6 ms·

Businesses Are Getting People Killed

64 points by colinprince 3y ago

spamjavalin 3y ago
well said - it truely is absurd state of affairs.
WalterBright 3y ago
> The easiest way to get away with murder in the United States is to kill someone with your car and make it look like a traffic accident. I'm not so sure about that. There are people convicted of deliberately driving over their spouse. To get away with it, one would have to have: 1. no apparent motive 2. a plausible accident scenario (not chasing the victim with your car, or singling them out, etc.)
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  ~50% of murders go unsolved in the US. I don’t believe the idea is so far fetched, but importantly, the point is that pedestrian and bicycle deaths by motorists is rarely punished (unless egregiously willful). https://www.npr.org/2023/04/29/1172775448/people-murder-unsolved-killings-record-high https://www.npr.org/2023/04/29/1172775448/people-murder-unso...
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    My point is that if Bob wanted to specifically murder Ralph with a car, it would be fairly difficult to do it in a way that doesn't scream intent.
    - eep_social 3y ago
      Manslaughter might have been a better scenario but it seems harder to explain to the reader.
    - schneems 3y ago
      It seems you’re missing the larger message of that phrase (in my opinion). The point isn’t about intent. The point is about our relationships between cars and the concept of murder/manslaughter.
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        I was responding to "getting away with murder". Murder means intent.
        schneems 2y ago
        I heard you. I understand you think that’s the most important art of the message. Did you hear me that I believe the author is trying to use strong wording to evoke emotion but that they are not intending it to be taken literally/technically? Basically: I validate your point of view (without agreeing). Can you validate that you understand that I feel the way that I do (can also be done without agreeing).
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      How long do the police spend on a fatal car accident that fits the standard profile of a no-fault accident? A couple hours, maybe? What are the chances they notice anything suspicious in that time frame? Pretty low, in my opinion.
leke 3y ago
I'm greatful to live in one of the safest towns in the world for cycling.
thefaux 3y ago
I just want to shout out WalkSF which is a small organization punching well above its weight fighting for increased safety for pedestrians (which by proxy will mean increased safety for everyone). Voters in San Francisco overwhelmingly chose to maintain the JFK promenade vehicle closure in spite of very noisy complaints from a small minority of car owners. There are many uphill battles, but calmer, safer streets are popular with a solid majority of residents and I think politicians will start realizing that this will be a winning issue for them. It won't happen overnight, but I do think there is cause for optimism.
deadbabe 3y ago
Maybe I’m just feeling emotional today but I found the examples so distressing I couldn’t continue the article. How could a whole family just be killed off: mother, father, and their children, and the driver responsible faces NO consequences? Even if consequences don’t bring people back from the dead, they are still useful for signaling to society that we recognize the severity of what happened. It’s depressing to think about their home where they spent their days together now just sitting silent and empty, one day they all left together and would never return again, everything exactly as they left it, soon to be emptied out and sold off to the next owners who will take over as if nothing happened. And apparently as far as society is concerned nothing did happen. Our lives really don’t mean shit to anyone but ourselves. Why are we like this?
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  The driver, if not a complete sociopath, will be haunted by it for the rest of his/her life. Likely also bankrupt from a civil wrongful death lawsuit by the next of kin. I'm not sure what a jail sentence would do on top of that.
  - estebank 3y ago
    Immediate removal of their driver's license is the bare minimum, and we don't even do that.
- zamfi 3y ago
