Usually, people don’t get behind the wheel with the intent to kill. We can always discuss the ramifications of drunk driving, speeding and other reckless behaviors that some drivers exhibit when they put the lives of others in danger. It is a discussion that is worth having and it is very important.
However, you cannot tell me that carrying a gun around and waving it in someone’s face is anything other than an attempt to threaten a life. Guns were built explicitly to kill. That is their only purpose. That is why people mostly focus on gun violence. There is intent behind the deaths of every person involved in a shooting while with car crashes, it is rarely the driver’s intent to murder anybody.
It doesn’t mean that car crashes don’t matter and don’t deserve attention, but you comparing the two as if they are the same is frankly ignorant and smells of gun apologist.
They’re not the same. This is privilege speaking, I know, but gun violence mostly occurs between people who know each other. I’m not in those circles or neighborhoods, so only the occasional mass shooting might affect me.
But cars? They’re omnipresent. There’s a steady stream of them in front of my home, so I can’t avoid the danger. My life is threatened by cars every damn day, and my quality of life degraded by them. And you can’t tell me that driving a car around a city is anything but sociopathic disregard for the well-being of others, because that’s what it amounts to.
Cars as bad as guns? No, they’re worse.
That is a pretty high number of shootings then. Practically everyone drives so that is a lot of miles/person. You have to drive, you don’t have to be shot, that is why it draws media attention.
One of these things is purpose-built for the deliberate infliction of harm. The other is vastly more popular and merely causes harm through negligence.
Sort of like the American political parties, I guess
Traffic engineers use decades-old manuals that ignore safety in favour of driver convenience. This has to change. Streets built by them are a huge public safety issue.
We should never accept crashes that result in serious injuries or deaths as if they are an inevitable force of nature or something. They’re merely a predictable outcome of a badly built system.
that ignore safety in favour of driver convenience
How about one better? Municipalities that ignore both safety and driver convenience in favor of feeling good about helping the environment, or so they perceive. The end result of more pollution, more hazardous navigational conditions for everyone, and more problems.
Example, a state law that made it so bicyclists no longer have to come to a stop at intersections. It was a feel-good measure to make things easier for bicyclists so they’re not having to come to a complete stop over and over. In implementation, it just means a car driving 55MPH comes up to a green traffic light intersection that would ordinarily be safe, except one of the cross-directions has trees blocking the side road, so a bike comes chugging down the hill at 35MPH and blazes through their red light right in front of the much heavier and slower to stop car. (C.R.S. § 42‑4‑1412.5)
Now, couple that with another law that allows large trucks, buses, and RVs preferential treatment at roundabouts. All other vehicles must yield to the large vehicle no matter what. And going back to… the bike doesn’t yield to anything. (C.R.S. § 42‑4‑715)
Welcome to Colorful Colorado.
People think the pandemic invited driver chaos, we were bold, and asked the universe, “hold my beer?”
You need three prongs, infrastructure, training and enforcement. No one wants to spend the large amount of $ it would take to redesign thousands of miles of roads in each city. There is also the issue of how ridiculously low the bar is set for getting a license and how basic safety inspections are. In my state I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen highway patrols enforcing traffic laws.
Traffic engineers
They are just doing what they are being told. They don’t have the authority to diviate in practice.
This is a political issue. Everything is captured by the shittiest lobby.
Health care > health insurance and pharma
Infra > cars and oil
Privacy > tech firms
There is nothing a slave can do via direct action in these jobs since they will fire you and out somebody in place who will follow orders.
I guess it’s because one of these things is a widely used tool, a requirement for work / living in the USA and gives people freedom.
The other is just car.
Given the strong correlation between these two, I hypothesise that in Chicago, cars rather than bullets are shot from guns.
Car guns. Fully automatic.
In absolute numbers.
How many users? How many per people?
Craah = Probably unintended
Shootings = Probably very intendedBesides. There are loads of local crash/emergency reports in the local newspaper.
Only one of these things draws media attention
Whats that? Trans people?
This doesn’t super surprise me. Driving should be taken more seriously. You’re controlling a 2 ton death machine and it shouldn’t be taken lightly.
We should be retaking driver tests every seven to ten years to keep our license.
Poorly designed roads, signage, and intersections cause a lot of accidents. Think on ramps that throw you into traffic, and off-ramps that want you to get over three lanes after exiting in order to turn right at your cross street.
Lack of traffic enforcement drives up insurance costs and reduces city revenues. Some states have cheaped out on the reflective paint used to stripe roads, so you can’t see lane dividers in the rain. More of that wonderful “deregulation” and people not wanting to pay taxes I guess.
It also doesn’t help that many states are getting rid of car inspections for some bizarre reason. Not great to avoid shit falling off of the car in front of you when you’re going 70 mph.
The deregulation & lack of inspections is probably so that the people don’t have as many legitimate reasons to demand higher pay.
We need certified driving and accident avoidance systems and local vehicle to vehicle communication to facilitate lane changes, also certified. All systems independent, acting with consensus.
all the auto body shops in town are on the same road. they lobbied city hall to have the intersection out front changed so now there’s two, three fender benders a day there.
