5 ms·

For dumb Americans like me - that 18.641 miles/hr.

by astura 1y ago

Dig1t 1y ago
[flagged]
- para_parolu 1y ago
  Clearly it’s opposite of killing
- monster_truck 1y ago
  Something tells me you play on your phone while driving anyways
- sapiogram 1y ago
  Making drivers miserable is part of the intention, they want people to drive less because it's annoying as hell for everyone else.
  - scns 1y ago
    The intention is to prevent accidents. Encountering 30kmh zones in strange places means there have been loads of them.
  - jmkni 1y ago
    That's fine if the public transport is up to scratch, as well as the cycling infrastructure. Where I live it's woefully inadequate making driving the only viable option for most journeys. This has a knock on effect of making cycling down right dangerous in places, because of all the cars + relatively high speed limits, like I wouldn't want to cycle from my house to work, it would be at best unpleasant, and I would be taking my life in my hands on some of the roads.
    - CalRobert 1y ago
      Streets with low speeds are themselves decent bike infrastructure.
      - jmkni 1y ago
        If people actually stick to those speed limits.
        CalRobert 1y ago
        Yeah, needs to be in the design instead of a dumb sign
        frosted-flakes 1y ago
        Good design is just that: de-sign. US roads have so. many. signs. Instead of just designing the roads and streets to not need signs in the first place.
    - Earw0rm 1y ago
      Even where public transport and cycling infra is more than adequate, you still have to restrict cars. Otherwise some people will choose driving to an extent that it screws up the public transport for everyone else. At least that's the lesson from London's buses. Paris built a more extensive metro system (London's tube is equivalent in the areas where it operates, but less than half the city is within 15 minutes walk of a Tube stop) so that part is deconflicted at least. But Paris is running into the same issue as they try to build out their cycle network. It can't be done without restricting cars, much to the annoyance of those who've built lifestyles around driving. Which really isn't at all necessary in a city like London or Paris, but that doesn't mean people don't do it. I'm not ideologically against people driving, especially EVs, but on a practical level it seems to be very difficult to accommodate demand for driving in a dense-enough-to-be-interesting city without screwing everything else up: pedestrian and cycling safety, bus reliability, street space usage, noise and air quality.
      - vladvasiliu 1y ago
        What do you mean by "Paris"? If it's the City of Paris (Paris intra-muros), then it's not comparable to London in terms of size or density. IMO, for the purposes of this discussion, Paris should mean the whole Paris region, since most of the people live outside the actual city limits. And in those areas, access to public transportation is hit or miss. Some people are close to suburban trains, but many are not. Then, another consideration, which is also very important, is what the available transportation actually looks like. By that I mean how often are there trains, how reliable are they? And, in Paris and probably Central London, too, are you actually able to get on board, or do you need to wait 3 trains packed to the brim? I don't know about London, but in Paris, the suburban trains have quite poor punctuality. Note that most car traffic in Paris is actually people from outside the city proper, so those who are most affected by these transit issues. Additionally, a lot of traffic also goes from suburb to suburb, which, currently, is a terribly bad joke transport-wise. When I was in college, the drive from my parents' house was around 20-30 minutes. Public transit was over one hour with multiple changes, one of which had around one minute of leeway before a 30 minute wait. They are building new circular lines around Paris, but they won't be ready for a few years. As