  As the article mentions, the driver will have to deal with the knowledge that they killed an entire family by accident, which can’t be easy. Of course, it is nothing compared to what the killed family’s fiends and loved ones feel, but “NO consequences” isn’t exactly fair. Which is also part of the point of the article: the problem is that it’s missing the forest for the trees to treat just the driver as responsible — one could argue the driver was also failed by the entire system described here, the system that privileges vehicles and their occupants over pedestrians, that treats death as an unavoidable, and therefore acceptable, consequence of vehicle use, which itself is treated as an unalienable right. Where are the: - fitness-to-drive tests every few years? - geofenced enforced speed limits? - protected sidewalks with higher boundaries? - physical smartphone restrictions on use while driving? (Paired with your car, moving > 5 mph, single occupancy? Car mode.) - pedestrian-focused safety mechanisms? (E.g., external airbags?) - traffic calming measures on major roadways shared with pedestrians? - standards around signaling at crosswalks on major roadways? - heavily subsidized transit that runs frequently enough that it’s preferable to driving? Every regulation has a cost, of course, and many of these are horribly privacy-violating if naively implemented. But let’s be 100% clear what we are privileging when we make these decisions!
iancmceachern 3y ago
I live right by 4th and king where the kid was killed. There was a community event where we all gathered to express our discontent with the lack of safety at this intersection, and many others. Someone had a sign that said "our neighbor died here" and one of the police officers there, the one who responded first the day the child died, walked up to the person with the sign and said "they weren't our neighbor". He said that because the family was visiting. They were our neighbor, and we let them down. I've been pretty dissapointed with many of my interactions with the folks that are supposed to be protecting us in this city. It's got to be a hard job, but we need to do better, somehow.
BenFranklin100 3y ago
This is a poor framing and Darrel knows better. While it is true retail shops fight to maintain parking spots, the real underlying issue is the local homeowners who fight the denser type of housing that is needed to promote foot traffic to keep businesses viable. Cities in general also don’t sufficiently support mass transit and biking which also helps increase non-auto customers. What is needed is general reform of the layout of America cities. Specifically we need to allow five-over-one buildings (retail first floor, 5 stories of residential above) nearly everywhere. Every time I am in Cambridge MA I am shocked at the blocks of one story retail along Massachusetts Ave.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  5-over-1 is all they are building where I live. The apartments are rented as fast as they go up but a lot of the ground-floor retail is vacant.
  - rickydroll 3y ago
    It is time to start examining why these stores are vacant. Are the businesses that provide services necessary for living profitable enough to pay city rent and living wage with the number of people within a 15-minute walk?
    - yardie 3y ago
      Commercial property owners are in denial at the moment. I have a friend who wanted to open a small restaurant in our neighborhood. The building is mixed use so great foot traffic and great elevator traffic. They contact the realtor who sends back the terms and the terms were eye watering expensive. Since then multiple coffee shops have tried and failed within the same storefront. I'm guessing over 50% of revenue is going toward paying the lease. Now it's been empty for almost a year.
      - SoftTalker 3y ago
        That and the whole notion that a majority of people want to go to a bunch of little shops every day for food and supplies. I go to Kroger or Target once or twice a week and I'm set.
kvark 3y ago
My US driving test didn’t even include a highway drive. It does feel like the ability to drive is treated as a right here. It’s only a privilege from the license cost point of view.
- pquki4 3y ago
  Just FYI driving tests at many other countries don't include highway drives either, for good reason.
- takeda 3y ago
  I was getting driver's license in Europe as well as US and both did not include freeway driving. I think this is because actually driving on freeway is actually easier that on streets, the major difference is that if you get into an accident likely much more severe. And you're much more likely to get into accident during a test than after passing it. What one needs on freeway is to have a greater confidence in their driving to not do sudden changes and drive around the same speed as the rest of the traffic. That confidence you get after you pass your exam and drive for a bit.
- wakawaka28 3y ago
  Well, driving is pretty easy and a virtual necessity. You can't drive without a license and you can't learn to drive without doing it. Most people take a class and/or get a learner's permit at a young age. They aren't crazy. If you are a new driver, going fast is scary and you'll avoid it until you have mastered basic driving on slow streets. The only country I've heard of where getting a basic driver's license is remotely hard is Germany, and it's because of the Autobahn. I forgot the details but I think you have to take a long class and clock a certain number of hours, and pay a couple thousand dollars equivalent. That kind of crap simply is not necessary in 90% of the US which is slow suburban traffic, where people can live for years without even going onto a highway once.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dangus 3y ago
