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I've noticed that people who don't drive usually don't have frame of reference of what cars are capable of, and usually don't understand all of the simultaneou

I've noticed that people who don't drive usually don't have frame of reference of what cars are capable of, and usually don't understand all of the simultaneous requirements that must be fulfilled by drivers. So you get pedestrians who don't understand what the stopping distance of a car is, or pedestrians who don't recognize dangerous situations that they create. In other words, people with driving experience are usually safer, more considerate as pedestrians.

giantrobot 3y ago
> In other words, people with driving experience are usually safer, more considerate as pedestrians. A great example of this is pedestrians in San Francisco. I've never seen more entitled oblivious assholes that pedestrians there. They seem to have no situational awareness and blithely jump out in front of cars. One of my favorite stupid pedestrian tricks is them jumping out from between parked cars crossing without so much as turning their heads to look for cars. Thankfully I don't have to deal with SF pedestrians very often. The city very obviously hates cars but is decidedly dependent on them existing. The pedestrians there act dumber than a deer in the rut.
- zelon88 3y ago
  Cambridge/Boston is the same. Another one that baffles me is seeing people ride E-bikes and scooters on streets with cars or worse, walk ways and trails where other motor vehicles are not allowed. These are not environmentally friendly alternatives. They are Chinesium E-waste with low quality batteries. They will be driven for one or two years then put in a closet and forgotten about. When they do get used they typically cause more greenhouse gasses from regular cars that have to yield to them, or stop busy intersections so they can cross. As an avid dirt bike rider it is especially frustrating because these are usually the same people (yuppies) who would call the police on me if I took my 17 year old 200cc dirt bike down the same trails.
  - UtopiaPunk 3y ago
    "Another one that baffles me is seeing people ride E-bikes and scooters on streets with cars or worse, walk ways and trails where other motor vehicles are not allowed." Wait, where is the place e-bikes should be in your opinion, then? At least where I live, the laws are quite clear which type of vehicles are allowed where. The laws here generally allow a pedal-assisted ebike to ride whereever a non-electric bicycle may ride. The pedal-assist is important. So yeah, you probably can't ride your motorbike down a pedestrian path ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    - zelon88 3y ago
      Nowhere but private property or registered OHRV trail. Same as a 4 wheeler. They are bad for the environment. Worse then small motorcycles. Most of the time when you see them they are crossing 8 lane intersections with the walk signal and there are 25 cars idling waiting for them to GTFO the way. If that person were riding a conventional motorcycle they would be part of traffic and contributing financially to support the infrastructure they require. Rather they are leeches. Slowing everything down and giving untrained motorists unregulated motor vehicles. They are made to last 2 years tops and will need new batteries shipped from China. Chances are the owners will outgrow them or get bored. Then they will end up in a land fill instead of a junkyard like normal motorcycles that get recycled almost completely.
InitialLastName 3y ago
I see plenty of people who are drivers also clearly incapable of meeting or understanding all the simultaneous requirements that must be fulfilled by drivers. Looking up from their phones being at the top of the list.
UtopiaPunk 3y ago
I've noticed that people who don't walk or bike usually don't have frame of reference of what cars are capable of, and usually don't understand all of the simultaneous requirements that must be fulfilled by pedestrians and cyclists. So you get drivers who don't understand that they need to look both ways even on a one way street, because someone might be using the sidewalk, drivers that don't pay attention to walk signals at intersections, drivers that speed down low traffic streets, or drivers who don't recognize dangerous situations that they create. I own a car, but I bike and walk a lot. The person driving the mutli-ton machine should carry the responsibility of operating it safely. It is a big responsibility, but it is their responsibility to not hurt or threaten others.
- zelon88 3y ago
  I understand the reasoning behind wanting this to be some kind of David v Goliath story, but this is the real world. Cars don't stop as fast as feet. Everybody is a pedestrian sometimes but not everyone is a driver. You can say accountability belongs to one or the other but one is gonna walk away and one isn't. Personal responsibility should take precedent over right of way. You cannot regulate or control others, but you can regulate yourself. I'm fine with cars having the right of way. They pay for the roads with sales tax, excise tax, gas tax, registration fees, inspection fees, insurance that pays for all kinds of things, and the car itself which is a huge investment into the economy. Quite literally it is the drivers who pay for the infrastructure used by everyone on the road. They earned it.
  - youngtaff 3y ago
    Most people who drive also walk… so it’s a completely facetious argument that motorists pay so they should have priority
  - eesmith 3y ago
    > You cannot regulate or control others, but you can regulate yourself. However, we are subject to the regulations of the people who came before us, who set up the street and road system to prioritize car transit over other forms of transit. You can't simply ignore that existing system of controls away and claim the main issues are "personal responsibility" and self-regulation. Not after over a century of explicit laws that shaped the very way you live and how you judge what is normal. > They pay for the roads with sales tax, excise tax, gas tax Those fees pay for only about half of the roads. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/gasoline-taxes-and-user-fees-pay-only-half-state-local-road-spending/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/gasoline-taxes-and-... says: "Nationwide in 2011, highway user fees and user taxes made up just 50.4 percent of state and local expenses on roads. State and local governments spent $153.0 billion on highway, road, and street expenses but raised only $77.1 billion in user fees and user taxes ($12.7 billion in tolls and user fees, $41.2 billion in fuel taxes, and $23.2 billion in vehicle license taxes).[3] The rest was funded by $30 billion in general state and local revenues and $46 billion in federal aid (approximately $28 billion derived from the federal gasoline tax and $18 billion from general federal revenues or deficit financed)." For another source, https://pirg.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Who-Pays-for-Roads-vUS_1.pdf https://pirg.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Who-Pays-for-Roa... says "general taxes paid by all tax-payers cover nearly as much of the cost of building and maintaining highways as the gas tax and other fees paid by drivers". > Quite literally it is the drivers who pay for the infrastructure used by everyone on the road. Quite literally they do not.
deleted 3y ago
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giantrobot 3y ago

