5 ms·

Zero MPH = zero traffic = zero road deaths. But without transport significantly more people will die from other things, due to reduced access to healthcare, em

Zero MPH = zero traffic = zero road deaths. But without transport significantly more people will die from other things, due to reduced access to healthcare, employment, food, etc. In a modern society, road transport is a critical part of our life support system. Those pushing for a what they see as a car-free utopia tend to ignore this.

exe34 1y ago
It's almost as if a balance could be achieved, both by reducing the number of cars and increasing the number of trains/busses.
- rwyinuse 1y ago
  Yep. Something worth considering is also building long-term parking spaces to the outskirts of cities, accessible with public transport. I know lots of city-dwellers who pretty much never use a car for intra-city transport, but need to own one anyway to reach other important places that are beyond reach of public transport. In case of Finland summer cottages are one such case. They're extremely common, and located in areas that usually have no public transport. Lots of people have also older relatives who live in middle of nothing.
  - hdgvhicv 1y ago
    Surely car hire would make more sense for that type of usage
    - rwyinuse 1y ago
      It's pretty common for people to stay in their summer cottages for a week or more, several times a summer. Renting a car for all that time gets very expensive, and it will be just sitting idle most of the time. At that point you may as well just buy a cheap used car for the same yearly cost. The need for car ownership would plummet if we had self-driving cars that can autonomously drive back to the city, and to pick you up from the countryside.
- bluescrn 1y ago
  Only in cities. And a lot of people don't want to live in ever-denser cities.
  - graemep 1y ago
    A lot of people seem to want to live in cities though. Scroll through this graph, especially the broad categories at the bottom of the page, and there is a consistent global trend to urbanisation: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locations=GB-US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locat... House prices are almost far higher in big dense cities, so people are clearly willing to pay a premium to live there. People either want or need to live in big cities.
  - exe34 1y ago
    I live in a small village on top of a hill. Most people drive, but I don't. When I need to get some heavy stuff up the hill once a month or two, I get the bus. The rest of the time I walk.
wafflemaker 1y ago
30 km\h limit in densely populated and heavily used by pedestrians first\last 2-5 minutes of your travel does what? Extends your travel time by 1 minute? At the same time making it nearly impossible to kill a kid, cat, dog or human in these places. Same goes with the right of way in these places. You're in a car, you're getting where you're going much faster anyway, so you let pedestrians go first. On pedestrian crossings, and often even without them in such "last leg" places. It's completely logical. You don't go faster in places where somebody can suddenly walk out from behind a parked car, bush, whatever. But it's a cultural thing in Scandinavia.
- throwaway9832 1y ago
  You, just like the grandparent, confuse egregious 0% tolerance speed enforcement with speed limits. Speed limits dictates stopping distance and is a key factor in collision avoidance. No one is asking to abolish speed limits. The problem is when passenger cars that require a fraction of stopping distance of a truck at given speed limit are fined for going 3-4 km over limit. Essentially, fined for driving at a speed where they can stop many meters before a truck going the sign posted limit. Revenue raising in the name of safety, down playing other factors like attention, driver training, road design, maintenance, and so on, but they don't bring as much money.
  - macguillicuddy 1y ago
    I don't see anything in the parent comments referencing or advocating for 0% tolerance speed enforcement. In the UK speed limits are typically enforced with a 10% grace factor.
    - bluescrn 1y ago
      Instead, there's a push to reduce limits ever closer to zero. 30mph was close to the sweet spot and had been for decades. Or it would have been with a reasonable level of enforcement. But as the ideological and/or climate-driven war on cars ramped up there's been a big push to reduce ever-more areas to 20mph, which is just too slow, especially when deployed widely/indiscriminately as it has been in Wales. (Used very sparingly, e.g. outside schools, 20mph limits were a good 'take particular care' signal to motorists - but that effect is lost when they're widespread) Is it really about safety or is it about 'fuck cars'?
aziaziazi 1y ago
There was a study [0] in Paris that demonstrates a signifiant life expectancy and positive benefit/risk ratio of bicycling or commuting by public transports: the effect on physical and psychic health largely outweighs (sometimes to x30) the risk of accidents and pollution disease. > without transport Nobody argues to remove all cars altogether, and certainly not other forms of transport. However we certainly can rethink the millions of individual cars in each cities: does everybody needs its own 1ton vehicle to bring food back from the local supermarket? To go to work 2-20km away? [0] (2012, french) https://www.ors-idf.org/nos-travaux/publications/les-benefic https://www.ors-idf.org/nos-travaux/publications/les-benefic...

