A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
A pediatric doctor at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was killed while riding her bike in Center City on Wednesday night.
https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/deadly-3-car-crash-rittenhouse-philadelphia/3915690/
The original post on the Philadelphia subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/philadelphia/comments/1e5wkv0/insane_accident_on_18th_and_spruce/
A pediatric doctor at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was killed while riding her bike in Center City on Wednesday night.
The use of passive voice in the first sentence does a lot of work shifting blame away from the driver and the car centric systems in an "objective" effort.
How about:
Cyclist Barbara Friedes died when the driver of a car hit her in the bike lane on Wednesday night.
@apfelwoiSchoppen @ByteOnBikes Active voice would be, “A driver killed…”
They're both active voice, they just have different verbs.
Yep, high school grammar 101. It isn't that journalists don't know this, it is how they are trained. Shift obvious blame away from parties for objectivity until a verdict or deference to the status quo.
"was killed" is passive.
Yes, we all agree on that fact. The discussion progressed to two different commentors' active voice re-writes of the original sentence.
Both killed and died are active voice.
@apfelwoiSchoppen But functionally, the victim didn’t die on her own, she died as the direct result of the driver hitting her. For the purpose of accurately portraying who took an action and who was acted upon, it should emphasize the driving, not the dying.
The discussion was active voice vs passive voice, not functionality of active voice vs functionality of differently-worded active voice. They're both still active voice.
Very interesting, thank you. I was wondering if that also happens in other countries. It is sadly the norm in Germany when reporting car accidents.
Even the word "accident" is part of that downplaying.
Somebody told me that at her hospital they don't say "accident" since it's always preventable. They say "collision"
"Negligence" works too.
The army shifted to this verbiage as well from “accidental discharge” to “negligent discharge” when at the clearing barrels or while on patrol.
Also increased the punishment, and it helped quite a bit in reducing the knuckleheads. No longer a “whoops! Mah bad”
My idea to address unfit elderly drivers is once you start claiming SS you have to take the physical driving test every 2 years then every year once you turn 80. 69 might not be old for some people but could be debilitating for others.
Honestly, every licensed driver should have to retake a test every ~5 years.
Even recreational air pilots need a retake every 2 years, and they aren't a top 10 cause of death.
Make it yearly.
Make it yearly.
Imagine that DMV line! You'd have to book next year's appointment at the conclusion of your test. Heaven help you is you have to reschedule. Haha!
Opportunity to create jobs!
And the test needs to be way, way harder than it is now. In my state you just drive around the block and then parallel park. No highway driving requirement, no emergency maneuvers, no reaction time test.
VR/AR test to test dangerous and difficult scenarios like what we expect level 5 autonomous vehicles be able to handle.
Dangerous weather, emergency conditions, evasive driving/emergency maneuvers, car failures, etc.
Automated test in test booths, much faster throughout, far less lines than waiting on a single tester to waddle their way from one car to the next.
The USA should adopt a similar driving license program to Germany and the EU.
@MacGuffin94 @ByteOnBikes Drivers can be unfit &/or negligent at any age. The focus should be on a safe system: streets that naturally limit speed so that crashes that do happen are less severe, vehicles that are appropriately sized and simple to operate, required features like automatic braking and speed limiters, and attractive options like walkable destinations and efficient transit.
Can be, yes.
But are at a statistically significant rate above & below a certain threshold.
Young kids and old folks cause a significant portion of all fatal accidents yet our society provides them no alternatives.
Disagree. Tying it to SS just means it's a requirement for retirees who need government assistance. Rich old people driving the biggest, fastest cars will get to continue driving recklessly. Same thing with the person below who said the test should be incredibly expensive. Disagree. That only hurts the poor who may rely on their car in cities with terrible public transit infrastructure. In-car driving tests should simply be mandatory every few years for all drivers.
As a CAR PERSON if we'd just use all the money spent on roads to build public transport and walkable streets and we wouldnt need to pay a road tax for cars we could just use the money to build racetracks to enjoy fast cars. Every problem solved. Also if a few people just race sometimes and people dont commute by car every day, pollution form gas cars wouldnt be a problem.
As a fellow car person I endorse this idea fully. It would also be great to increase the knowledge and skill levels required for a license.
Also, make every car manual so people can't use their phones while driving.
Edit: What if we turned old mall parking lots into racetracks?