> In other words, people with driving experience are usually safer, more considerate as pedestrians. A great example of this is pedestrians in San Francisco. I've never seen more entitled oblivious assholes that pedestrians there. They seem to have no situational awareness and blithely jump out in front of cars. One of my favorite stupid pedestrian tricks is them jumping out from between parked cars crossing without so much as turning their heads to look for cars. Thankfully I don't have to deal with SF pedestrians very often. The city very obviously hates cars but is decidedly dependent on them existing. The pedestrians there act dumber than a deer in the rut.

zelon88 3y ago
Cambridge/Boston is the same. Another one that baffles me is seeing people ride E-bikes and scooters on streets with cars or worse, walk ways and trails where other motor vehicles are not allowed. These are not environmentally friendly alternatives. They are Chinesium E-waste with low quality batteries. They will be driven for one or two years then put in a closet and forgotten about. When they do get used they typically cause more greenhouse gasses from regular cars that have to yield to them, or stop busy intersections so they can cross. As an avid dirt bike rider it is especially frustrating because these are usually the same people (yuppies) who would call the police on me if I took my 17 year old 200cc dirt bike down the same trails.
- UtopiaPunk 3y ago
  "Another one that baffles me is seeing people ride E-bikes and scooters on streets with cars or worse, walk ways and trails where other motor vehicles are not allowed." Wait, where is the place e-bikes should be in your opinion, then? At least where I live, the laws are quite clear which type of vehicles are allowed where. The laws here generally allow a pedal-assisted ebike to ride whereever a non-electric bicycle may ride. The pedal-assist is important. So yeah, you probably can't ride your motorbike down a pedestrian path ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - zelon88 3y ago
    Nowhere but private property or registered OHRV trail. Same as a 4 wheeler. They are bad for the environment. Worse then small motorcycles. Most of the time when you see them they are crossing 8 lane intersections with the walk signal and there are 25 cars idling waiting for them to GTFO the way. If that person were riding a conventional motorcycle they would be part of traffic and contributing financially to support the infrastructure they require. Rather they are leeches. Slowing everything down and giving untrained motorists unregulated motor vehicles. They are made to last 2 years tops and will need new batteries shipped from China. Chances are the owners will outgrow them or get bored. Then they will end up in a land fill instead of a junkyard like normal motorcycles that get recycled almost completely.

InitialLastName 3y ago

I see plenty of people who are drivers also clearly incapable of meeting or understanding all the simultaneous requirements that must be fulfilled by drivers. Looking up from their phones being at the top of the list.

UtopiaPunk 3y ago

I've noticed that people who don't walk or bike usually don't have frame of reference of what cars are capable of, and usually don't understand all of the simultaneous requirements that must be fulfilled by pedestrians and cyclists. So you get drivers who don't understand that they need to look both ways even on a one way street, because someone might be using the sidewalk, drivers that don't pay attention to walk signals at intersections, drivers that speed down low traffic streets, or drivers who don't recognize dangerous situations that they create. I own a car, but I bike and walk a lot. The person driving the mutli-ton machine should carry the responsibility of operating it safely. It is a big responsibility, but it is their responsibility to not hurt or threaten others.

zelon88 3y ago
I understand the reasoning behind wanting this to be some kind of David v Goliath story, but this is the real world. Cars don't stop as fast as feet. Everybody is a pedestrian sometimes but not everyone is a driver. You can say accountability belongs to one or the other but one is gonna walk away and one isn't. Personal responsibility should take precedent over right of way. You cannot regulate or control others, but you can regulate yourself. I'm fine with cars having the right of way. They pay for the roads with sales tax, excise tax, gas tax, registration fees, inspection fees, insurance that pays for all kinds of things, and the car itself which is a huge investment into the economy. Quite literally it is the drivers who pay for the infrastructure used by everyone on the road. They earned it.
- youngtaff 3y ago
  Most people who drive also walk… so it’s a completely facetious argument that motorists pay so they should have priority
- eesmith 3y ago
  > You cannot regulate or control others, but you can regulate yourself. However, we are subject to the regulations of the people who came before us, who set up the street and road system to prioritize car transit over other forms of transit. You can't simply ignore that existing system of controls away and claim the main issues are "personal responsibility" and self-regulation. Not after over a century of explicit laws that shaped the very way you live and how you judge what is normal. > They pay for the roads with sales tax, excise tax, gas tax Those fees pay for only about half of the roads. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/gasoline-taxes-and-user-fees-pay-only-half-state-local-road-spending/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/gasoline-taxes-and-... says: "Nationwide in 2011, highway user fees and user taxes made up just 50.4 percent of state and local expenses on roads. State and local governments spent $153.0 billion on highway, road, and street expenses but raised only $77.1 billion in user fees and user taxes ($12.7 billion in tolls and user fees, $41.2 billion in fuel taxes, and $23.2 billion in vehicle license taxes).[3] The rest was funded by $30 billion in general state and local revenues and $46 billion in federal aid (approximately $28 billion derived from the federal gasoline tax and $18 billion from general federal revenues or deficit financed)." For another source, https://pirg.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Who-Pays-for-Roads-vUS_1.pdf https://pirg.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Who-Pays-for-Roa... says "general taxes paid by all tax-payers cover nearly as much of the cost of building and maintaining highways as the gas tax and other fees paid by drivers". > Quite literally it is the drivers who pay for the infrastructure used by everyone on the road. Quite literally they do not.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]