We can expand this concept to basically anything in this country that everyone wants and isn’t getting done. Universal healthcare is the elephant in the room.
kstenerud 3y ago
> Business owners and the merchant class believe that any customers they get are drivers. They are unswayed by research consistently showing that increased foot traffic and alternative travel to commercial areas increase their profit. It was exactly the same problem in German cities until a few pilot programs were ram-rodded through.
seoulmetro 3y ago
>I place most of the blame for these accidents on traffic engineers and city planners who let drivers speed through crowded pedestrian areas. What a dumb take. "I blame the people who eat seafood on why the ocean's coral reefs are dying." "I blame the people who sell knives to chefs for murders in restaurants." It turns out that if you basically don't punish people, they don't care what wrongs they do. That's it. That's all there is to it, there is no optimisation that can avoid telling people not to be naughty. Drivers aren't taking more precaution in their driving and it shows. There are less pedestrians on the streets next to fast cars than ever before...
- shalmanese 3y ago
  A junior fat fingers a command line and accidentally deletes prod. Do you a) Immediately fire the junior, yell a bunch and send company wide messages that anyone else making the same mistake will face the same consequences b) Do a retro, figure out process changes that can avoid the same mistake happening again and thank the junior for discovering a flaw in our processes that leave room for improvement?
  - seoulmetro 3y ago
    >A junior fat fingers a command line and accidentally deletes prod. Do you A) Delete prod yourself because it was obviously your design flaw for creating a production server. B) Teach juniors that deleting prod destroys the company and that to keep the company alive we need to limit anyone to deleting prod more than two times at the company. We don't want to punish people who know how not to delete prod from working on prod. C) Teach juniors that deleting prod destroys the company and that deleting prod means their instant access to prod is now forfeit for a set amount of time and needs to be reviewed. D) Ramble on about how everything that goes wrong with a persons actions is a good thing and all the negatives are actually positives. Would you like a 50/50? Neither of your solutions are good. You can't "change a process" and have prod be both worked on and undeletable. Prods have existed for a long time without constantly being deleted everywhere, they also need to be accessed. This isn't a situation where you're magically limited from deleting X or Y or Z but not XYZ. >and thank the junior for discovering a flaw in our processes that leave room for improvement? This is the most unhinged part of your comment and made me laugh. Reward the poop on the floor with a treat! It's clearly my fault for buying carpet!
kkfx 3y ago
While the article fails to explain why deadly incidents seems to rise in the west, the graph show another interesting point: Russia. They have had, and still have, more deadly accidents than the west, but their rates still drop, while in the west the trend is inverted here and there. Well, people in Russia move by car, much, and they tend to be not exactly modern cars with ADAS, they have smartphones as well, perhaps in some spread area they use them less, but most deadly accidents happen in not-so-spread areas simply because of number of people on the road. Roads mean condition and climate does not help. They have business as well... Long story short, still unproved, but maybe the west inversion is due to people less and less able to drive, not to business or big SUV/light trucks. Indeed we can see young less and less good at driving, at least here in EU. So far we have not seen except in very rare cases ads in cars or other new-and-distracted infotainment, at least not hyper-recently, touchscreens distracts, but they are not that new. So...
tim333 3y ago
Coming from the UK which is near the bottom of the death graph they show, it doesn't have to be a case of cycle/pedestrian safety or local business parking. You can largely get both by slowing the traffic with obstacles and the like. A couple of examples Harpenden https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Costa_Coffee_Harpenden_Town_Centre.jpg/1920px-Costa_Coffee_Harpenden_Town_Centre.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Co... Primrose Hill https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprodmigration%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F932d70f3-8f91-4d1b-81e7-e9a5a2d21378.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1500 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsu... It's more about separating fast through traffic from where the pedestrians are.

