        I agree that the government isn't always following popular opinion. However, there is also a difference between idealistic opinion and reasonable opinion. People want better transit, but fewer people with to raise taxes for it, and fewer still can pock a tax they want to raise. https://transweb.sjsu.edu/research/What-Do-Americans-Think-about-Public-Transit-Review-U.S.-Public-Opinion-Polling-Survey-Questions https://transweb.sjsu.edu/research/What-Do-Americans-Think-a... "To bring up one more thing related to your point on rural and suburban areas, the low-density car-dependent development across the vast majority of the US is a deeply ingrained problem here." If it's such low density, is it really a problem?
  - nomel 4y ago
    > bus, and The current reality is that these aren’t options, in most American cities. My 20 minute commute is a 2.5 hour bus ride, according to google. My 20 minute commute also puts me into a neighborhood that I can afford.
    - brucedawson 4y ago
      That is because: > We repeatedly make a political decision in the US not to prioritize them Public transit can be fast and efficient if it is prioritized. That may require raising the federal tax on gasoline (last raised thirty years ago!!!) and directing that overdue increase to funding alternative transportation options.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        One other possibly is due to the lower density in many areas. For the higher density cities, cost is a major factor. I remember seeing a study or article comparing cost and time to build a subway in the US vs a European country. If I remember correctly, it tooks years longer and cost tens of millions more for a similar route even adjusted for local cost differences. I would like additonal funding for many things. I would first like to explore efficient use of the money we do have in order to make it all more effective.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      Yeah, I took public transportation for a while. It went from a 20 or so minute drive to about an 80 minute commute with 2 trains, a shuttle, and about a mile of walking.
- digdugdirk 4y ago
  They don't have all the utility. In fact, they're grossly overused for the utility they do provide. There was a great article on here the other day about the evolution of pickup trucks, the user-survey statistics about how trucks are typically used was pretty eye opening. As was the size of the forward facing blindspot for your everyday stock F-150. Kids don't stand a chance.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    Did they give any stats on the percentage of pedestrian accidents where visibility was a factor? It doesn't seem like it would be a major factor if the driver is paying attention to objects entering and leaving their blind spots, as well as the increasing use of cameras, collision detection, etc. It seems the biggest factor is alcohol, which played a role in around 50% of pedestrian fatalities (not all on the part of the driver).
  - notch898a 4y ago
    The ever growing size of trucks is in part because the government outlawed the more reasonable economical compact trucks, through an absolutely bone-headed combination of CAFE and the chicken tax and various regulation.
  - alar44 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 4y ago
      We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- pkulak 4y ago
  Are you serious? A BMW driving some schmuck to an office park has "all the utility"?
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    I'm hoping that is just a bad faith attempt at trolling. Because otherwise I'm speechless. Though it sure would explain a lot about how some folks on HN arrived at the conclusion they did.
bilsbie 4y ago
How come everyone doesn’t bike everywhere? That’s what I do. So easy pEople
- SQueeeeeL 4y ago
  If you live in most American cities, biking is basically a life hazard on par with smoking imo
  - 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
    And good luck not having your bikes get regularly stolen in places like SF or NYC. You better ride the most revolting beater you can find, and even then.
    - convolvatron 4y ago
      eh...decent hardware fits on an old steel frame. and while yes, it does suck to lose a bike...I still end up way way ahead of someone paying to park, fuel, and maintain a car. and I'm much more fit and enjoy my commute more.
    - rhaway84773 4y ago
      I’ve had a $300 used bike service me just fine for over 11 years now. There was a period right during/after the pandemic where things were really bad but it’s settled to a fairly decent situation. If you ride a $500 bike then you will probably be fine factoring in a $50-$100 theft cost at most. Finally, most bike theft is covered under rental insurance, which isn’t all that expensive to begin with, and is highly recommended anyways.
      - notch898a 4y ago
        Might want to check the deductible on your renters insurance. For me it'd be a total loss. Basically only worth it if someone drives up with a moving truck and just steals half the house or if someone gets hurt and sues me for medical bills.
  - 4y ago
notch898a 4y ago
I wouldn't feel safer if food, medical products, construction materials, and other materials for our wellbeing became less accessible due to the increased labor cost of transport associated with significantly lower speed limits, however.
- ehnto 4y ago
  The separarion of streets for people and roads for cars means better, faster car flow too. The problem America has is that it tries to smoosh cars and peds on the same roads, making them terrible for both. Instead of being able to do 40 on every road, think instead of doing 15 on some roads and 60 on others. The amount of actual ped zones in America is pretty small anyway, think downtown shopping precints and stuff like that, so the majority of roads would still be car dominant.
- scrollaway 4y ago
  Tell me you’ve only ever lived in North America without telling me you’ve only ever lived in North America.
  - notch898a 4y ago
    North American goods actually make most of their way through water and rail but the "final mile" costs are much higher and therefore still significant. In places like Africa this effect is probably more magnified as rail system is far more limited and you must drive from the port.
hammock 4y ago
>As long as safety for people is not prioritized over car speed It’s possible to have both. It’s why we have grade separation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_separation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_separation
- ehnto 4y ago
  It's prohibitively expensive, better would be to sacrifice some city corridors as pedestrian only. Cars don't need to be in the city centre on every street. Most pedestrian friendly streets that do mix in cars actually do the opposite to grade separation, slow down the cars a lot and make it clear that they are in a pedestrian space by removing demarcation between cars and people,which changes behavior.
  - mouse_ 4y ago
    My city introduced car free streets, then they introduced mall cops to them and they effectively became unwelcoming commercial strip malls. America has an America problem, and the solution won't be simple.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
Would you rather share a grade with slow cars or have actual physical barriers between you and fast cars? Exactly. Separating traffic of different types/speeds is paramount to safety. We've known this for going on 150yr.

