We don’t need more pronouns. We need less of them.
In my native language there is no even he/she pronouns. The word is “hän” and it’s gender neutral. You can be male, female, FTM, MTF, non-binary or what ever and you’re still called “hän”. You can identify as anything you like and “hän” already includes you.
That sounds like a solution that should make everyone happy. However, the crowd arguing against more pronouns would also argue against this, just because they’re impossible to appease.
Wouldn’t be surprised if the (mostly) political right that seems all these new pronouns as stupid would also ironically be against giving up on their own gender specific pronoun for a gender neutral one.
My language is the exact opposite, everything is gendered in a binary way, and there’s no way to talk in a neutral or non-binary way, at least not in a super awkward way.
I feel the same but with genders. To be clear if anyone identifies to a specific gender, I’ll respect that. However I don’t see why genders are necessary. We are all unique human beings and there’s no need to label everyone to a specific gender.
I think a little bit it’s just that people typically like labels. They want to fit neatly into their little labeled box and the more labels they have, the more unique and/or complete they feel.
I really rejected labels as a teen, I hated the idea of it. Now I realize they can be useful for some things, and you know, if my trans brother feels better because his label is now male, that’s fine it doesn’t hurt me any to call him what makes him feel good.
the more labels they have, the more unique and/or complete they feel.
That sounds completely bonkers to me but you might be right.
if my trans brother feels better because his label is now male, that’s fine
No, of course if you don’t like the body you have and you want to change your “gender-defining” features, you should. It’s a bit like changing your haircut - although more impactful. You didn’t like your looks/body before, so you changed it and now you feel better so that’s perfect!
Before I learned about the LGBTQ community, I thought of gender as something you were born with and that described your body type: masculine or feminine. Aside from that, I don’t and never believed that it defines what kind of person you are, it only defines a part of your looks.
Now with the community there are people who describe themselves as non-binary or agender and again, I’ll totally respect that. However when I tried to think about what my gender really was, I started to realize that the whole concept of gender didn’t really make sense to me. What does it really mean to be non-binary? Heck, what does it even mean to be male or female? If it’s not just your body-type then what is it? Why do we need it? Isn’t it easier to not assign any genders at all? Just be who you want to be and love who you want to love!
If it’s not just your body-type then what is it? Why do we need it? Isn’t it easier to not assign any genders at all? Just be who you want to be and love who you want to love!
That would be lovely if they weren’t a lot of heavily armed persons willing to kill you or make you suffer if you act that way.
However I don’t see why genders are necessary. We are all unique human beings and there’s no need to label everyone to a specific gender.
And if many people (specially, even if not exclusively, in a certain country whose name I’ll avoid mentioning) didn’t have as their favorite passtime “kill the freak”, where “freak” is anyone not belonging to their narrow definition of acceptability, difference would truly be unremarkable. However, reality doesn’t seem to be working well for those folks, and they need a way to identify each other to provide community and to feel less alone and, maybe, to defend each other.
We should remove the gender information from ID and other documents unrelated to the gender
(Maybe kept the XX or XY mark on medical papers though, may be useful to avoid death from medical poisoning, but even your gender and sexual preferences have nothing to do here, so no gender mark neither)
And we’ve nowadays taken it even further, in spoken Finnish we’ve even got rid of the “hän” and mostly use “se”, which is the Finnish word for “it”. The same pronoun is used for people in all forms, animals, items, institutions and so on, and in practice the only case for “hän” is people trying to remind others they consider their pets human.
I’ll go one further: I get (and respect) the utility of they/them pronouns for a singular entity, but it IS clunky and confusing. English is ever evolving but when I hear a “they” it is still very much more abstract and plural than a more specific he or she.
Whatever: it’s my shit and I’ll gladly deal with a nanosecond of confusion and adjust if it allows people to maintain their dignity. Point is, by insisting that there’s nothing confusing about they/them in reference to a single entity feels disingenuous. I know moderate people who are otherwise live and let live as well as receptive to basic human dignity who are turned off by the confusing abstraction, switching tenses, etc.