64 points by colinprince 3y ago

well said - it truely is absurd state of affairs.

> The easiest way to get away with murder in the United States is to kill someone with your car and make it look like a traffic accident. I'm not so sure about that. There are people convicted of deliberately driving over their spouse. To get away with it, one would have to have: 1. no apparent motive 2. a plausible accident scenario (not chasing the victim with your car, or singling them out, etc.)

toomuchtodo 3y ago
~50% of murders go unsolved in the US. I don’t believe the idea is so far fetched, but importantly, the point is that pedestrian and bicycle deaths by motorists is rarely punished (unless egregiously willful). https://www.npr.org/2023/04/29/1172775448/people-murder-unsolved-killings-record-high https://www.npr.org/2023/04/29/1172775448/people-murder-unso...
- WalterBright 3y ago
  My point is that if Bob wanted to specifically murder Ralph with a car, it would be fairly difficult to do it in a way that doesn't scream intent.
  - eep_social 3y ago
    Manslaughter might have been a better scenario but it seems harder to explain to the reader.
  - schneems 3y ago
    It seems you’re missing the larger message of that phrase (in my opinion). The point isn’t about intent. The point is about our relationships between cars and the concept of murder/manslaughter.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      I was responding to "getting away with murder". Murder means intent.
      - schneems 2y ago
        I heard you. I understand you think that’s the most important art of the message. Did you hear me that I believe the author is trying to use strong wording to evoke emotion but that they are not intending it to be taken literally/technically? Basically: I validate your point of view (without agreeing). Can you validate that you understand that I feel the way that I do (can also be done without agreeing).
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    How long do the police spend on a fatal car accident that fits the standard profile of a no-fault accident? A couple hours, maybe? What are the chances they notice anything suspicious in that time frame? Pretty low, in my opinion.

leke 3y ago

I'm greatful to live in one of the safest towns in the world for cycling.

thefaux 3y ago

I just want to shout out WalkSF which is a small organization punching well above its weight fighting for increased safety for pedestrians (which by proxy will mean increased safety for everyone). Voters in San Francisco overwhelmingly chose to maintain the JFK promenade vehicle closure in spite of very noisy complaints from a small minority of car owners. There are many uphill battles, but calmer, safer streets are popular with a solid majority of residents and I think politicians will start realizing that this will be a winning issue for them. It won't happen overnight, but I do think there is cause for optimism.

deadbabe 3y ago

Maybe I’m just feeling emotional today but I found the examples so distressing I couldn’t continue the article. How could a whole family just be killed off: mother, father, and their children, and the driver responsible faces NO consequences? Even if consequences don’t bring people back from the dead, they are still useful for signaling to society that we recognize the severity of what happened. It’s depressing to think about their home where they spent their days together now just sitting silent and empty, one day they all left together and would never return again, everything exactly as they left it, soon to be emptied out and sold off to the next owners who will take over as if nothing happened. And apparently as far as society is concerned nothing did happen. Our lives really don’t mean shit to anyone but ourselves. Why are we like this?

SoftTalker 3y ago
The driver, if not a complete sociopath, will be haunted by it for the rest of his/her life. Likely also bankrupt from a civil wrongful death lawsuit by the next of kin. I'm not sure what a jail sentence would do on top of that.
- estebank 3y ago
  Immediate removal of their driver's license is the bare minimum, and we don't even do that.
zamfi 3y ago
As the article mentions, the driver will have to deal with the knowledge that they killed an entire family by accident, which can’t be easy. Of course, it is nothing compared to what the killed family’s fiends and loved ones feel, but “NO consequences” isn’t exactly fair. Which is also part of the point of the article: the problem is that it’s missing the forest for the trees to treat just the driver as responsible — one could argue the driver was also failed by the entire system described here, the system that privileges vehicles and their occupants over pedestrians, that treats death as an unavoidable, and therefore acceptable, consequence of vehicle use, which itself is treated as an unalienable right. Where are the: - fitness-to-drive tests every few years? - geofenced enforced speed limits? - protected sidewalks with higher boundaries? - physical smartphone restrictions on use while driving? (Paired with your car, moving > 5 mph, single occupancy? Car mode.) - pedestrian-focused safety mechanisms? (E.g., external airbags?) - traffic calming measures on major roadways shared with pedestrians? - standards around signaling at crosswalks on major roadways? - heavily subsidized transit that runs frequently enough that it’s preferable to driving? Every regulation has a cost, of course, and many of these are horribly privacy-violating if naively implemented. But let’s be 100% clear what we are privileging when we make these decisions!