As long as safety for people is not prioritized over car speed, no amount of spending will make streets substantially more safe. Cars are the problem, they cause all the deaths.

rootusrootus 4y ago

> they cause all the deaths And have all the utility, too. It's not a simple problem.

zamzoid 4y ago
The problem is simpler than your framing alludes. There are other modes of transit that are much safer with far fewer negative externalities than private cars, like walking, bike, bus, and rail. We repeatedly make a political decision in the US not to prioritize them. This spending for street safety is a step in the other direction, but by and large does very little to change the dominance of public spending on private cars in the US.
- giantg2 4y ago
  That political decision is due to a lack of support. Preferences have to change. One major factor standing in the way is the overwhelmingly poor service by most cities. So it's a bit of a catch-22 since service can't improve without money. I'm not even going to bring up places like rural or lower density suburbs as the service there is almost non-existent.
  - zamzoid 4y ago
    I agree with everything you said in this comment, except for the lack of support. It's kind of a meme in online urbanist circles at this point that in the US you can pick either walkable or affordable. There's incredible demand for walkable places where you don't have to use a car, to the point where these places are not affordable for most people (I'm not saying all the demand for these dense places comes from walkability, but there is good research saying it's a strong factor). Your comment is also sort of based on the view that "whatever the (federal) government is doing is what the public ultimately demanded", which is clearly not true. Federal government agencies like USDOT act with a certain degree of autonomy, and their actions are very much open to public criticism as we are doing in this thread. To bring up one more thing related to your point on rural and suburban areas, the low-density car-dependent development across the vast majority of the US is a deeply ingrained problem here. That is changing with more dense transit-oriented development happening across the country, but it will probably take decades for the needle to move significantly. And unfortunately the street safety measures that this money is going to are not going to help very much with this, which is sort of the point of the original comment. These issues are all intertwined, but I don't understand the arguments in these comments that point out the problems are intertwined and stop there, as if that's a death knell for change (for example, political support for transit service is tied to the quality of that service). Yes, no one is denying they are intertwined, that is even why urbanists have started using terms like "car culture" that encapsulate the messy ball of issues. The more we discuss these issues, even online, the more consciousness arises in the public about how things can change; and things eventually do change. Hence the use of attention-grabbing call to action phrases like "cars are the problem" that started this thread, which provide an alternate framing.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      I agree that the government isn't always following popular opinion. However, there is also a difference between idealistic opinion and reasonable opinion. People want better transit, but fewer people with to raise taxes for it, and fewer still can pock a tax they want to raise. https://transweb.sjsu.edu/research/What-Do-Americans-Think-about-Public-Transit-Review-U.S.-Public-Opinion-Polling-Survey-Questions https://transweb.sjsu.edu/research/What-Do-Americans-Think-a... "To bring up one more thing related to your point on rural and suburban areas, the low-density car-dependent development across the vast majority of the US is a deeply ingrained problem here." If it's such low density, is it really a problem?
- nomel 4y ago
  > bus, and The current reality is that these aren’t options, in most American cities. My 20 minute commute is a 2.5 hour bus ride, according to google. My 20 minute commute also puts me into a neighborhood that I can afford.
  - brucedawson 4y ago
    That is because: > We repeatedly make a political decision in the US not to prioritize them Public transit can be fast and efficient if it is prioritized. That may require raising the federal tax on gasoline (last raised thirty years ago!!!) and directing that overdue increase to funding alternative transportation options.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      One other possibly is due to the lower density in many areas. For the higher density cities, cost is a major factor. I remember seeing a study or article comparing cost and time to build a subway in the US vs a European country. If I remember correctly, it tooks years longer and cost tens of millions more for a similar route even adjusted for local cost differences. I would like additonal funding for many things. I would first like to explore efficient use of the money we do have in order to make it all more effective.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    Yeah, I took public transportation for a while. It went from a 20 or so minute drive to about an 80 minute commute with 2 trains, a shuttle, and about a mile of walking.
digdugdirk 4y ago
They don't have all the utility. In fact, they're grossly overused for the utility they do provide. There was a great article on here the other day about the evolution of pickup trucks, the user-survey statistics about how trucks are typically used was pretty eye opening. As was the size of the forward facing blindspot for your everyday stock F-150. Kids don't stand a chance.
- giantg2 4y ago
  Did they give any stats on the percentage of pedestrian accidents where visibility was a factor? It doesn't seem like it would be a major factor if the driver is paying attention to objects entering and leaving their blind spots, as well as the increasing use of cameras, collision detection, etc. It seems the biggest factor is alcohol, which played a role in around 50% of pedestrian fatalities (not all on the part of the driver).
- notch898a 4y ago
  The ever growing size of trucks is in part because the government outlawed the more reasonable economical compact trucks, through an absolutely bone-headed combination of CAFE and the chicken tax and various regulation.
- alar44 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 4y ago
    We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
pkulak 4y ago
Are you serious? A BMW driving some schmuck to an office park has "all the utility"?
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  I'm hoping that is just a bad faith attempt at trolling. Because otherwise I'm speechless. Though it sure would explain a lot about how some folks on HN arrived at the conclusion they did.