someone who ever only walks or takes public transit I'm all for limiting car noise and pollution. But what I'd love to see is some form of improvement of the offer (a carrot). Riding around packed like sardines in trains with questionable reliability is a tough sell. I'm lucky enough I can modulate my commute hours to avoid peak times, but not everyone is so lucky. Right now, the city is mostly spending money on making driving hell (all stick). And bikes are fine, I guess, if you have where to store them. I wouldn't leave any kind of bike unattended around my office. There's also a bike sharing scheme which used to be nice, but for a few months now it's basically impossible to find a usable bike. And I tend to avoid peak times for those, too.
  - userbinator 1y ago
    And those with that intention are authoritarians that need to be kept out of government.
    - Muromec 1y ago
      But Finland is a democracy. People clearly voted for it.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - perching_aix 1y ago
      I don't claim to have the perfect definition for authoritarian behavior, but I would say that intending to consolidate authority is pretty key to it. Which making drivers' life miserable isn't really connected to, or at least I really don't see it. Otherwise, the typical government is a central authority made up of people, carrying out lawmaking, adjudication, and enforcement activities [0], and so basically all of them could be characterized this way, with sufficient bad faith. So I'm not sure that's a very meaningful claim. It definitely could be a misuse of power regardless though, but there's no evidence that I see in your comment that would suggest it was the officials in question misusing their powers rather than aligning with community sentiment or interests. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers
      - Ray20 1y ago
        In my understanding, authoritarianism is not only defined by the desire to strengthen their own power, but also by the desire to bring the way of life of all other people in line with their own moral values. For example, the persecution of homosexuals is widely recognized as an authoritarian behavior and has nothing to do with consolidate of authority
        bitmasher9 1y ago
        The persecution of homosexuals absolutely has an impact on consolidating authority. * Some of your political opponents will be homosexual, so it gives you an avenue to remove them. You can turn a blind eye to your political allies, if they are discrete. * You can use the accusation to persecute anyone. * It sets the frame that the authority governs every private aspect of your life.
- 9dev 1y ago
  Not as painful as getting run over, apparently.
  - userbinator 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - knome 1y ago
      Looking both ways is undone if drivers are speeding, not bothering to stop at stop signs and being generally unpredictable and dangerous. Blaming pedestrians for getting run over by speeders that are too impatient to drive at safe speeds in residential areas is a ludicrous opinion to take.
      - userbinator 1y ago
        If you can't estimate how fast traffic is moving, you are either a child too young to cross unattended, or an idiot deserving of your fate. Pedestrians have far better visibility and can stop or change directions far more quickly than the slowest car.
        userbinator 1y ago
        Apparently the laws of physics are lost on those who don't believe me.
        Mawr 1y ago
        Were you forced to operate your vehicle by the pedestrian crossing the street? No? Then take responsibility for your own damn choices. You're the one endangering everyone around you, not the pedestrians.
        userbinator 1y ago
        Were you forced to cross the street without looking either? What fucking retarded arguments these anti-car radicalists spew...
