At least in the US. Hopefully other countries do better.
According to NHTSA numbers, New Years Day (and New Years Eve) are no longer in the top 10 most deadly holidays for drunk driving fatalities, or driving fatalities generally. Strong police presence and strict DUI enforcement has done a lot to cut down on the loss of life in this particular case.
Canada does not do better. We are really good at blaming the victim and allowing drunk drivers to be repeat offenders. Shit, where I moved away from there were people lobbying to increase the legal BH limit.
This is why driving should be by profession only and very regulated IMO.
Any other heavy machinery generally needs a license and regular recertification that requires you to basically take the test again. And anywhere you’d be operating generally has other people who have also undergone their own safety trsining. But giant 1-ton metal machines that go on public roads co-occupied by random pedestrians? Just come round every so often so we can give you a new ID.
Exactly, it’s insane how we allow people- even literal children- to operate heavy machinery that kills thousands every year with only a basic understanding and minimal experience.
Not only that, but the most common area to train in is the very same roads everyone is using. There are no facilities where you can go and learn under controlled conditions and supervison, for most people you near the end of your teens and an adult gives you some keys after you past a written exam.
Well, depending on your location. In the North East U.S. you definitely can take a professional driving course. There is a program called “In Control: Crash prevention”.
I first took that class as an EMT through my ambulance job. But, it is open to the public. I brought my 17 y/o son to the class shortly after he got his license.
Yes these services exist, but they are not required to get a lisence, and that is part of the problem, there is no centralized regulatory body controlling the training drivers recieve if any.
Fair point. That level of class that we took should be required.
dude, .04 is a joke and an excuse for police to harass. MADD ceased being about safety and has been money generation for decades now. This all has been a classic case of imposing new laws instead of simply enforcing the old ones, like gun control and some other things i can think of.
The legal limit is .08 in most places. It should be 0. There should be no alcohol in anyone’s blood stream when they are driving, no exceptions.
You’re as poorly informed as you are clever.
Because I don’t think people should be allowed to drive drunk?
Neither do I, but that’s not the point you’ve been making. You’re still poorly informed on the laws, spreading misinformation mixed with what you want things to be
How am I spreading misinformation? Generally speaking the legal limit is .08 in Canada.
.04 is the general rule now, and this is not uncommon knowledge.
Yup it’s rampant here, thinking I might move to Montreal.
So many accidents in Romania could be avoided if freight trucks were on rail, but now freight rail is garbage and nobody says anything
How would you get freight to places other than train stations?
To these places the only option would be (maybe smaller) trucks, from the station. I am not talking about in city transport, but about transport between cities, or even internationally
Speeding, drunk driving, lack of transit options, lack of enforcement… All preventable factors
These deaths are not accidents
My ex’s mom never stopped driving when she developed a medical condition that has her randomly passing out multiple times a day. She never stopped, the doctor never took it, and the inevitable happened.
She passed out, killed a pedestrian. Did like 2.5 years and ~6 Mo of that was time served IIRC.
Motorists aren’t REALLY punished for crimes, and pedestrian murder is just victim blaming advertising for car ownership “if they hadn’t been on their bike they would have survived” “that’s what you get for walking on the side of the road”
War famine disease these are all preventable!
Everything bad that happens to anyone is because someone decided to have sex a few decades ago. So really, there are no accidents whatsoever
I’ll never forget one of the dumbest things I’ve heard. Person in charge of the “orientation meeting” for exchange students at UCSB said with a straight face to the group of about 30 foreigners:
It’s important that you don’t drink and driver, as you can get a big fine.
Are you sure that’s the reason?
Living in Norway, It’s been 15 years since I heard of someone I know, know someone who drunk drove. Likely a very different experience in other social circles, or other parts of the country (coughFinnmarkcough) , but I would say it’s definitely a cultural difference.
Please elaborate on how nothing has been done?
What should be done about it?
I know there are some obvious answers on there and really im for anything that has less cars.
But “what should be done about it?” If someone ran a political party of “fuckcars” and got into power what would the ideal solutions be?
It’s easy to say more rail but that isn’t enough to make change.
Some politician saying " I want a highway through that black neighbourhood" was enough to evict countless people, destroy their homes, divide communities, and create urban freeways. We could certainly do the same with public transit but without the racism, just take the space from the cars this time.
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Okay but how.
Is it just the case of huge spending in cities? Flatten a big line across the city to run a new train line? Then flatten big areas around the stations for 15 mins cities. Could land value the tax around the station but then you lose the central planning on that 15 minute city.
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I don’t know why you are giving me attitude. I’m even on your side. No wonder you have such a bad reputation and no one listens to you, people like you giving the movement a bad name.