bilsbie 4y ago

How come everyone doesn’t bike everywhere? That’s what I do. So easy pEople

SQueeeeeL 4y ago
If you live in most American cities, biking is basically a life hazard on par with smoking imo
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
  And good luck not having your bikes get regularly stolen in places like SF or NYC. You better ride the most revolting beater you can find, and even then.
  - convolvatron 4y ago
    eh...decent hardware fits on an old steel frame. and while yes, it does suck to lose a bike...I still end up way way ahead of someone paying to park, fuel, and maintain a car. and I'm much more fit and enjoy my commute more.
  - rhaway84773 4y ago
    I’ve had a $300 used bike service me just fine for over 11 years now. There was a period right during/after the pandemic where things were really bad but it’s settled to a fairly decent situation. If you ride a $500 bike then you will probably be fine factoring in a $50-$100 theft cost at most. Finally, most bike theft is covered under rental insurance, which isn’t all that expensive to begin with, and is highly recommended anyways.
    - notch898a 4y ago
      Might want to check the deductible on your renters insurance. For me it'd be a total loss. Basically only worth it if someone drives up with a moving truck and just steals half the house or if someone gets hurt and sues me for medical bills.
- 4y ago

notch898a 4y ago

I wouldn't feel safer if food, medical products, construction materials, and other materials for our wellbeing became less accessible due to the increased labor cost of transport associated with significantly lower speed limits, however.

ehnto 4y ago
The separarion of streets for people and roads for cars means better, faster car flow too. The problem America has is that it tries to smoosh cars and peds on the same roads, making them terrible for both. Instead of being able to do 40 on every road, think instead of doing 15 on some roads and 60 on others. The amount of actual ped zones in America is pretty small anyway, think downtown shopping precints and stuff like that, so the majority of roads would still be car dominant.
scrollaway 4y ago
Tell me you’ve only ever lived in North America without telling me you’ve only ever lived in North America.
- notch898a 4y ago
  North American goods actually make most of their way through water and rail but the "final mile" costs are much higher and therefore still significant. In places like Africa this effect is probably more magnified as rail system is far more limited and you must drive from the port.

hammock 4y ago

>As long as safety for people is not prioritized over car speed It’s possible to have both. It’s why we have grade separation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_separation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_separation

ehnto 4y ago
It's prohibitively expensive, better would be to sacrifice some city corridors as pedestrian only. Cars don't need to be in the city centre on every street. Most pedestrian friendly streets that do mix in cars actually do the opposite to grade separation, slow down the cars a lot and make it clear that they are in a pedestrian space by removing demarcation between cars and people,which changes behavior.
- mouse_ 4y ago
  My city introduced car free streets, then they introduced mall cops to them and they effectively became unwelcoming commercial strip malls. America has an America problem, and the solution won't be simple.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

Would you rather share a grade with slow cars or have actual physical barriers between you and fast cars? Exactly. Separating traffic of different types/speeds is paramount to safety. We've known this for going on 150yr.