iancmceachern 3y ago

I live right by 4th and king where the kid was killed. There was a community event where we all gathered to express our discontent with the lack of safety at this intersection, and many others. Someone had a sign that said "our neighbor died here" and one of the police officers there, the one who responded first the day the child died, walked up to the person with the sign and said "they weren't our neighbor". He said that because the family was visiting. They were our neighbor, and we let them down. I've been pretty dissapointed with many of my interactions with the folks that are supposed to be protecting us in this city. It's got to be a hard job, but we need to do better, somehow.

BenFranklin100 3y ago

This is a poor framing and Darrel knows better. While it is true retail shops fight to maintain parking spots, the real underlying issue is the local homeowners who fight the denser type of housing that is needed to promote foot traffic to keep businesses viable. Cities in general also don’t sufficiently support mass transit and biking which also helps increase non-auto customers. What is needed is general reform of the layout of America cities. Specifically we need to allow five-over-one buildings (retail first floor, 5 stories of residential above) nearly everywhere. Every time I am in Cambridge MA I am shocked at the blocks of one story retail along Massachusetts Ave.

SoftTalker 3y ago
5-over-1 is all they are building where I live. The apartments are rented as fast as they go up but a lot of the ground-floor retail is vacant.
- rickydroll 3y ago
  It is time to start examining why these stores are vacant. Are the businesses that provide services necessary for living profitable enough to pay city rent and living wage with the number of people within a 15-minute walk?
  - yardie 3y ago
    Commercial property owners are in denial at the moment. I have a friend who wanted to open a small restaurant in our neighborhood. The building is mixed use so great foot traffic and great elevator traffic. They contact the realtor who sends back the terms and the terms were eye watering expensive. Since then multiple coffee shops have tried and failed within the same storefront. I'm guessing over 50% of revenue is going toward paying the lease. Now it's been empty for almost a year.
    - SoftTalker 3y ago
      That and the whole notion that a majority of people want to go to a bunch of little shops every day for food and supplies. I go to Kroger or Target once or twice a week and I'm set.

kvark 3y ago

My US driving test didn’t even include a highway drive. It does feel like the ability to drive is treated as a right here. It’s only a privilege from the license cost point of view.

pquki4 3y ago
Just FYI driving tests at many other countries don't include highway drives either, for good reason.
takeda 3y ago
I was getting driver's license in Europe as well as US and both did not include freeway driving. I think this is because actually driving on freeway is actually easier that on streets, the major difference is that if you get into an accident likely much more severe. And you're much more likely to get into accident during a test than after passing it. What one needs on freeway is to have a greater confidence in their driving to not do sudden changes and drive around the same speed as the rest of the traffic. That confidence you get after you pass your exam and drive for a bit.
wakawaka28 3y ago
Well, driving is pretty easy and a virtual necessity. You can't drive without a license and you can't learn to drive without doing it. Most people take a class and/or get a learner's permit at a young age. They aren't crazy. If you are a new driver, going fast is scary and you'll avoid it until you have mastered basic driving on slow streets. The only country I've heard of where getting a basic driver's license is remotely hard is Germany, and it's because of the Autobahn. I forgot the details but I think you have to take a long class and clock a certain number of hours, and pay a couple thousand dollars equivalent. That kind of crap simply is not necessary in 90% of the US which is slow suburban traffic, where people can live for years without even going onto a highway once.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

dangus 3y ago

We can expand this concept to basically anything in this country that everyone wants and isn’t getting done. Universal healthcare is the elephant in the room.