Look most cities had streets in them before the car. Most major streets have been there for over 100 years so they aren’t new. My city and the larger cities near me have one lane in each direction for a major roads. There is no space to add a train line there and being realistic they are not going to remove the only road between a major area of the city and its downtown.
So what’s the realistic solution? To make a new street. That would require buying housing and destroying them, or building an underground which costs even more. Having said that even if you did take out the road and put rail in it wouldn’t work. The streets are too windy and too steep.
There is no.metion of how to get new estates built around the car onto public transport either. They aren’t dense enough.
I think it’s a valid question to ask how this would be achieved. You can scream into the void all you like about cars being the wrong answer but to actually make changes and transition is a different matter.
Yes places that have 4 lanes you can reduce it. But that’s not going to remove cars entirely. Just remove them from that one road. That’s not enough.
Also looking at the past isn’t entirely fair. It was a lot easier to make people sell their house for the greater good than it is now.
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This has more to do with idiots.
Blaming individuals for systems failures is the oldest trick in the book for avoiding fixing things. Google “The nut that holds the wheel” if you want to learn more, eg this article
only twelve of the twentyfour states which require licenses to drive insist on an examination of the applicant
Wait what? Is this for real? I’m in BC in Canada and it takes a written and two practical tests over 2 years before you can drive normally.
I agree but you’d literally have to take peoples vehicles a way.
Or provide them with public transit that runs as late as the bars are open
New years eve: the only night when trams run all night here. Better than 0 nights with trams I guess.
That would be good too but doesn’t help with idiots. The only help there is catching them and there’s way too many.
A reliable public transit system would remove the need to drive.
If there were better public transit options then people would have the option not to drive. Let the “idiots” drive and hit each other, I don’t want to drive with them but I often have no choice.
Just make it more expensive or better, transit less expensive and more convenient.
And that’s an invalid solution because…?
I’d love to see it go down. It would be pure chaos.
So have you heard of this thing called a drivers license, which can be suspended, and is required to acquire the “freedom” to drive in the first place?
You say the problem is idiots. We already have a system for weeding those out. We should be using it.
We should be and we do, but my point about idiots is they will be driving and breaking the law anyway.
yes-wojak.jpg
No one thinks they’re the idiot, but idiots exist. Which are you?
Cars have been made safer and drunk driving laws are more enforced then ever. But sure, “nothing will be done” whatever makes you feel self-satisfied in your weirdo anti-car cult.
Traffic fatalities are literally on their way back up, not down.
They’re down sharply per capita. Anything else?
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Where did you get that statistic from? Over last decade its been incredibly steady per driver.
I don’t even think anyone here is anti-car. All I’ve ever heard said is that it needs to stop being the default (and only) option.
This is pretty reasonable when you consider it’s the only way we can meet emissions targets to continue living on this planet.
I could see alternative options being implemented in some cities, but in many it’s simply not an option, especially when you consider some of the commutes. There will never be a series of bus rides that would bring my spouse to work, which is only 25 minute drive. I like the idea, just really need remote work to take off in a huge way to support it.
Not the person you commented on but, don’t know if I agree with that, I am on the side of cars are needed but they should be supplemented with better alternatives as will to dissuade their usage unless actually required for the trip(for many of the reasons this community has stated).
it’s why I joined the community because I do like the posts demonstrating why this is required, and the posts that give information about potential alternatives. That being said I’ve been on edge whether to stay as of late because I’m no longer seeing posts like that, and when I read the comments there’s so much toxicity and always someone flaming another. Sometimes it’s called for, others I do agree feel very cult like in behavior of “oh they are indicating cars might have usage? burn the witch!”
Note I’m not saying this specific instance qualifies as that, just saying what I’ve noticed in the past posts I’ve looked at.
note note: realized I skipped your emissions target part… fully agree changing the defacto tech for current day cars are a hard requirement if we want to meet goals as the current ones just aren’t cutting it
This is pretty reasonable when you consider it’s the only way we can meet emissions targets to continue living on this planet.
Reminder that claiming individual action can have any meaningful impact compared to corporate action is journalistic malpractice/misinformation.
Having trouble posting the image directly, so here is a link.
I’m proposing a system wide change though
This motherfucker has a DUI guaranteed.
“Hanging out in communities you sharply disagree with to run defense for pedestrian murder” sounds WAY more culty than “cars should not be the only possible method of getting around,” friendo. 🤷
Interestingly, the US is going in the opposite direction to everyone else with road fatalities. Since the mid 2010’s their numbers have stopped declining and increased slightly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year
Brave of you to post this in a community litteraly named “Fuck Cars”
Cars are safer? What are you talking about?
