We’ve never had better technology to build safer cars and streets, and yet here we are. Pedestrian detection and all, installed on a vehicle that’s got a front grille as tall as a person.
I saw someone watching a movie on their phone as they drove the other day, also a probable factor.
Investment in better infrastructure with no profit is a crime against capitalism.
I met a woman who told me that during the pandemic lock downs she made money driving to legal weed states to spend tens of thousands of dollars on weed and flip it back in her state. She also told me that it was really boring so she’d frequently get above 100 while watching a movie on her phone on her dashboard. So that’s who’s out on the road with you
Fucking.
Wild.
That kind of behaviour should just be an immediate and permanent revocation of the license, car towed on the spot. Fiddling with phone to get directions or dismiss a notification is one thing but actively watching entertainment?
I have ADHD. It’s not super severe but it’s not great. I can drive 16 hrs (with appropriate breaks) without the radio. I will admit, I tend not to be super respectful of speed limits. But driving is enough stimulation for my scatterbrained self. Brain rot is a hell of a drug.
I also have ADHD, and have also done a 16 hour drive straight through. Audiobooks or podcasts help. Music gets boring after a few hours. Audiobooks or podcasts are constantly changing, so it’s enough mental stimulation to stay engaged, while also not being too distracting.
Punishment for bad driving iof any kind is nearly completely unenforced.
Just the occasional holier-than-thou speed crackdowns. Nothing for the people totally ignoring the road.
People like this are why safe drivers’ insurance premiums are still so high. The safe drivers are subsidizing the dangerous ones. We’re being forced to pay more because the risk of being hit by a braindead watches-movies-while-doing-100 driver has increased.
That’s the end result of car centric infrastructure. The bad drivers couldn’t afford to pay the full rates they would be charged. If you kick 10-20% of the population off the road, that is a whole lot of people siddenly unable to work
That many people suddenly stopping working would destroy the only thing Americans truly value - shareholder profits
We have no alternatives to driving. As such the worst drivers you’ve ever seen will continue to drive by necessity
That’s absolutely wild. Before my state started selling legal weed, I would sometimes take trips to Massachusetts to buy enough to last me for months.
The one thing I never did on those drives? Speed.
I figured I was already technically breaking the law by carrying so much weed across non-legal states. To get pulled over for speeding could’ve led to massive trouble. Why put a target on my car (beyond already having an out-of-state license plate)?
I went the other way - I meticulously watched for speed limit changes and set my cruise control accordingly, so it would be one fewer thing to worry about. When possible, I drove so there’d be a car some distance in front of me, but still within my view. That way, if there was a cop up ahead, I’d see the other car slow down first and it would give me a heads up.
Adding more distractions and driving more erratically when you’re already breaking one law is a really stupid way to get caught.
Yup. When you look around, everybody is on their fucking phone these days. No wonder they are killing people.
You would think in a country that leads the world in the lawsuit industry someone would have come after Telcos for not installing safety measures on phones so people can’t do stupid shit while driving.
Vehicles are getting way too big on average, I mean the F150 is North America’s best selling vehicle (*edit: I have since learned as of 2024 that spot actually belongs to the RAV4) since forever. It’s a problem of misaligned incentives.
There’s an exception carved out for large vehicles in the EPA guidelines that hold them to less stringent emissions standards which incentivizes building larger vehicles 1
Large cars are also incentivized by our crash safety rating system which only takes into account the mortality rate of those inside the car as apposed to average related fatalities. This means it will prioritize safety of those in the vehicle, which has led to our average fatalities increasing. 2
As an unintended side effect this also damages roads much faster because vehicle weight per axle determines the magnitude of the damage a vehicle does to the road. 3 anecdotally this makes me concerned for the additional weight that electric cars add.
Also as vehicles increase in weight the amount of microplastics put into the air as a by product of tire wear increase. 4
As cars increase in size (and therefore weight) the downsides are exponential.
All that plus everyone is going 10 over on their phones. If operating a motor vehicle is so disinteresting to you, that you need to look at your phone every 10 seconds, DON’T DRIVE.
Driving is simultaneously the most boring and most dangerous thing people do day-to-day. They want the driving to stop as soon as possible, so they speed. They don’t want to be stuck with their own thoughts for even a single second, so they text.