kstenerud 3y ago

> Business owners and the merchant class believe that any customers they get are drivers. They are unswayed by research consistently showing that increased foot traffic and alternative travel to commercial areas increase their profit. It was exactly the same problem in German cities until a few pilot programs were ram-rodded through.

seoulmetro 3y ago

>I place most of the blame for these accidents on traffic engineers and city planners who let drivers speed through crowded pedestrian areas. What a dumb take. "I blame the people who eat seafood on why the ocean's coral reefs are dying." "I blame the people who sell knives to chefs for murders in restaurants." It turns out that if you basically don't punish people, they don't care what wrongs they do. That's it. That's all there is to it, there is no optimisation that can avoid telling people not to be naughty. Drivers aren't taking more precaution in their driving and it shows. There are less pedestrians on the streets next to fast cars than ever before...

shalmanese 3y ago
A junior fat fingers a command line and accidentally deletes prod. Do you a) Immediately fire the junior, yell a bunch and send company wide messages that anyone else making the same mistake will face the same consequences b) Do a retro, figure out process changes that can avoid the same mistake happening again and thank the junior for discovering a flaw in our processes that leave room for improvement?
- seoulmetro 3y ago
  >A junior fat fingers a command line and accidentally deletes prod. Do you A) Delete prod yourself because it was obviously your design flaw for creating a production server. B) Teach juniors that deleting prod destroys the company and that to keep the company alive we need to limit anyone to deleting prod more than two times at the company. We don't want to punish people who know how not to delete prod from working on prod. C) Teach juniors that deleting prod destroys the company and that deleting prod means their instant access to prod is now forfeit for a set amount of time and needs to be reviewed. D) Ramble on about how everything that goes wrong with a persons actions is a good thing and all the negatives are actually positives. Would you like a 50/50? Neither of your solutions are good. You can't "change a process" and have prod be both worked on and undeletable. Prods have existed for a long time without constantly being deleted everywhere, they also need to be accessed. This isn't a situation where you're magically limited from deleting X or Y or Z but not XYZ. >and thank the junior for discovering a flaw in our processes that leave room for improvement? This is the most unhinged part of your comment and made me laugh. Reward the poop on the floor with a treat! It's clearly my fault for buying carpet!

kkfx 3y ago

While the article fails to explain why deadly incidents seems to rise in the west, the graph show another interesting point: Russia. They have had, and still have, more deadly accidents than the west, but their rates still drop, while in the west the trend is inverted here and there. Well, people in Russia move by car, much, and they tend to be not exactly modern cars with ADAS, they have smartphones as well, perhaps in some spread area they use them less, but most deadly accidents happen in not-so-spread areas simply because of number of people on the road. Roads mean condition and climate does not help. They have business as well... Long story short, still unproved, but maybe the west inversion is due to people less and less able to drive, not to business or big SUV/light trucks. Indeed we can see young less and less good at driving, at least here in EU. So far we have not seen except in very rare cases ads in cars or other new-and-distracted infotainment, at least not hyper-recently, touchscreens distracts, but they are not that new. So...

tim333 3y ago

Coming from the UK which is near the bottom of the death graph they show, it doesn't have to be a case of cycle/pedestrian safety or local business parking. You can largely get both by slowing the traffic with obstacles and the like. A couple of examples Harpenden https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Costa_Coffee_Harpenden_Town_Centre.jpg/1920px-Costa_Coffee_Harpenden_Town_Centre.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Co... Primrose Hill https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprodmigration%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F932d70f3-8f91-4d1b-81e7-e9a5a2d21378.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1500 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsu... It's more about separating fast through traffic from where the pedestrians are.