3 ms·

Airliners crash far less, road fatalities kept going down till 2010, so taking the broad view of were infrastructure is I’d say at least those got better. Anec

Airliners crash far less, road fatalities kept going down till 2010, so taking the broad view of were infrastructure is I’d say at least those got better. Anecdotally, I remember more electricity interruptions and plumbing issues when I was a kid, but that could be location dependent and I couldn’t quickly find good numbers going back that far. Edit: While the phone network didn’t necessarily go down, I frequently got “all circuits busy” when I was a kid. I don’t remember the last time that happened.

watersb 3y ago
And how often one of our five TV stations would be "Experiencing Technical Difficulties... Please Stand By".
bronco21016 3y ago
I wish we had metrics for utility companies. In my midwestern experience, things have gotten worse. I don’t remember any outages as a kid in the 90s that were over 24 hours aside from the major blackout in the early 2000s. As an adult I’ve experienced several outages greater than 24 hours in both summer and winter months. It’d be nice to be able to measure this.
- Aloisius 3y ago
  I would caution comparing today against one's childhood memories. Children have few responsibilities and are shielded by their caretakers. They simply do not notice much of the things that happen.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    Right? As a kid we might not have questioned that sudden trip to Grandma's for the day.
georgeplusplus 3y ago
Not to come off pedantic but improvements in airplane and car design has nothing to do with infrastructure. I think the average person views infrastructure improvements as improvements in the roads, airports, or air traffic control.
- Reubachi 3y ago
  They are part and parcel. In USA for example, road design AND vehicle design is directly linked and beholden to NHSTA regulations and policies. Infrastructure (IE State route roads) are ever trending towards wider lanes and more gentle shoulder. This is precisely due to vehicle industry requirements requiring more vehicle safety features (and thus width and length), height, and shoulder level clearance @ windows. All these infrastructure and endpoint changes are driven "organically" by the USA trend towards SUVs, but mainly driven by insurance requirements. Insurance and gov't "make out" on safer/roads/vehicles due to (perceivabally) less accidents and road maintenance. I can't speak to airplanes, but I imagine the fact that far, far, far more people are able to fly today than even 25 years ago should show that the infrastructure has drastically improved.
scarface_74 3y ago
And tangentially related, it was much easier for anyone to eavesdrop on your conversations. When it rained, I could pick up my phone and hear conversations from my neighbor on my landline and talk to them without calling. Not to mention if you were in the same house, you could surreptitiously here conversations by just picking up the phone or getting a device from radio shack that didn’t have a microphone, that you could plug in to another phone outlet. With analog cellular, you could also buy a receiver from Radio Shack and hack it to pick up the unencrypted signals from cell phones.

watersb 3y ago

And how often one of our five TV stations would be "Experiencing Technical Difficulties... Please Stand By".

bronco21016 3y ago

I wish we had metrics for utility companies. In my midwestern experience, things have gotten worse. I don’t remember any outages as a kid in the 90s that were over 24 hours aside from the major blackout in the early 2000s. As an adult I’ve experienced several outages greater than 24 hours in both summer and winter months. It’d be nice to be able to measure this.

Aloisius 3y ago
I would caution comparing today against one's childhood memories. Children have few responsibilities and are shielded by their caretakers. They simply do not notice much of the things that happen.
- vel0city 3y ago
  Right? As a kid we might not have questioned that sudden trip to Grandma's for the day.

georgeplusplus 3y ago

Not to come off pedantic but improvements in airplane and car design has nothing to do with infrastructure. I think the average person views infrastructure improvements as improvements in the roads, airports, or air traffic control.

Reubachi 3y ago
They are part and parcel. In USA for example, road design AND vehicle design is directly linked and beholden to NHSTA regulations and policies. Infrastructure (IE State route roads) are ever trending towards wider lanes and more gentle shoulder. This is precisely due to vehicle industry requirements requiring more vehicle safety features (and thus width and length), height, and shoulder level clearance @ windows. All these infrastructure and endpoint changes are driven "organically" by the USA trend towards SUVs, but mainly driven by insurance requirements. Insurance and gov't "make out" on safer/roads/vehicles due to (perceivabally) less accidents and road maintenance. I can't speak to airplanes, but I imagine the fact that far, far, far more people are able to fly today than even 25 years ago should show that the infrastructure has drastically improved.

scarface_74 3y ago

And tangentially related, it was much easier for anyone to eavesdrop on your conversations. When it rained, I could pick up my phone and hear conversations from my neighbor on my landline and talk to them without calling. Not to mention if you were in the same house, you could surreptitiously here conversations by just picking up the phone or getting a device from radio shack that didn’t have a microphone, that you could plug in to another phone outlet. With analog cellular, you could also buy a receiver from Radio Shack and hack it to pick up the unencrypted signals from cell phones.