Slow Train

Forget War, Famine, Disease ... meet the real global terror.

linux_author

- there's something to be said for Drivers Ed!

(of course, i didn't had a car until i turned 25)...

Wogster

I didn't have a car until I was 24, and if I had been smart, I wouldn't have gotten the darn thing then, cars are a financial black hole, you keep pouring money into it, and the only thing that you get out, is your expanding waist line. Problem is I was 44, before I got a bike again.

fat_bike_nut

I got my first, and so far only, car when I was 17.

Yep. A financial black hole. Too bad the realization didn't hit me until I seriously sat down to calculate it with everything in...gas, insurance, maintenance, repairs, depreciation (the model I chose was/is one of the fastest depreciating models of cars out there).

I wanna sell it soon...

Dahon.Steve

From the article
>>>>WHO is asking the World Bank and other institutions making loans for road building in the developing world to require that 10 percent of the money go for safety features, such as guardrails, barrier-protected lanes for bicyclists or pedestrians, speed bumps, traffic- calming roundabouts and lighting.<<

The article goes on to say that in order to cut back on the number of road deaths, we need to build MORE roads! Only 10% of the money is to go for safety features! This is insane.

It should be the other way around as building more roads will only increase the number of deaths because drivers will be able to go faster on improved roads. If you've been to some third world countries, traffic calming is badly needed and 90% of the money should be spent there.

biketony

So many thoughts...one can either expound for pages or say very little.

We rarely (ever?) question the 'right' of a technology to exist. We rail against the carnage caused by drunk drivers, young drivers, elderly drivers, etc, but do NOT question driving itself. A state/federal official actually advocating drastic automobile restrictions, and the obvious lifestyle changes, would be branded a Luddite and laughed off the national stage. With apologies to Gil Scott Heron, this revolution will NOT be televised.

gerv 

The technology thing is a big part of our mythology. Same for the notion of progress. Have a problem? Defer to the gods of technology. Even if technology evolves to the point where we are introducing the possibility for severe damage, we are reluctant to curb it. That would be stopping "progress".

However, there have been a few examples where the right of technology was questioned. For example, the growth of nuclear power plants stopped in the US right after 3 Mile Island. We may also be in the middle of questioning some of the more advanced gene-alterign technology. (Germline, rather than somatic, might see use actually cloning human being at some point...) .

In the case above, I don't think we as a society are yet at the point where we see "more roads" as being a questionable move. But there is hope that this might change.

Roody

I know how much life changes when you get that phone call, "There's been an accident, you need to get to the hospital as fast as you can."

One more damn good reason to get these horrible machines off the road.

lyeinyoureye

What a wonderful post. If it weren't for it, we may have a reasonable, sensible thread on a valid concern. I figure it's only a matter of time before the zealots come out of the woodwork in any discussion...

Roody

I'm grateful that Slow Train brought up this topic.

The accident I referred to made me realize the dark side of the automobile culture. The public today is so jaded about car accidents that we rarely stop to think that these accidents are unacceptable and unnecessary. We've come so far in our blind acceptance of cars that we think the deaths and injuries are just a small price to pay for the convenience of cars.

wahoonc

This is sort of on topic. When I think about automobiles and the "personal freedom" that people claim I get very irritated. People driving cars kill way too many people. If I killed that percentage of people on my jobsite OSHA would have shut me down years ago. When it comes to safety on jobsites "personal freedom" takes a back seat. Perhaps this needs to be done in the general public sector when it comes to accidents and drivers. I know of no other "industry" that is allowed to wreak as much havoc on the general public with no or such limited consequences. [/rant off]

Aaron

gerv 

Another aspect of this that scares me are all the suburban bars and restaurants that are set up far, far from the homes of their clients. I wonder how everyone gets home after a night out. They certainly seldom take cabs. Mostly they drive and I'm pretty sure that most of them shouldn't get behind a wheel.

It seems to me that if you own a bar in a strip mall, you should be required to have some means of transporting your clients back home.

wahoonc

And I don't reccomend it in MSP either...the muslim taxi cab drivers don't want to take fares that "might" have alcohol

FWIW this is yet another issue brought on by urban sprawl. When I was temporarily living in Mansfield, OH I was surprised by the number of "neighborhood" bars. I could walk to at least 4 from where my apartment was located. And just for reference I have spent most of my life in the deep south where bars were hidden on the "bad" side of town or waaaay out in the country. I would love to be able to ride my bike to a local brew pub for a pint every now and again, but I don't see that happening anytime soon...I live in a dry county

Aaron

biketony

The car really is an insidious feature of modern life. The Big Box stores open at the edge of town, where property is cheaper, and we all drive there to get those Low! Low! prices. This, in turn, kills the local (read: bikeable/walkable distance) businesses that deal with the consumer basics such as groceries. Now, factor in strict zoning which forces homes HERE and business over THERE, somewhere... Oh, and a lot of US cities/suburbs have codes requiring homes to be larger than they were in the past. This, of course, requires larger lots which, in turn, leads to more sprawl (again, land is cheaper the further away one drives), requiring more driving to lead that American Dream.