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  I agree, but if the streets are set up accordingly, it's about as fast as you'd normally want to drive anyway. For the standard US road with 12-foot-wide lanes and generally straight-ahead routes, 20mph does feel very slow. I've driven on some roads though where narrower lanes, winding paths, and other "traffic calming" features contribute to a sense that 20mph is a reasonable speed.
  - timeon 1y ago
    Yes narrower lanes is "traffic calming" in itself. Residential roads and city streeets should have different lanes than highways.
- squigz 1y ago
  Sorry to say but if we can reduce traffic accidents by a significant margin this way, people being annoyed at having to drive slower is a fine price to pay.
- Forgeties79 1y ago
  It may feel like you aren’t going very fast, but at the end of the day you’re probably only arriving at your location a couple of minutes later than you normally would and when applied at scale this could potentially save thousands if not tens of thousands of lives a year depending on how widely this is adopted. Hell maybe hundreds of thousands, but I don’t know the numbers well enough to make a claim that high, seems steep at first glance. Surely we can agree the pros outweigh the cons here? I can wake up 5-10 minutes earlier for safer roads.
  - echelon_musk 1y ago
    > you’re probably only arriving at your location a couple of minutes later than you normally would That depends on the total journey distance.
    - crote 1y ago
      No, it doesn't. Those low speed limits are only used for smaller residential streets. It only impacts the part of your journey from your home to the edge of your neighbourhood, and the same at your destination. Regardless of journey distance, the vast majority of your trip will be spend driving on roads intended for through traffic - which will of course still have a higher speed limit. Percentage-wise it is only going to meaningfully impact your travel time if you stay within your own neighbourhood. At which point the only logical response can be: why are you even taking the car?
      - everforward 1y ago
        Fwiw, this is how my American neighborhood is set up and it's completely tolerable. Nobody is more than 5 or 6 blocks from a "through traffic road". It's also got stop signs on virtually every intersection, so speeding is basically gone. A lot of people ignore speed limits, but I've never met anyone that blanket ignores stop signs on 4 way intersections. You're not getting much faster than 20mph in a single city block without making a very obvious amount of noise (at least in an ICE).
    - Forgeties79 1y ago
- graevy 1y ago
  i think a large part of this that often goes unstated is the suburban sprawl that causes people to need to drive longer distances near pedestrians to begin with -- do you live in an area with wide streets, many single-family homes, and parking lots? when i've lived in city neighborhoods with dense housing i've only had to drive far/fast to leave, and when i've lived in the middle of nowhere i wasn't at risk of flattening pedestrians
- jeffbee 1y ago
  If we were a real country, we would actively hunt down people who express this sentiment and seize their vehicles until after they satisfy a psychological exam.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - Muromec 1y ago
    And then if they fail the exam, appoint to the public office.
    - jeffbee 1y ago
      Thereby increasing the number of officials without access to cars? A diabolical plan!
      - Muromec 1y ago
        Everybody gets a personal chauffeur and the problem is solved. Check and mate, dirty commie urbanistas.
- 13_9_7_7_5_18 1y ago
  [dead]
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- zahlman 1y ago
  Try checking the average speed (total distance / total time) on your next outing. You might be surprised.
Sharlin 1y ago
For dumb Americans like you who haven’t heard of significant figures, it’s 20 mi/hr. Mayybe 18 mi/h but that’s stretching it.
EasyMark 1y ago
using a different units system doesn't make you dumb. Otherwise the USA would still be navel gazing instead of star gazing