They/them isn’t the elegant, seamless drop in that people say it is and it hurts the messaging. I get that being rigid and forceful is necessary with the rampant transphobia and “i’m just asking (bad faith) questions” going on, but I still fuck up semantics and tenses like whoa
I don’t think they/them is the ideal word to replace he/she with either. It probably needs to be a whole new word. They/them exists in my language too and it’s used when you’re talking about multiple people. It’s confusing to say “they did something” when you’re speaking of a single person.
It’s not people using the neutral that bothers me, it’s the fact that the neutral is both singular and plural while the non neutrals are only singular/plural.
and the plural part also alters the entire sentence structure to plural.
“He is over there” - Singular and easy to understand
“They is over there” - Just sounds wrong.
“They are over there” - Both singular and plural. Is it a person of unspecified nature or multiple people of mixed ones?
English could use a popularization of a strictly singular neutral that doesn’t carry implications of being an object rather than a being (“It is over there”)
This argument has never made sense simply because of the fact that singular they/them has been in use for literally centuries. It’s even reasonable to say it’s always been in use considering singular they/them was in use in the 14th century and modern English formed around 14-17th. I can guarantee you have never batted an eye when you heard something like “someone called but they didn’t leave a message”.
There are only two differences with recent usage: people are less likely to assume genders so use they/them more freely; and people identifying specifically as they/them. The words themselves haven’t really changed, they’re just more common now. Opposition to singular they/them is almost entirely political.
True, but singular they is undeniably clunky. Unfortunately it’s the best we have, so we will have to get used to it. Opposition to the natural evolution of language has never worked.
Their argument has a lot to do with people not establishing context upfront unlike your example with “someone called”. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had a conversation with someone talking about a non-binary person, only to realize five minutes in they weren’t talking about a group of people. It’s super jarring when it happens.
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Once you have found a reputable pharmacy, you can place your order online. The process is typically straightforward. You will need to provide your prescription information, as well as your shipping and payment information. Once your order is placed, it will be shipped to you via express shipping.
Adderall is a prescription medication used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy. It is a central nervous system stimulant that works by increasing the levels of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain. This can help to improve focus, attention, and behavior in people with ADHD. Adderall is also used to treat excessive daytime sleepiness in people with narcolepsy.
If you are looking to order Adderall online with express shipping in the USA, there are a few things you should keep in mind. First, you will need a prescription from a doctor. You can get a prescription from your primary care physician or a psychiatrist. Once you have a prescription, you can order Adderall online from a reputable pharmacy.
When ordering Adderall online, it is important to make sure that you are using a safe and reliable pharmacy. There are many scams online, so it is important to do your research before placing an order. You should also make sure that the pharmacy you are using is licensed and regulated.
Once you have found a reputable pharmacy, you can place your order online. The process is typically straightforward. You will need to provide your prescription information, as well as your shipping and payment information. Once your order is placed, it will be shipped to you via express shipping.
Adderall is a prescription medication used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy. It is a central nervous system stimulant that works by increasing the levels of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain. This can help to improve focus, attention, and behavior in people with ADHD. Adderall is also used to treat excessive daytime sleepiness in people with narcolepsy.
If you are looking to order Adderall online with express shipping in the USA, there are a few things you should keep in mind. First, you will need a prescription from a doctor. You can get a prescription from your primary care physician or a psychiatrist. Once you have a prescription, you can order Adderall online from a reputable pharmacy.
When ordering Adderall online, it is important to make sure that you are using a safe and reliable pharmacy. There are many scams online, so it is important to do your research before placing an order. You should also make sure that the pharmacy you are using is licensed and regulated.
Once you have found a reputable pharmacy, you can place your order online. The process is typically straightforward. You will need to provide your prescription information, as well as your shipping and payment information. Once your order is placed, it will be shipped to you via express shipping.
Some of it does. Maybe even a lot of it. Andor is a pretty good miniseries though, I like that it’s more mature and has a bleaker undertone like Rogue One.
I absolutely loved Star Wars as a kid. Every movie since then has been a major disappointment. I’ve only watched the first of the OT as an adult so far (with my kids), and I was not as into it as expected. Luke was one whiney kid.