I agree with this too, except that last bit. Making a car manual has a near zero affect on people's use of phones when driving.
I say this as someone that used to use T9 to text when driving a manual car. Mind you that was 20 ish years ago when I was a stupid teenager, but there really was no difference between manual/automatic and using my phone when driving other than the added step of shifting.
To be fair, texting via t9 on physical buttons was way safer than fumbling around on a touch screen. I dit it blindly all the time.
You aren't wrong lol.
Also, make every car manual so people can't use their phones while driving.
Can confirm that back when it was still legal, I was using my phone while driving a manual car
Can also confirm that even today it is still very easy to use the phone and drive manual, especially since the phone is addictive
As a car person in a city that used to have a race track, heck yeah! No more sideshows in neighborhoods too!
Damn that's horrible to see. Spruce Street is so nice too. There is no point to speeding in Philly. There are stop signs or lights every block so you have to come to stop frequently, speeding won't save you any time.
So many people just can't understand this. In dense city streets your journey times are usually decided by how long you spend waiting in queues and barely affected at all by your top speed. Which is why you can get around a city by bike faster than by car, even though few transportation riders cruise at much more than ~16mph/25kph on the flat.
I used to think that people just hadn't thought this through and realized it, but I've had a few online discussions where it's clear some people are just flat out incapable of understanding that when there's congestion, speeding to a traffic queue most often just means a longer wait in the queue, not a shorter journey time.
"speeding to a traffic queue most often just means a longer wait in the queue, not a shorter journey time."
Total agree this this statement. I personally drive near the absolute posted limit, or below. I also don't gun it to the next red light to wait in queue.
Once you shift your driving style to minimise waiting at the next light (which usually means driving the posted limit) you will find the light turns green just before you arrive at the intersection. Traffic engineers usually time traffic signal this way as well.
This means your commute will feel less congested, you will still arrive at your end destination at the same time, and personally feel a little more calm and relaxed.
Though I do have to say if people are speeding behind you and being aggressive, let them pass you (don't speed-up). They will just get stuck at the next red, and you will just roll up right behind them with no extra time added to your arrival. Them having saved no time all well.
Once you shift your driving style to minimise waiting at the next light (which usually means driving the posted limit) you will find the light turns green just before you arrive at the intersection. Traffic engineers usually time traffic signal this way as well.
There's a street in my town where the lights are timed such that if you drive the 25mph speed limit you don't have to stop.
That is unless there's a bunch of idiots who insist on speeding to a red light, only to stop for five seconds. Then you have get stuck behind them and you also have to stop.
I wish there was some way to communicate to people that they're on a stretch of road like that so they know that going the speed limit is actually faster and easier than gunning it only to stop again a quarter mile ahead.
Edit: It would be super if car drivers thought streets with bike lanes worked like this. If enough of the streets actually do that, maybe it would get them to slow down next to all bike lanes.
The. Problem is too many streets where the lights are not synchronized, or even synchronized well above the speed limit
My town redid a major street during COViD to cut it from 2 lanes down to one thru lane plus turn lanes. They also synchronized the lights. It’s so much calmer of a street now, and we get through much faster.
They did a lousy job trying to add a bike lane but I guess that’s all you can hope for when the pavement was unchanged
Every major US city I have ever been in is full of dumb idiot assholes with cars that cost twice what I have ever managed to make in a year, racing from stop light to stop light as fast as possible, braking at the last minute.
There are days I have wished I could get away with making an Ocean's 11 style EMP, purely to disable every car in a 2 mile radius.
There’s plenty to show that tailgating is the entire reason for “rush hour” traffic. Not allowing others to merge safely means you end up with people being cut off or slowed down constantly. Everyone wants to be going the fastest but no one wants to go the quickest.
I leave a huge amount of space on the highway and cruise at a more constant speed to avoid this issue. It always helps traffic behind me flow better. My favourite was a guy behind me who was super pissed off and ran into the on-ramp lane to pass me, honked a bunch, floored it, and then had to slam on the brakes to avoid absolutely obliterating the car in front of me. My car is 50in tall, it’s not hard to see around but people just don’t get it. I figured it out by myself the very first time I went on the highway and yet…
It’s different at lights and stuff, of course, but only a little. Regardless it just goes to show that people have no idea what they’re doing and a whole lot of pent up rage to really make it “fun”.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin said it, but this is a great example of it in practice.