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deaths-high-traffic-car
I’ve joined this instance for a reason, because I agree with it’s message. But what you’ve posted here is misleading. Cars have gotten safer over the years. Seatbelts, airbags, drive by wire, etc have all helped do that. The link you’ve posted refers to the US, which does matter in this case. Cos, globally, there has been a 5% drop in road user deaths since 2010 (and some countries have had some huge drops, over 50% isn’t super rare), partly cos of these increased safety measures. So, yeah, cars have objectively gotten safer. The US’ problem stems more from other issues like culture, infrastructure, individual attitudes etc.
Reversal of the safety trends occurred in the US just when SUV became the dominant car type in new car sales. Europe and other countries are slowly approaching this pivotal point. There is a risk that these results will be replicated in other countries after that is approached. Therefore we can’t dismiss this US only (for now) phenomenon.
I mean, sure, we can’t outright dismiss it. Espexially as there was a slight rise in the death rate of vulnerable road users (ie, those not in a vehicle) globally. But let’s look at those countries I mentioned who have significantly dropped their death rates. Even if they somehow manage to get the same 40% increase in pedestrian deaths, their total is still gonna go down. And I doubt it’ll rise anywhere near close to that 40%, if it even does rise, as they do things like have better public transport, higher petrol taxes that discourage driving so much, higher taxes on “yank tanks”, better designed roads for all users, lowering speed limits, initiatives like what Japan does where they ban on street parking at night in busy areas so pedestrians and cyclists can be more easily seen, things like that. You know, actually being proactive about the issue. I wouldn’t be using the US as a global barometer for anything besides obesity rates. Cos here’s another example, and I know it’s not just America who has this problem, but global gun related deaths dropped ever so slightly between 1990-2016 despite the US’ rising (admittedly, not by much cos it start to show a drop for a while). Because a bunch of countries have done the work to reduce their death tolls, which counters the insanity of those few countries who haven’t. Cos other countries give two shits about their citizens.
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Yeah that’s why pedestrian death rates have been increasing since 2008.
Edit: to be clear, it’s because cars are needlessly getting bigger and actively more dangerous to pedestrians.
Pedestrian death rates have been dropping. Pedestrian deaths have been increasing. If you’re going argue a point at least understand it first.
Unless you think the US population has magically increased more than 50% since 2008, it’s most certainly been both.
Cars are safer, yes. The issue is the amount of people driving larger vehicles such as SUVs and pickups for absolutely zero reason. The vast majority of people driving those vehicles have no actual practical use for them. Look into the history of auto manufacturers pushing anything considered a light truck in order to dodge EPA regulations. It’s absolutely an issue and it absolutely needs to be addressed through legislation, including but not limited to getting rid of the light truck exemption, sales tax based off curb weight, and property tax based off curb weight.
“safer” still isn’t as safe as any system that can get driving-age people around without expecting 90% of them to spend most of their travel time…
- behind the steering wheel of a 2 ton machine at an average speed of 45mph/70kph
- driving on roads that we literally paved over cities to have and now bleed funding from the surviving towns to maintain
- bound by the authoritarian system that is necessary to ensure any amount of safety in doing the aforementioned.
In fact, the industry had to push a lot of propaganda and laws by anti-democratic means to make the public accept the death toll of cars. They achieved this by a) shifting all blame for excess deaths away from those producing and selling the cars as they actively destroyed all other means of transport, and b) making roads as “safe” and convenient as they are by making them hostile to all road users other than cars. All of that just so you can feel so confident in the number of people being killed and maimed by cars as to be here in a community literally called fuckcars talking like any number of road deaths is a normal and good thing, actually.
You can read about the propaganda and other methods used by the auto industry here (section 1.5) if you actually care to learn at all. Highly recommend reading the rest while you’re at it too. Genuinely good and compelling read. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7325856/#s0030title
People got around before cars, they still get around without cars in many places. Fewer cars on the road means less traffic and fewer road deaths. Car-centric infrastructure is expensive to maintain, encourages blight, kills small business, and discourages community engagement. In contrast, people and businesses and communities alike all thrive when infrastructure prioritizes pedestrian transport. There simply needs to be more alternatives to driving; especially in high density areas where people go out to eat, drink, and be merry; so nobody has to put themselves and others in danger just to get from a to b.
Edit: fixed some grammar errors and changed formatting for clarity
No one is going to bubble wrap all the sharp corners on the planet for you.
Bold of you to reply without reading past the first sentence.
Welp 🤷🏽 you can lead a horse to fresh water but you can’t make them drink.
Have a day.
I gave your comment as much time as it deserved. Be less presumptuous.
lol. So you just have really poor reading comprehension then? Sorry, my mistake. Next time I’ll approach assuming less intelligence 👍
