Odd sentence, ain't it, but also like half the reasoning why people keep buying ever bigger cars and trucks.
The other half is "some other schmuck thinking this will snuff me out", which, fair, but how do you not arrive at the conclusion the eternal arms race of weight and height with cars is like, super bad?
I say this a lot but I genuinely think personal vehicles are too much responsibility for people en masse. I know that’s not a convincing proposition to the unconverted but I think it’s true.
Even me, I phone shit in waaaaaay more than I think is acceptable lol and I think most people, if they were honest, would say the same. I don’t believe a single American is locked in driving like they’d act like if you started questioning them about this stuff
I don’t think anyone would design society in this way intentionally if given the choice lol. It’s wildly inefficient and dangerous, we’re just used to it and it made a lot of automobile lobbyists rich along the way
I say this a lot but I genuinely think personal vehicles are too much responsibility for people en masse.
: a bicycle is an individual vehicleBut otherwise, yes.
I don’t think anyone would design society in this way intentionally if giving the choice
Disagree'd here due to carbrain as an effect of having done it too long
I meant personal automobiles. Bicycles aren’t anywhere near as dangerous so I thought it kinda went without saying but I understand why you might think of them lolAnd when I said “anyone” I meant like, absent the influence of cars. Like if we took a person and presented them societies with different organizations of travel, weighing their costs, efficiencies, threat to life, etc, I don’t think anyone who didn’t grow up in this culture would pick this shit on an objective basis. Which is why I said “we’re just used to it.”
The problem is that nobody's making an informed, apples-to-apples choice when it comes to cars or transit. People like the drive anywhere, anytime access they get when they spend five figures a year on their cars. They wouldn't trade it for the transit where they live because the transit where they live sucks. They wouldn't trade it for NYC transit because even that is full of suck (bad connectivity outside of Manhattan and filthy-ass stations that are going to feel like saunas in a few weeks if not right now). Thing is, MTA's budget is $19B and even if you restrict it to NYC proper, serves 8M people. That's under $2500 per person. As such, the proper comparison should be either:
Whatever godawful clunker you can get off craigslist and somehow keep running for $2500 a year versus MTA levels of service
OR
Current car versus what MTA could do with a quintupled budget -- Manhattan levels of service in all boroughs with clean, cool stations and rental car reimbursement for when people need to go somewhere backwards.
a bicycle is an individual vehicle
unironically a good way of thinking about it
A bicycle is an appropriately individual vehicle in that is a 1 Human power vehicle to carry 1 human rather than 100 horsepower vehicle to carry uh 1 human
You need special training, licensing, and (likely) random drug testing to drive "heavy" machinery that's smaller and weighs less than these trucks. Those vehicles can't go 100mph, either.
Depends on the job, I've seen machine operators who are absolutely not passing a random drug test and I've also operated a couple with absolutely no license 😇
Still agree that murdertrucks are bad but don't assume anyone is enforcing any rules with regards to heavy machinery lol
I spend a lot of time walking around in a couple neighborhoods where these giant trucks come from. I'm over 6 feet tall and some of them have hoods that come up to my head and extend out a solid 3 feet forward. Headlights that are taller than my car's roof. And from my experience as someone who drives slow on the freeway, they drive with emotion.
These people should be charged with a crime just for owning them. They have no ability to prevent themselves from rolling over a child unless they have a front facing camera. Premeditated unintentional manslaughter.
There's a theoretical mechanism in german law where if you do a traffic violation purposeuflly, it costs double in fines.
It is never applied. You can park, illegally, on a sidewalk here and any and all enforcement agencies will think that was a whoopsie.
Which, fine, but if you manage to park on the sidewalk without noticing I'm pretty sure you should have your drivers license taken away as you're not fit to operate a motor vehicle or even a bicycle.
The fact that there's no height, length, width, or weight limit for personal vehicles is mortifying and jokerfying
I don't get too mad when some random car blocks a crosswalk or whatever I'm walking across but when it's some giant stupid truck that has never left a paved road? Oh man I let em have it. These people are very easy to emasculate. And their comebacks are so weak.
What drives me inSANE is when I’m trying to go into a parking lot from a frontage road and they’re there waiting to turn out and their giant tank truck blocks the entire fucking thing bc those inlets weren’t designed for those things
My favorite part of American road design is that it's usually impossible to get good visibility on the oncoming lane without pulling into the crosswalk. Especially if there's street parking or you're next to a giant truck.
I will lip off hard to anyone in a car cause they aren't gonna get out to fight me and if they do they'll make all of traffic mad
But what if I unconsciously believe that I have a small penis? How else am I supposed to express this belief except by buying a $100,000 lifted Ford, wearing wraparound sunglasses, shaving my head, growing my beard down to my belly, listening to the same five shitty autotuned songs on the radio continuously, and then tailgating you bumper-to-bumper if you do less than 70 MPH over the speed limit? Checkmate, liberal.
Dark Forest Theory of intersuburban politics
So what you don't understand is that they need these trucks for hauling. It's just that every time you see them empty they're on the way to/from a haul. It seems improbable but it's true!
I love that even if this was the case the actual area for cargo is the one thing that's managed to shrink over time.