Is there really any wonder at the notion that we'd actually have a war for oil?

To veer back to this thread's topic, cars as a health/safety issue: Society wrings it's collective hands about all the deaths and injuries that result from all of our driving. Still, every time we start the engine we are declaring these deaths/maimings to be 'acceptable losses'.

And I am not above any of this; I still own a car. One of those ironies of modern life, is that some of us move to more rural areas-and then drive even more. My wife and I are moving to a city, and are very much looking forward to, among many other things, NO driving. I wonder if a Nissan Frontier would make a nice planter box?

Platy

Saw the cab's roof off. Poke holes through the floorboards and bed for drainage. Leave the wheels on so you can roll it around to get maximum sun.

wahoonc

You could use it for a guest house

Aaron

JeffS

Bolded to make my point. Indept drivers are the primary cause of these deaths and no amount of "safety features" is going to change that. A competent driver, paying attention doesn't need guard rails (with a few exceptions) or five signs to warn of each impending turn.

I couldn't care less about death rates, but that we, as a society, continue to label vehicle-based maiming and murdering as accidents does annoy me. A couple kids die on a 3-wheeler and they're outlawed. Thousands of kids die in cars and we try to fix it with safety-features.

Wogster

One of the traffic reporters here in Toronto also uses the term collision instead of accident, he says because not all collisions are accidents, and until the police investigation is complete, you can't know, so he refers to them as collisions. Cars are special, because politicians are in the pockets of the automobile and oil industries, so special laws apply. However if regular people, decided to stop driving, and demanded that the government do something about it, and elected green candidates, rather then the ones with the biggest election contributions, then cars would probably be banned.

biketony

Great, something else to ponder! I wonder when the term 'accident' became mainstream, and how that occured. The cynic in me would suspect the auto industry itself. Without a great leap of imagination, it's easy to envision the 'powers-that-were' wanting to downplay the significance of automobile collisions to a public still needing to be coaxed into the car. Doesn't the word 'accident' seem to conjure up an almost benign event? Sort of like "the puppy just had an 'accident' on the floor". Yes, messy and unwanted, but easily corrected; no harm, no foul.

Roody

I call them "crashes" and so do a lot of traffic engineers and safety advocates.

fat_bike_nut

I've been calling them collisions ever since I took a close look at the definition of "accident" in the dictionary.

thebankman

Look at it from another perspective: Life changes when someone has to call your family and friends for you to tell them to come to the hospital immediately.

lyeinyoureye

Don'tcha think that's a half-truth? Strict licensing and enforcement would do nearly as much for accidents as removing all cars from the road. The problem is a blind acceptance of standards, not cars. Although the blind acceptance of cars does apply in other areas, such as urban pollution, it doesn't apply to operator safety. If every driver had to go through what a semi driver does, as well as a thorough course on automotive maintenance, I doubt we would have this "epidemic". We've come so far in our blind acceptance of lax standards that we think the deaths and injuries are just a small price to pay for the convenience of easy licensing.

Roody

Actually, no, I don't think standards for drivers are the problem or the solution. It's much harder to get a driver's license than it used to be, at least in this state. The cars themselves are much safer now too, with innovations like antilock braking, crumple zone construction, and especially seat belts and airbags. Roads are also constructed to higher safety standards these days.

I think a big cause of crashes is that there are just too many cars on the roads. There are literally more cars than drivers in the US, as you probably know. The number of cars on the roads has more than doubled since I learned to drive in the 1970s, but the actual linear mileage of roadways has increased by a much smaller proportion. Congestion makes roads more dangerous and also contributes to road rage and reckless driving. This situation is bad for everybody, but especially distressing for cyclists and pedestrians.

A related danger is that the speed limits are too high. They're high because of the increased number of cars on the road. The existing roads can handle a bigger volume of traffic if speeds are faster, much like more water can get through a pipe if it's going faster.

Another way they handle more cars on the existing roads is through creative highway engineering. Examples of this include intersections with multiple turn lanes, roundabouts and complex traffic signals with vehicle activation and advanced and delayed green lights. These traffic innovations generally work well for cars, but not so well for bikes and walkers. You probably know how difficult it can be to get your bike over into the proper left turn lane, only to discover there isn't enough metal mass on the bike to activate the left turn arrow, and the cars behind you are honking.....

donnamb 

Wogster, that's one reporter who is worthy of respect, IMO.