Yeah my state has gotten rid of inspections and it’s baffling to me.
Inspections were cancelled because it was shown that they actually led to more accidents. A small percentage of the time mechanics didn’t tighten bolts, back on correctly, after removing a wheel to inspect brake pads. The vast majority of accidents are caused by speeding, not because a wheel brakes free and the car swerved.
Mine has been arguing this point for a while. Apparently there wasn’t really a drop of issues here when they went into place, so they question the usefulness.
That said, they’re just done incorrectly in the first place. They are done by dealers/shops that lose money in doing them and are instead banking on charging you lots of money for problems they find and hope you get fixed with them. They need be done at an independent run spot with no interest in anything but safety and no way to be bought out.
Wouldn’t the dealers / shops by the most motivated to find the problems, if that’s the case?
Over my 25 yrs driving and getting inspected here, I’ve found a mix of issues… I always inspect my car before dropping it off, most times in their own parking lot.
- good old boys that don’t care and pass it without obviously checking because they know they won’t make money on it anyway.
- ones that talk down to my wife because she must just believe any BS they make up (until I get involved, call them out, the apologize and I don’t go back)
- dealers that make problems for you to have to fix (had two places… one obviously shoved a screwdriver through my CV boot that was fine when I drove it in and wanted $989 to fix. The other said I was missing lug nuts that I know were there when I dropped it off and wanted to charge me $5/each plus $100 installation.)
- places that are actually good and fair.
One issue with the first is that the state doesn’t actually pay them enough per hour that it makes sense to take their time and do it right… they just crank them through finding obviously high money making issues and skipping the rest.
They’re so motivated, they find problems that don’t exist!
Texas?
Where I live, car inspections have never been a thing. Some cities in my state mandate emissions tests, which I think include a basic inspection. Nothing at all in my county. Just pay to re-register it every year.
It would have to be a written test to do any good. And for that to be administered properly costs money.
Yes, safety costs money.
it shouldn’t be taken lightly
Well, of course not. It’s 2 tons!
I’ll get out…
Not gonna make much of a difference unless you take your mum with you.
Ohhh!! Hahahahahajaj that was a good burn! Hahahahahahah
Cars are not designed to inflict harm. This cheap false equivalence tells us a lot.
Yeah, cars aren’t even designed to kill people and they still do it just as much as guns. They’re way too dangerous to be legal.
That doesnt make any sense. Since card have other purposes than killing they can be legal.
Since guns only exist to kill they should not be legal. But it is a fight against wind mills since americans love their ability to kill who they want more than they love their kids.
Car drivers kill more people without even trying than shooters kill. Imagine if the car drivers were actually trying to kill people. Cars are probably a hundred or a thousand times as dangerous as guns if you control for intent.
Yet cars are not made to kill and have a purpose in everyday life. Guns dont. But sure, I am all for building more public transportation.
Nobody has ever used a car to accomplish as much good as The Adjuster did
Right. I can’t ride my gun to work or the grocery store. I get that there’s a lot of negatives associated with car culture, but it’s a tool in a way that firearms are not.
An automobile, at the end of the day, is a luxury item. A toy. Humanity existed for most of its history without cars, and even today, you can get to work or the grocery store without one. (Granted, often not easily, but that’s only because we’ve made it difficult to get there any other way. But making it difficult was a deliberate policy choice designed to exclude poor people.) One could argue that the automobile is an anti-tool, as its use is making our lives materially worse (traffic violence, health impacts, pollution, ecosystem destruction, climate change, the burden on government and personal budgets), but that ignores a car’s major function as a cultural identity marker, and for wealth signaling. We humans value that a lot. Consider, as but one common example, the enormous pickup truck used as a commuter vehicle, known as a pavement princess, bro-dozer, or gender-affirming vehicle.
In that way, they’re exactly the same as firearms, which are most often today used as a cultural identity marker. (Often by the same people who drive a pavement princess, and in support of the same cultural identity.) Firearms are also also luxury toys in that people enjoy going to the firing range and blasting away hundreds of dollars for the enjoyment of it. But beyond that, the gun people have a pretty legit argument, too, that their firearms are tools used for hunting and self-defense. They are undeniably useful in certain contexts, and no substitute will do. One certainly wouldn’t send mounted cavalry with sabers into war today.
Your car is just as dangerous as a gun. You’re not allowed to wave your gun around at McDonald’s, so why can you drive your car through it? It’s corruption. Cars were going to be banned in cities before the auto industry started passing bribes around.
Cars, roads, and car culture are inflicting harm though, even if it’s seen as a neutral tool by many
Lots of things cause harm while also doing good things. It’s a balance.
The problem is when that balance skews more one way than another.
I hope the next “acceptable casualty” of car culture is you
Are you saying that OP is making a “cheap false equivalence”? They are commenting on news coverage, so I don’t follow what you mean.
Yes, OP is very much doing that. They are commenting on how they think that news coverage should do a false equivalence on those two things.
The graph didn’t offer the conclusion- op did, and yes it’s cheap
Road deaths are typically viewed as a risk we take while going about our day, while firearm deaths are either an intentional act, or someone doing something very stupid.
How many people drive a car daily in this area?
