3 ms·

The roads were wide open for 2+ years, people got used to driving very fast and not really paying attention to their surroundings because there wasn't much othe

The roads were wide open for 2+ years, people got used to driving very fast and not really paying attention to their surroundings because there wasn't much other traffic to start with. People started running red lights because not other traffic to wait on. You could drive recklessly without much risk. Now people are still driving recklessly but have a lot more cars and activity around them. One thing that I've noticed is people moved to a suburb or took a new job that was a reasonable commute at the time. Now that traffic came back, it's not a reasonable commute anymore so they're trying to drive like crazy to get back and forth.

saiya-jin 3y ago
By definition this should be a very small subset of drivers, since before as you claim 'roads were empty'. If most drivers stayed at home they should not got those bad habits. Very surreal this discussion, very US specific too. Here in Europe, in past 3 years tons of new cycling infrastructure, either wider roads or parts of roads taken from cars and given to cyclists (ie 1 lane instead of 2 lane roads). The goal isn't to move traffic asap, but rather make coming into cities as annoying as possible, so key intersections have in incoming directions green light ie for 10 seconds. And no, not seeing any increase in aggression neither. But then again Europe is massive and culturally extremely diverse, and I haven't visited more than 10 countries in past 3 years so somewhere this may be valid, but its not an overall trend.
- conductr 3y ago
  The article being discussed is US specific. Frequency of driving was reduced but when you did drive, the roads were empty. The people who did continue to drive daily was not insignificant (maybe 10-30% of people, guessing IDK) and may be the ones creating the problems. Eg. in heavy traffic if 5% of vehicles are driving reckless, it's bad.
cryptonector 3y ago
There was (and still is) greatly reduced traffic enforcement as well.
- atlasunshrugged 3y ago
  Strong +1 on this -- in DC I've noticed people driving incredibly recklessly because there is little enforcement (both at the ticketing level and at the making you pay up for the ticket level). It's even gotten to the point where people don't update their tags because they won't be fined for it. Sorry, paywalled, but Matthew Yglesias has made it a personal priority of his to work on these issues: https://www.slowboring.com/p/we-cant-tolerate-fake-expired-and https://www.slowboring.com/p/we-cant-tolerate-fake-expired-a...

saiya-jin 3y ago

By definition this should be a very small subset of drivers, since before as you claim 'roads were empty'. If most drivers stayed at home they should not got those bad habits. Very surreal this discussion, very US specific too. Here in Europe, in past 3 years tons of new cycling infrastructure, either wider roads or parts of roads taken from cars and given to cyclists (ie 1 lane instead of 2 lane roads). The goal isn't to move traffic asap, but rather make coming into cities as annoying as possible, so key intersections have in incoming directions green light ie for 10 seconds. And no, not seeing any increase in aggression neither. But then again Europe is massive and culturally extremely diverse, and I haven't visited more than 10 countries in past 3 years so somewhere this may be valid, but its not an overall trend.

conductr 3y ago
The article being discussed is US specific. Frequency of driving was reduced but when you did drive, the roads were empty. The people who did continue to drive daily was not insignificant (maybe 10-30% of people, guessing IDK) and may be the ones creating the problems. Eg. in heavy traffic if 5% of vehicles are driving reckless, it's bad.

cryptonector 3y ago

There was (and still is) greatly reduced traffic enforcement as well.

atlasunshrugged 3y ago
Strong +1 on this -- in DC I've noticed people driving incredibly recklessly because there is little enforcement (both at the ticketing level and at the making you pay up for the ticket level). It's even gotten to the point where people don't update their tags because they won't be fined for it. Sorry, paywalled, but Matthew Yglesias has made it a personal priority of his to work on these issues: https://www.slowboring.com/p/we-cant-tolerate-fake-expired-and https://www.slowboring.com/p/we-cant-tolerate-fake-expired-a...