exe34 1y ago

It's almost as if a balance could be achieved, both by reducing the number of cars and increasing the number of trains/busses.

rwyinuse 1y ago
Yep. Something worth considering is also building long-term parking spaces to the outskirts of cities, accessible with public transport. I know lots of city-dwellers who pretty much never use a car for intra-city transport, but need to own one anyway to reach other important places that are beyond reach of public transport. In case of Finland summer cottages are one such case. They're extremely common, and located in areas that usually have no public transport. Lots of people have also older relatives who live in middle of nothing.
- hdgvhicv 1y ago
  Surely car hire would make more sense for that type of usage
  - rwyinuse 1y ago
    It's pretty common for people to stay in their summer cottages for a week or more, several times a summer. Renting a car for all that time gets very expensive, and it will be just sitting idle most of the time. At that point you may as well just buy a cheap used car for the same yearly cost. The need for car ownership would plummet if we had self-driving cars that can autonomously drive back to the city, and to pick you up from the countryside.
bluescrn 1y ago
Only in cities. And a lot of people don't want to live in ever-denser cities.
- graemep 1y ago
  A lot of people seem to want to live in cities though. Scroll through this graph, especially the broad categories at the bottom of the page, and there is a consistent global trend to urbanisation: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locations=GB-US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locat... House prices are almost far higher in big dense cities, so people are clearly willing to pay a premium to live there. People either want or need to live in big cities.
- exe34 1y ago
  I live in a small village on top of a hill. Most people drive, but I don't. When I need to get some heavy stuff up the hill once a month or two, I get the bus. The rest of the time I walk.

wafflemaker 1y ago

30 km\h limit in densely populated and heavily used by pedestrians first\last 2-5 minutes of your travel does what? Extends your travel time by 1 minute? At the same time making it nearly impossible to kill a kid, cat, dog or human in these places. Same goes with the right of way in these places. You're in a car, you're getting where you're going much faster anyway, so you let pedestrians go first. On pedestrian crossings, and often even without them in such "last leg" places. It's completely logical. You don't go faster in places where somebody can suddenly walk out from behind a parked car, bush, whatever. But it's a cultural thing in Scandinavia.

throwaway9832 1y ago
You, just like the grandparent, confuse egregious 0% tolerance speed enforcement with speed limits. Speed limits dictates stopping distance and is a key factor in collision avoidance. No one is asking to abolish speed limits. The problem is when passenger cars that require a fraction of stopping distance of a truck at given speed limit are fined for going 3-4 km over limit. Essentially, fined for driving at a speed where they can stop many meters before a truck going the sign posted limit. Revenue raising in the name of safety, down playing other factors like attention, driver training, road design, maintenance, and so on, but they don't bring as much money.
- macguillicuddy 1y ago
  I don't see anything in the parent comments referencing or advocating for 0% tolerance speed enforcement. In the UK speed limits are typically enforced with a 10% grace factor.
  - bluescrn 1y ago
    Instead, there's a push to reduce limits ever closer to zero. 30mph was close to the sweet spot and had been for decades. Or it would have been with a reasonable level of enforcement. But as the ideological and/or climate-driven war on cars ramped up there's been a big push to reduce ever-more areas to 20mph, which is just too slow, especially when deployed widely/indiscriminately as it has been in Wales. (Used very sparingly, e.g. outside schools, 20mph limits were a good 'take particular care' signal to motorists - but that effect is lost when they're widespread) Is it really about safety or is it about 'fuck cars'?

aziaziazi 1y ago

There was a study [0] in Paris that demonstrates a signifiant life expectancy and positive benefit/risk ratio of bicycling or commuting by public transports: the effect on physical and psychic health largely outweighs (sometimes to x30) the risk of accidents and pollution disease. > without transport Nobody argues to remove all cars altogether, and certainly not other forms of transport. However we certainly can rethink the millions of individual cars in each cities: does everybody needs its own 1ton vehicle to bring food back from the local supermarket? To go to work 2-20km away? [0] (2012, french) https://www.ors-idf.org/nos-travaux/publications/les-benefic https://www.ors-idf.org/nos-travaux/publications/les-benefic...