Yeah heart disease kills more than either but we don’t hold candlelight vigils to ban butter. Because food is a normal part of life. I know a lot of people grow up with guns, but to me, guns are weird. I don’t know anyone who owns a gun. Not that I know of anyway. I have never held a gun. I have never seen a gun, except strapped to a cop walking by. I hope to never touch a gun (or be touched by one).
Nobody should grow up in car culture either. It’s not safe for kids to be surrounded by Death Zones. It leads to kids either being kept inside all day and getting brain atrophy, or dying on the road. Not to mention all the asthma. Raising a child in a car neighbourhood is abuse.
I’ve used firearms before, including doing smallbore shooting, it can be a lot of fun.
But they’re also a massive responsibility, and I don’t plan to actually own one.
I mean, how many times have we seen news reports of people intentially driving into protesters? I do wish they had the leading cause of death for comparison tho. Probably cancer, looks like a low-estimate is 6000 people a year just in Chicago.
Neither of these topics should even be drawing media attention, considering how frequent and non-notable they are. They just report on this stuff every day because it’s cheaper and easier than exclusively finding and reporting on real notable local news, and television news needs filler content for selling ad spots. Ever had a day where there was no news, and they ended early?
Driving is orders of magnitude more likely to kill you at any second you’re in a car, than flying is at any second you’re in a plane.
People who are terrified of flying will get in a car and drive like a monkey like it’s no big deal.
Phobias are, by definition, irrational.
They should fear neither. Orders of magnitude relative risk to a minute risk is still very little.
Driving is orders of magnitude more likely to kill you at any second you’re in a car, than flying is at any second you’re in a plane.
This is an oft-repeated factoid that comes straight from the airlines bending statistics to meet their desires. It’s true that on a per mile basis, planes are safer. But on a per trip basis, cars actually win on safety.
And this makes some sense once you actually think about it. A car ride is typically going to be a frequent, short distance; An average of like 90% of all driving happens within 5 miles of the person’s home. Whereas air trips are infrequent and cover huge distances. So the accident-per-trip stat is watered down with cars having lots of trips, but the short distances tend to inflate the accident-per-mile number. In contrast, the accident-per-mile stat is watered down with planes covering a lot of miles per trip, but the infrequent nature of the trips means the accident-per-trip number is inflated.
And airlines conveniently only ever quote the accident-per-mile number when comparing safety statistics, because they have a vested interest in making airplanes seem statistically safer. If anything, seeing this factoid repeated is just a reminder that even math can be intentionally biased to fit a certain agenda.
Per trip is a completely useless metric as you say, that’s the reason.
So the point you’re making is that going far away is dangerous? No shit.
My point is that the “planes are safer” stat is, at best, disingenuous. Any single trip is going to be more dangerous in a plane. But people tend to fly less than they drive, so cars are cited as being more dangerous.
Any single trip is going to be more dangerous in a plane
So you’re saying driving from London to Shanghai is safer than flying there?
Dumb question: which one draws more media attention in Chicago?
In my own experience (not Chicago), the local news is dominated by where the rush-hour crash is today, while national news talks way more about gun deaths.
I’m going to go with the general vibe of Lemmy here and assume you mean that auto deaths need to get more attention in America. To that I would say there is a general cultural attitude that cars are a necessary evil (even among most people who don’t outright love them, which is a huge demographic), and fixing the zoning and infrastructure would take decades and many tens of billions of dollars to restructure a large city around public transit. Besides bumper-sticker-slogan politics (“more public transit!”) there are precious few real, concrete plans for getting from the current situation to the car-free utopia.
Even then, you’d not eliminate cars entirely. Among the more developed western European nations that are known for good public transit, Ireland seems (at a quick glance) to have the fewest cars per person at 536 per 1,000, while the car-happy US has 850/1,000. So best case, you reduce cars by ~35%.
Gun deaths, on the other hand, are easier to imagine as a problem that can be solved relatively quickly and with less disruption. From an advocacy point of view, it’s the lower-hanging fruit.
But the question is deaths by car and you don’t need to entirely get rid of cars to make a huge difference.
- inspections. It boggles the mind that some places don’t have them
Traffic calming really can work. I’m not talking about speed bumps, but things like curb bumps to narrow the road at intersection while increasing pedestrian visibility, traffic islands, roundabouts. Even repainting lines can make a difference. My town’s master plan is driven by accident stats, so every road rework is a noticeable improvement
A couple years ago my town repainted a two lane road into one lane plus turn lanes. Now traffic is slower and calmer yet you get through that area more quickly. Most importantly it’s no longer one of the most dangerous roads in town
Most recently they built a median. This was a dangerous intersection because it always backed up so impatient people would blast straight through in the turn lanes, causing accidents. Now they can’t
And yes, because of Florida Man, my town built medians at every railroad crossing so idiots can’t go around the gates. We never had that problem, but idiocy is contagious.
Every city and town can make a difference. Now. Relatively cheaply. Just by collecting accident data and prioritizing by that. Just by making small changes a little at a time
there are precious few real, concrete plans for getting from the current situation to the car-free utopia.
Ban cars today and let people figure it out themselves.
