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The article seems to paint the automakers as a cabal of villains for convincing people to not walk in front of a moving vehicle. I'm not sure what I'm supposed
by Zikes 12y ago
The article seems to paint the automakers as a cabal of villains for convincing people to not walk in front of a moving vehicle. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to make of it.
- happyscrappy 12y agoYou are supposed to rage against corporate fascist America, duh. But still look both ways when you cross.
- mrxd 12y agoThey may have had other motives besides public safety.
- Zikes 12y agoWell, I've no doubt about that, but should we care that people do the right thing for the wrong reason? I suppose there's some room for debate about whether it's the "right" thing, as the goal of the article seems to be "hey, roads used to be for PEOPLE", apparently forgetting that there's people in the cars as well whose want and right to unobstructed travel is just as valid as those outside the car.
- akgerber 12y agoThough the driver's desire for unobstructed travel is just as legitimate as anyone else's, the amount of land area required to cater to that desire is far larger than that of the pedestrian, cyclist, or mass transit user: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JFCIT3QO2IE/UxqPRqcRK7I/AAAAAAAAY30/VNPZu68Q2ms/s1600/pedestrians,+buses,+cars,+road+space.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JFCIT3QO2IE/UxqPRqcRK7I/AAAAAAAAY3... Beyond simple use of space, cars moving at high speeds preclude a safe and pleasant experience for those outside of cars. The driver's desire to travel at high speeds is perfectly reasonable, but when we as a society attempt to meet that desire in a dense urban area, the result is unpleasant at best and deadly at worst.
- eru 12y agoWhile I agree with their aims, that picture is a bit manipulative. (They are changing the angles between shots.)
- mrxd 12y agoThe article makes clear that city streets were once a mix of pedestrians, pushcarts, street cars, horse drawn vehicles, etc. The automobile industry didn't just push for equal rights for cars. They already had that. They wanted exclusive rights, and they used the problem of pedestrian deaths as leverage.
- anigbrowl 12y agoI'm a person, but I don't think you'd have much sympathy if I expressed a desire to walk down a busy street swinging a pickaxe around my head, notwithstanding the fact that it's great exercise and I enjoy it. Someone in a car is taking up a larger share of space and imposing larger risks on passers-by. I know vehicle owners pay an annual fee for their tags and for each gallon of gasoline they purchase, but it's arguable that their use of the road was heavily subsidized for quite a while.
- aliston 12y agoI think the point is that perhaps we've swung too far to the extreme in favor of cars. We've lost a social gathering place. Not to mention, when other modes of transportation (i.e. bikes) share the road with cars, in cases of bike-car collisions, it is almost always assumed that the bicyclist is at fault. Also, I think the tide is shifting. Many cities are moving towards more pedestrian friendly corridors, replacing some streets with parks etc.
- Zikes 12y agoI guess I'm a bit jaded against articles that wax nostalgic about what society has supposedly lost in the pursuit of progress.
- SilasX 12y ago>Also, I think the tide is shifting. Many cities are moving towards more pedestrian friendly corridors, replacing some streets with parks But that's orthogonal -- the cities are saying "no cars here". They're not saying "hey, peds get (more) preference on the car-shared roads now". They still enforce the very same car/foot traffic separation that the auto industry (and anyone concerned with safety) wanted.
- baddox 12y agoI can certainly agree that the car culture in the US is a bad thing. But I don't quite understand why streets make sense at all as a social gathering place. Why not parks or people's yards/driveways/patios?
- Zikes 12y agoBecause idealistic utopia/good old days/change is inherently bad.
- saosebastiao 12y agoBecause in urban areas, people live next to the street, and their neighbors live next to the street, and the closest park is a few blocks away, and almost nobody has a yard/driveway/patio.
- NhanH 12y agoIn a sense, they were, if you consider "evil" to be doing whatever it takes to advance your agenda. On a more on topic note, I'm trying to imagine a world where personal cars didn't take off. What would be the difference (at least in the US)? More cities, less suburbans comes to mind. Will it be better?
- Zikes 12y agoWe'd have to build up instead of out. Jet-powered elevators become the norm, with a villainous group of Elevatormakers lobbying for jayleapers to not rappel down elevator shafts.
- walterbell 12y agoR.A. Lafferty wrote a short story about this scenario, Interurban Queen, http://www.ralafferty.org/works/stories/interurban-queen/ http://www.ralafferty.org/works/stories/interurban-queen/
- akgerber 12y agoDifferent countries have far different degrees of automobile use. Essentially nobody commutes by automobile in Tokyo or Manhattan, and those cities are organized around major railroad stations as opposed to highway interchanges, with neighborhoods designed to satisfy needs in compact walkable areas rather than distant auto-oriented shopping centers.
- mikeash 12y agoWhat are the vast number of cars on the streets of Manhattan actually doing?
- Thlom 12y agoThe same as most cars in most cities I guess. They come from the suburbs to work in the city (or enjoy it's offerings).
- akgerber 12y agoMany Manhattan vehicles are delivery trucks or service vehicles driven by construction or foodservice workers. Many are taxis or car service vehicles. Some are avoiding the $17+ toll on the Verazzano Narrows bridge by taking the free Manhattan Bridge & Holland Tunnel. Parking a car for a reasonable price is essentially impossible in much of Manhattan, and garages are also packed by valets that pack cars in tightly in tiny garages accessed via car elevator. Unless you're a cop, in which case you just park on the sidewalk because you know the other cops won't ticket you. And, of course, the number of pedestrians is far more vast than the number of cars.