For dumb Americans like me - that 18.641 miles/hr.

by astura 1y ago

For dumb Americans like me - that 18.641 miles/hr.

Dig1t 1y ago

[flagged]

para_parolu 1y ago
Clearly it’s opposite of killing
monster_truck 1y ago
Something tells me you play on your phone while driving anyways
sapiogram 1y ago
Making drivers miserable is part of the intention, they want people to drive less because it's annoying as hell for everyone else.
- scns 1y ago
  The intention is to prevent accidents. Encountering 30kmh zones in strange places means there have been loads of them.
- jmkni 1y ago
  That's fine if the public transport is up to scratch, as well as the cycling infrastructure. Where I live it's woefully inadequate making driving the only viable option for most journeys. This has a knock on effect of making cycling down right dangerous in places, because of all the cars + relatively high speed limits, like I wouldn't want to cycle from my house to work, it would be at best unpleasant, and I would be taking my life in my hands on some of the roads.
  - CalRobert 1y ago
    Streets with low speeds are themselves decent bike infrastructure.
    - jmkni 1y ago
      If people actually stick to those speed limits.
      - CalRobert 1y ago
        Yeah, needs to be in the design instead of a dumb sign
        frosted-flakes 1y ago
        Good design is just that: de-sign. US roads have so. many. signs. Instead of just designing the roads and streets to not need signs in the first place.
  - Earw0rm 1y ago
    Even where public transport and cycling infra is more than adequate, you still have to restrict cars. Otherwise some people will choose driving to an extent that it screws up the public transport for everyone else. At least that's the lesson from London's buses. Paris built a more extensive metro system (London's tube is equivalent in the areas where it operates, but less than half the city is within 15 minutes walk of a Tube stop) so that part is deconflicted at least. But Paris is running into the same issue as they try to build out their cycle network. It can't be done without restricting cars, much to the annoyance of those who've built lifestyles around driving. Which really isn't at all necessary in a city like London or Paris, but that doesn't mean people don't do it. I'm not ideologically against people driving, especially EVs, but on a practical level it seems to be very difficult to accommodate demand for driving in a dense-enough-to-be-interesting city without screwing everything else up: pedestrian and cycling safety, bus reliability, street space usage, noise and air quality.
    - vladvasiliu 1y ago
      What do you mean by "Paris"? If it's the City of Paris (Paris intra-muros), then it's not comparable to London in terms of size or density. IMO, for the purposes of this discussion, Paris should mean the whole Paris region, since most of the people live outside the actual city limits. And in those areas, access to public transportation is hit or miss. Some people are close to suburban trains, but many are not. Then, another consideration, which is also very important, is what the available transportation actually looks like. By that I mean how often are there trains, how reliable are they? And, in Paris and probably Central London, too, are you actually able to get on board, or do you need to wait 3 trains packed to the brim? I don't know about London, but in Paris, the suburban trains have quite poor punctuality. Note that most car traffic in Paris is actually people from outside the city proper, so those who are most affected by these transit issues. Additionally, a lot of traffic also goes from suburb to suburb, which, currently, is a terribly bad joke transport-wise. When I was in college, the drive from my parents' house was around 20-30 minutes. Public transit was over one hour with multiple changes, one of which had around one minute of leeway before a 30 minute wait. They are building new circular lines around Paris, but they won't be ready for a few years. As someone who ever only walks or takes public transit I'm all for limiting car noise and pollution. But what I'd love to see is some form of improvement of the offer (a carrot). Riding around packed like sardines in trains with questionable reliability is a tough sell. I'm lucky enough I can modulate my commute hours to avoid peak times, but not everyone is so lucky. Right now, the city is mostly spending money on making driving hell (all stick). And bikes are fine, I guess, if you have where to store them. I wouldn't leave any kind of bike unattended around my office. There's also a bike sharing scheme which used to be nice, but for a few months now it's basically impossible to find a usable bike. And I tend to avoid peak times for those, too.
- userbinator 1y ago
  And those with that intention are authoritarians that need to be kept out of government.
  - Muromec 1y ago
    But Finland is a democracy. People clearly voted for it.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    I don't claim to have the perfect definition for authoritarian behavior, but I would say that intending to consolidate authority is pretty key to it. Which making drivers' life miserable isn't really connected to, or at least I really don't see it. Otherwise, the typical government is a central authority made up of people, carrying out lawmaking, adjudication, and enforcement activities [0], and so basically all of them could be characterized this way, with sufficient bad faith. So I'm not sure that's a very meaningful claim. It definitely could be a misuse of power regardless though, but there's no evidence that I see in your comment that would suggest it was the officials in question misusing their powers rather than aligning with community sentiment or interests. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers
    - Ray20 1y ago
