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Ultimately the safest ways to prevent traffic deaths are to redesign the street so that drivers don't feel safe exceeding the speed limit. Amsterdam is certain

Ultimately the safest ways to prevent traffic deaths are to redesign the street so that drivers don't feel safe exceeding the speed limit. Amsterdam is certainly working on that, but it takes time to rebuild a street. The speed limit is a nice way of saying "if you're paying attention, you can be safer by doing this thing" while waiting for city-wide roadwork to complete. It's pretty clear to me that automobiles and urban life basically don't coexist. They tragedy of the commons'd every city they touched. A car is great if only you have one, but not so great when everyone has one. This realization is not socialism, but more like rolling back a failed experiment. You can still drive your pickup truck 300 miles per hour on your farm or whatever if you want. Just not through dense cities, where most people are walking or cycling.

okokwhatever 3y ago
Wow this is so retrograde that I feel I cant answer. To produce insecurity and danger to other human beings without understanding the necessity of moving fast in a crowded place like a city is the most inhuman solution I've heard in a long time. Why not better to create specific and separated fast lanes for those who have to move from one side of the city to the other to have normal lifes like taking kids to the school or attending a meeting with a client?
- pjc50 3y ago
  > Why not better to create specific and separated fast lanes Everywhere that has tried this has regretted it, because the volume of traffic induced is so high that the average journey speed ends up below 30km/h anyway. What a city needs to get millions of people across it is high volume public transport.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  > Why not better to create specific and separated fast lanes for those who have to move from one side of the city Amsterdam _has_ a ring road, you know.
- jrockway 3y ago
  Why is there a necessity to move fast? Things are close together, so the need for speed is actually decreased. If you're willing to tolerate a 20 minute commute, that might be a 1 mile walk in the city compared to a 20 mile drive in the middle of nowhere. It ends up working out; people put stuff close together specifically so that you can easily travel between those places without burning dinosaurs or running over the local children whose ball went into the street! If you need to cover longer distances, you can likely go slowly towards some sort of transit hub and then take a faster vehicle to your final destination. (This is why people fly instead of drive across the country. In the cities, you can run trains underground and not conflict with anything else going on in the city! Many cities have tried this with great success; the only complaint is not doing enough of it.)

okokwhatever 3y ago

Wow this is so retrograde that I feel I cant answer. To produce insecurity and danger to other human beings without understanding the necessity of moving fast in a crowded place like a city is the most inhuman solution I've heard in a long time. Why not better to create specific and separated fast lanes for those who have to move from one side of the city to the other to have normal lifes like taking kids to the school or attending a meeting with a client?

pjc50 3y ago
> Why not better to create specific and separated fast lanes Everywhere that has tried this has regretted it, because the volume of traffic induced is so high that the average journey speed ends up below 30km/h anyway. What a city needs to get millions of people across it is high volume public transport.
rsynnott 3y ago
> Why not better to create specific and separated fast lanes for those who have to move from one side of the city Amsterdam _has_ a ring road, you know.
jrockway 3y ago
Why is there a necessity to move fast? Things are close together, so the need for speed is actually decreased. If you're willing to tolerate a 20 minute commute, that might be a 1 mile walk in the city compared to a 20 mile drive in the middle of nowhere. It ends up working out; people put stuff close together specifically so that you can easily travel between those places without burning dinosaurs or running over the local children whose ball went into the street! If you need to cover longer distances, you can likely go slowly towards some sort of transit hub and then take a faster vehicle to your final destination. (This is why people fly instead of drive across the country. In the cities, you can run trains underground and not conflict with anything else going on in the city! Many cities have tried this with great success; the only complaint is not doing enough of it.)