- haroldp 12y ago> One was an attempt to shape news coverage of car accidents. The National Automobile Chamber of Commerce, an industry group, established a free wire service for newspapers: reporters could send in the basic details of a traffic accident, and would get in return a complete article to print the next day. These articles, printed widely, shifted the blame for accidents to pedestrians — signaling that following these new laws was important. You have to admit, that it pretty terrible.
- Zikes 12y agoThat is definitely a terrible thing to do.
- e40 12y agoThe Freakonomics guys did a podcast on the perfect murder, and it turns out it was "kill someone with your car" because only a tiny percentage of people that kill pedestrians are prosecuted for manslaughter. Tiny. This is also evil, though I'm not sure who is to blame for it.
- Zikes 12y agoI'm betting that's because it's at the bottom of a list of deaths whose cause can be directly traced to an individual. Surely the perfect murder would look like an act of complete provenance, with no apparent ties to anyone else or suspicions as to the cause.
- eru 12y agoDepends on what your goal is. Some people would gloat a lot, if everyone would know they did it, but nobody could prove anything in court.
- upofadown 12y agoI think it is a form of judicial corruption where the justice system does what is popular rather than what is right. Pretty much everyone drives and anyone can make a mistake while driving. The needs of the majority outweigh the needs of the few. The Canadian Supreme Court actually stated this principle in a decision where they weighed the "social value" of driving against the responsibility of the driver. If we were to make drivers strictly responsible for their actions we would make the value of the automobile less. Ref: R v Roy
- SilasX 12y agoI concur. Where is the article about the train cabals who deprived people of their inalienable right to have a picnic on the railroad? Where's the stock photo of the Caltrain "$271 fine for crossing when lights on"?
- gohrt 12y agoHow many railroads are in your way as you walk about every day? The automobile is a deep incursion into our lives, for the benefit of some, and great risk and cost to others. The automobile has no inalienable right of way across the entirety of our communities.
- saraid216 12y agoMass transit is also a lot different from the princely horsepowered carriage trundling through the streets in order to maintain a proper separation from the unwashed masses.
- schiffern 12y ago>not to walk in front of a moving vehicle. …and if that were the definition of "jaywalking", you might be on to something. :\ Underlying your comment is the assumption that it is the walker's responsibility to not be injured, not the driver's responsibility not to cause injury. It begs the question.
- imgabe 12y agoIt's a shift of responsibility from the motorist to the pedestrians. The car "belongs" in the street and the pedestrian doesn't. Cars are not required to look out for people, people have to look out for cars. That's a change that shifts the generally understood purpose of the whole infrastructure. If you and I are walking on the sidewalk, we're equals. It's as much your responsibility not to run into me as it is my responsibility to run into you. According to the article, before cars the situation was the same in the street. Everyone was equal. With the advent of jaywalking laws, suddenly cars are prioritized above all other traffic. If a car hits someone who wasn't in the street at a designated spot, the car has no responsibility for the accident.
- SilasX 12y agoCars aren't required to look out for people? They don't have criminal or civil liability? That is not the world that I experience. Go run over a pedestrian (even one who technically shouldn't have been there) and let us know how that works out.
- smeyer 12y agoI think a lot of people are exaggerating in this thread. Still, only 5% of New York drivers who are involved in a fatal crash with with a pedestrian are arrested, let alone convicted[1]. It seems that most of the time, there isn't much criminal liability. [1] http://freakonomics.com/2014/05/01/the-perfect-crime-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/ http://freakonomics.com/2014/05/01/the-perfect-crime-a-new-f...
- PhantomGremlin 12y agoHere in Oregon, pedestrians and bicyclists are routinely run over by cars, buses, and light rail trains. Almost invariably without consequences. At least for the motorist; the bicyclist often suffers severe medical consequences. Usually it's considered an "accident". The one thing you can't do is "hit and run", you must stop. The police aggressively investigate hit-and-run accidents. There is no liability unless you are "negligent". So if you've been drinking and driving you could face both civil and criminal penalty. And certainly you can be sued by whoever you hit. And maybe your insurance company will pay the pedestrian, but that's usually because it's cheaper to pay a few medical bills than to pay lawyers to continue to litigate. Cost-benefit analysis.
- davmre 12y agoThe point is that they worked to establish the norm that pedestrians must defer to cars on city streets, instead of cars deferring to pedestrians. This makes it viable to actually get somewhere by driving a car in the city, but at the cost of dramatically reducing walkability and undermining incentives for public transit.
- mikeash 12y agoWhat you describe as "walk in front of a moving vehicle" could just as well be described as "drive into a pedestrian." Your very phrasing assumes guilt for one party and innocence for the other, when there's no particular reason to assign it that way.
- Zikes 12y agoSidewalk = pedestrian Road = vehicle (car, bicycle, horse-drawn carriage) If one crosses into the territory of the other without following a prescribed rule of law, who do you think should take responsibility? In order for me to "drive into a pedestrian" I'd have to swing my car onto a crowded sidewalk, and unless a swarm of bees exits the car with me I'd have a hard time maintaining my innocence after that.
- mikeash 12y agoWhy assume the road is exclusively the domain of cars? That once again assumes the very setup it argues for.
- Zikes 12y agoIn the US it's not at all an assumption. Easily 99% of roads were built for the operation of cars. Everything else is just a dirt path, and I know people that have to drive on those if they want to go anywhere, too.
- gburt 12y agoZikes is incorrect. It is not "easily 99%". http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2013/apr/16/roads-not-built-for-cars-book http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2013/apr/16...
- Zikes 12y agoEasily 99.39%, actually. Only 0.61% of road use is cyclists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_the_United_States#Passenger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_the_United_S...