      In my understanding, authoritarianism is not only defined by the desire to strengthen their own power, but also by the desire to bring the way of life of all other people in line with their own moral values. For example, the persecution of homosexuals is widely recognized as an authoritarian behavior and has nothing to do with consolidate of authority
      - bitmasher9 1y ago
        The persecution of homosexuals absolutely has an impact on consolidating authority. * Some of your political opponents will be homosexual, so it gives you an avenue to remove them. You can turn a blind eye to your political allies, if they are discrete. * You can use the accusation to persecute anyone. * It sets the frame that the authority governs every private aspect of your life.
9dev 1y ago
Not as painful as getting run over, apparently.
- userbinator 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - knome 1y ago
    Looking both ways is undone if drivers are speeding, not bothering to stop at stop signs and being generally unpredictable and dangerous. Blaming pedestrians for getting run over by speeders that are too impatient to drive at safe speeds in residential areas is a ludicrous opinion to take.
    - userbinator 1y ago
      If you can't estimate how fast traffic is moving, you are either a child too young to cross unattended, or an idiot deserving of your fate. Pedestrians have far better visibility and can stop or change directions far more quickly than the slowest car.
      - userbinator 1y ago
        Apparently the laws of physics are lost on those who don't believe me.
      - Mawr 1y ago
        Were you forced to operate your vehicle by the pedestrian crossing the street? No? Then take responsibility for your own damn choices. You're the one endangering everyone around you, not the pedestrians.
        userbinator 1y ago
        Were you forced to cross the street without looking either? What fucking retarded arguments these anti-car radicalists spew...
SoftTalker 1y ago
I agree, but if the streets are set up accordingly, it's about as fast as you'd normally want to drive anyway. For the standard US road with 12-foot-wide lanes and generally straight-ahead routes, 20mph does feel very slow. I've driven on some roads though where narrower lanes, winding paths, and other "traffic calming" features contribute to a sense that 20mph is a reasonable speed.
- timeon 1y ago
  Yes narrower lanes is "traffic calming" in itself. Residential roads and city streeets should have different lanes than highways.
squigz 1y ago
Sorry to say but if we can reduce traffic accidents by a significant margin this way, people being annoyed at having to drive slower is a fine price to pay.
Forgeties79 1y ago
It may feel like you aren’t going very fast, but at the end of the day you’re probably only arriving at your location a couple of minutes later than you normally would and when applied at scale this could potentially save thousands if not tens of thousands of lives a year depending on how widely this is adopted. Hell maybe hundreds of thousands, but I don’t know the numbers well enough to make a claim that high, seems steep at first glance. Surely we can agree the pros outweigh the cons here? I can wake up 5-10 minutes earlier for safer roads.
- echelon_musk 1y ago
  > you’re probably only arriving at your location a couple of minutes later than you normally would That depends on the total journey distance.
  - crote 1y ago
    No, it doesn't. Those low speed limits are only used for smaller residential streets. It only impacts the part of your journey from your home to the edge of your neighbourhood, and the same at your destination. Regardless of journey distance, the vast majority of your trip will be spend driving on roads intended for through traffic - which will of course still have a higher speed limit. Percentage-wise it is only going to meaningfully impact your travel time if you stay within your own neighbourhood. At which point the only logical response can be: why are you even taking the car?
    - everforward 1y ago
      Fwiw, this is how my American neighborhood is set up and it's completely tolerable. Nobody is more than 5 or 6 blocks from a "through traffic road". It's also got stop signs on virtually every intersection, so speeding is basically gone. A lot of people ignore speed limits, but I've never met anyone that blanket ignores stop signs on 4 way intersections. You're not getting much faster than 20mph in a single city block without making a very obvious amount of noise (at least in an ICE).
  - Forgeties79 1y ago
graevy 1y ago
i think a large part of this that often goes unstated is the suburban sprawl that causes people to need to drive longer distances near pedestrians to begin with -- do you live in an area with wide streets, many single-family homes, and parking lots? when i've lived in city neighborhoods with dense housing i've only had to drive far/fast to leave, and when i've lived in the middle of nowhere i wasn't at risk of flattening pedestrians
jeffbee 1y ago
If we were a real country, we would actively hunt down people who express this sentiment and seize their vehicles until after they satisfy a psychological exam.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- Muromec 1y ago
  And then if they fail the exam, appoint to the public office.
  - jeffbee 1y ago
    Thereby increasing the number of officials without access to cars? A diabolical plan!
    - Muromec 1y ago
      Everybody gets a personal chauffeur and the problem is solved. Check and mate, dirty commie urbanistas.
13_9_7_7_5_18 1y ago
[dead]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
zahlman 1y ago
Try checking the average speed (total distance / total time) on your next outing. You might be surprised.

Sharlin 1y ago

For dumb Americans like you who haven’t heard of significant figures, it’s 20 mi/hr. Mayybe 18 mi/h but that’s stretching it.

EasyMark 1y ago

using a different units system doesn't make you dumb. Otherwise the USA would still be navel gazing instead of star gazing