And there’s no choice. It’s not like they can get anywhere without a car in this shithole country.
Thank you for putting these links together! I’m about to be in the market for a truck and have been researching current models, and noticed the trend of larger and larger vehicles for a few years now, and wondered why. It couldn’t just be because of lifted truck culture. I’m about to just go to a junk yard and try to restore an old one.
It sucks too because the old trucks with a low bed were so much better for actualy doing work if you care about your back at all.
Honestly, I would love a lil Japanese kei truck in addition to my daily driver vehicle. They seem like the perfect lil truck for dump runs and transporting materials from Home Depot or what have you.
I got curious… In Norway pedestrian fatalities fell by ~73% (from 22 to 6) from 2010 to 2024.
Ah! So Norwegians immigrating to the US are to blame! /s
And it’s all the bad drivers and reckless pedestrians too!
and its 100% from unnecessarily large cars
and car infrastructure
Not even 1% from phones?
Phones cause more accidents but mortality rate rose sharply with the increased size of vehicles.
And now the States has forced the EU to allow shit cars like that.
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There would certainly be consequences if they stood up to the US.
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There are shit tons of MEPs who are in Trump’s and/or Putin’s pockets. There won’t be any consequences for them personally.
Europe is essentially a collection of neocolonies of the US empire. As Europe’s colonies gained independence and as NATO constantly increased demands for US military hardware and as fossil fuels became dominated by trade in dollars and as the Eurozone robbed them of currency sovereignty, they became stuck in a state of dependency on the US and USD. The amount of leverage Trump has to punish Europe is actually massive, tariffs are the tip of the iceberg.
How does a winter without imported US gas sound? You can’t get it from Russia anymore, after all.
The only hope I see for Europe is if they pivot to Asia, especially China. The only alternative is to get off of imported US natural gas and oil traded in dollars by switching to Chinese solar and electric vehicles, embrace electrification. The Netherlands backing down on stealing that Chinese chip factory gives me some hope that Europe isn’t going to alienate itself from China too.
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The US would just wait for the EU to collapse, because even a single winter without US imports would destroy them. The UK couldn’t ramp up production that quickly, they’ve been declining as producers for a long time. There’d be at least a few years when people can’t heat their homes or run factories because they’re cut off from the US and Russia at the same time.
Trump also seems fully willing to destroy the US just to teach his enemies a lesson lol
Besides, just drilling for more fossil fuels is going to kill us all. Electrification is the only serious solution.
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Yes, the US shooting itself in retaliation. Real bad consequences, that.
Tariffs are really stupid
Yes, the US is a stupid country full of stupid people.
But, there’s a reason Europe is bending the knee. As stupid and self destructive as the US is, it can still wreck their economy.
We’re all speeding towards the next great depression. Giving into the US won’t stop it from coming. But I do see your point
The reason is that MEPs have been installed by Russia.
Yes, Russia controls all the world’s governments.
This is a reasonable thing to believe and not at all fucking stupid. 👍
It’s not as if research has shown that Russia has been doing that shit for at least the past 10 years (I attend security conferences, they’re not fun, although the food is nice)
Just to clarify, death to Amerikkka.
I just recognize that the empire is dangerous and understand why weak liberals don’t want to provoke it.
I wonder if it’s all of the touch screens? I got in a rideshare vehicle the other day and the driver had fucking youtube on
Trucks and SUVs have also gotten bigger with flatter fronts. People used to go onto the hood in a collision, now they go under the vehicle
I think that’s been true for a long time though
Damn, 23 posts in 4 hours. You sure are posting fast.
They have to. They’re driving.
The share of pedestrians increased over that period, which may have had something to do with it. I suspect cell phone use while driving makes up a large part as well.
I live in a small town and when I’m walking around it seems as though half of the vehicles that drive by are in their phones
How is that legal in the US?
If you walk into the knife, someone is running around with, then its your fault?
It’s more like walking on train tracks and being surprised when you are hit by a train.
no, it isn’t. You are not supposed to walk on train tracks and there are no train tracks next to every house.
Expand public transportation towards the goal of banning personal cars nothing but giant space hoarding, planet destroying death machines.
Now do 1810 thru 1961!
