"The ultimate test to prove what cars have done to the American psyche only requires that you walk out your front door. Take a photo with your phone. Now highlight in red the places in which it would be fully legal for a car to strike and kill you. Now highlight in yellow the places in which a car could strike and kill you and you would have to make a legal case that it was not your fault. Now highlight in green places where you believe you are safe from cars." - Dan Sheehan #fuckcars
6:30am, Thursday, San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge
This congestion could have been a single train car, but the powers that be decided that it was better (for them) to make everyone dependent on the oil and auto industry.
Buy a polluting gas guzzler today and we'll give you €500 to fly somewhere on holiday. Spread the joy of fossil fuels far and wide.
Fun for the kids as well: colour in this picture of a huge #wankpanzer of the kind that is particularly good at killing kids and if you're lucky you might win tickets to be driven to a adventure park.
"Wohnraum statt Hubraum" auf ein dickes Wohnmobil kleben und dieses in einer ohnehin engen Fahrradstraße in einer der teuersten Städte Deutschlands abstellen und damit den Flächendruck nur noch erhöhen...
Manchmal verzweifle ich echt an der egozentrischen selbstgerechten Dummheit unserer MitbürgerInnen.
@kim_harding I know nothing about the California electricity grid. But I do know electricity demand more or less follows a sinewave and overnight demand is negligible. So set your timer to start charging at 9 pm and run till 7am and you actually help the grid, using otherwise unusable energy which would have to be dumped.
And in some parts of Australia the grid can actually tap into household and EV batteries at the peak half hour just after 8am so they can cope with the excess demand
@capntransit@evanpeterjones Yeah, I've told you this but I don't know if Evan knows that the origin story of the blog name was from when I walked around Worcester, was horrified by how unwalkable it was, and put some photos onto a Facebook album with the title "more pedestrian observations."
@Alon@evanpeterjones I'm not sure you ever actually told me the story behind the name! Pretty cool.
I've changed trains in Worcester, England, and I've been to a lot of towns in Massachusetts, but for some reason I've never been to Worcester, Massachusetts....
Looking at modern American cities, and at photos of General Motors' "Futurama" exhibit - where they promoted their utopic view of a future in which everyone was their customer - it's clear that GM succeeded in pushing through with their vision.
Modern American cities look very much like the models they presented there.
They were razed and re-made, not according to the will of their citizens but that of a handful of corporate profiteers.
If Earth Day really meant anything, it would be World Scrap a Car day, doesn't have to be yours (if you don't have one), just any random car... that way we really could start to save the planet...
@cheeaun of course they need to start from somewhere. But quite curious normal driver here are aware of those bike lanes or not? (Maybe they thought those are motorbike lane 🤣)
But they also mentioned “he said, highlighting that the lane was built according to safety regulations and specifications.”.
@henrylim96 maybe good for initial awareness/marketing/education despite still useless. I see the lanes got put bicycle icons. Now just need to see if the awareness thing or the maintenance work will persist 🫣
SG also got such issues last time but they really rebuilt the whole road (widening, move trees, move bus stops, etc) instead of monkey-patching.
I am going to take to work one of the few bus routes that goes through my town, even though it only comes every forty minutes and I have been told only "crazy" people ride on it. I guess that means I am a crazy person now. #fuckcars
Summarises car-related harm including crashes, pollution, land use, and injustices.
1 in 34 deaths are caused by cars and automobility with 1,670,000 deaths per year.
Cars and automobility have killed 60–80 million people since their invention.
Car harm will continue unless policies change; example interventions are discussed.
Abstract
Despite the widespread harm caused by cars and automobility, governments, corporations, and individuals continue to facilitate it by expanding roads, manufacturing larger vehicles, and subsidising parking, electric cars, and resource extraction. This literature review synthesises the negative consequences of automobility, or car harm, which we have grouped into four categories: violence, ill health, social injustice, and environmental damage. We find that, since their invention, cars and automobility have killed 60–80 million people and injured at least 2 billion. Currently, 1 in 34 deaths are caused by automobility. Cars have exacerbated social inequities and damaged ecosystems in every global region, including in remote car-free places. While some people benefit from automobility, nearly everyone—whether or not they drive—is harmed by it. Slowing automobility's violence and pollution will be impracticable without the replacement of policies that encourage car harm with policies that reduce it. To that end, the paper briefly summarises interventions that are ready for implementation.
@mzedp The irony is a LOT of those "tough" cars are all very fragile plastic molding. Take them offroad and the plastic all cracks. I have installed radios on a number of those in an area where 4WD is required for road reasons, and all those "tough" cars are very, very fragile. Interior panels crack, dashboards, headliner falls down, the external "macho" stuff all breaks into pieces. Not suitable for offroad.
Un classico: un'#auto mi fa uno sfioro in #zona30 lasciandomi circa 10 cm, subito prima di un cantiere. 🤬 Poco dopo un'altra auto mi supera lasciandomi poco margine. 😡
Io procedevo a circa 20 km/h.
Entrambe le auto le ho raggiunte al semaforo successivo 😤
Ho la pellaccia dura e non mi faccio intimorire, però capisco che episodi del genere possano fare passare la voglia di andare in bici, a chi ha meno esperienza, a chi è più timoroso.
What if mass shootings were reported the way vehicular manslaughter is reported?
Headline: 13 People Dead and 4 Injured After They Collided With Bullets.
Story: According to police 13 people died and 4 were taken to the hospital after they collided with bullets at a café on Main Street.
A 22 year old male was walking past the café and his gun began to fire bullets at the café. Several bullets hit the café damaging a coffee machine before more bullets hit some of the diners in the café. According to the police, none of the diners were wearing bulletproof vests or military body armor when they ran into the bullets.
Of the 13 dead, 9 died at the scene and 4 died later at the hospital. The 4 injured diners were treated for non-fatal wounds and released from the hospital.
The 22 year old male gun owner is uninjured and returned to his home very shaken by the incident.
@KawaTora I'd say this needs more passive voice. Make it sound more like a police report: "The cafe was hit by several bullets, damaging a coffee machine, before some of the diners were hit by more bullets." Nobody, not even the bullets, take any action at all. "Nine people were declared dead at the scene; four people were later declared dead at the hospital."