I’ve been a fan of Star Wars since I was a kid. But Disney’s management of this IP has totally ruined it for me. I still haven’t seen The Rise of Skywalker after the trash that was The Last Jedi. They also seem to be focusing on pumping out as much content as possible, which has diluted any feelings of longing I had to see more.
They also need to branch out a bit more. The best of new star wars imo (Rogue one, Mando, and Andor) are so awesome because they focus any other aspect of the immense galaxy instead of focusing on the same 1 family from sand planet.
It was a different perspective on an imperfect galaxy and one that felt like it was lived in.
Not just Aliens visit earth!
But a new perspective like.... what if just because we have faster then light travel, racism didn't go away, and it had laser swords and near super human abilities powers!
No Star Wars media compares to the idea of Star Wars.
Except maybe for Andor. I liked Andor. Make stuff that gets away from those fucking Jedis and the whole Skywalker family. They’re the worst bit about the whole franchise.
I downvoted because this is a popular opinion. MCU is the same thing. Most people probably don’t have a strong opinion on Star Wars either way, but for the people who do there are plenty who think it sucks.
I like Star Wars fine. If they make something, I’ll probably watch it. But I don’t consider myself a fan. I don’t keep track of the lore and would be hard pressed to tell you the plot of anything I hadn’t seen recently. Which is a long way of saying I’m in the don’t have a strong opinion camp.
I think so much about it is awesome (visuals, design of ships and sets, music, etc.) but maybe due to lack of repeated exposure to the movies as a child I don’t feel much about them. The modern movies were especially meh, since they all feel like they are trying to recapture the feeling of people who saw the originals in the cinema in the late 70s and 80s, but without doing anything new. I did quite enjoy the Fallen Order game and will probably play the follow up at some point too though.
I feel the originals were great when they came out, but haven’t aged well. Of course, I was a kid and the special effects were cutting edge at the time.
They’ve aged fine if you don’t expect the effects to be 2023 effects. If you accept that they were top of the line 1978 effects, it won’t bother you at all. What always made me laugh is my mother telling me how they were all dumbfounded, not by laser blasts and cool ship exteriors, but rather the introductory text moving off into infinity. I think she’d have been something like 21 at the time.
On the last day of my college internship a senior VP at my little company invited me into his office presumably to get to know me prior to extending a full-time offer. To break the ice he asked me what my favorite Star Wars movie was. I smiled and replied that I could never get through any of them.
As I was uttering these words I began to notice the giant Star Wars poster directly behind the gentleman. It then dawned on me that his office was chalk full of Star Wars memorabilia.
The man did not ask me any further questions. He shook my hand, thanked me for my great work, and I never stepped foot into those offices ever again.
If I come across you in a dark alley and we’re all alone then you better be ready cos I’ll accept your opinion and offer some other suggestions of movies that we might like, such as all 3 Lord of the Rings (extended editions of course).
Yeah, they’re a great guide on how to treat your slaves, how many birds should one sacrifice when his wife is having her period, how much money should one demand when someone beats his wife so much that she has an abortion. Truly “social values”.
Social values didn’t originate out of thin air. Abrahmic Religions actually introduced them. There is a God.
Those actually two separate assertions.
The first one could be true, but that 1) doesn’t give credence to the beliefs 2) is not a good reason to have social values now, given the existence of more humanistic and less magical-thinking mechanisms to propose and enforce social values (secular humanism, for one).
The second one is unproven and, depending on the god alluded, unprovable, and such entities are not worthy of belief until such a time where their existence is unequivocally proven, presenting objective, material, reproducible evidence that skeptics can examine, and that can be considered valid both via the scientific method and in a court of law.
Can’t agree more. The microlabels are too much at this point. You do not need mix sexual orientation, which is the sex we are naturally attracted to, with having preferences, which are the qualities we find attractive in a person or a relationship. The two are completely separate.
Read the bisexual manifesto. Bi has always included nonbinary people. If you are attracted to all genders, both bisexual and pansexual are valid labels you can choose.
Actually didn’t know that, even though I identify as bi lol. Pretty sure my other bi and pan friends didn’t know either from the kinds of discussions we’ve had. But then that’s just a bad choice linguistically, no? It’s very misleading because you literally have the terms bi and non-bi and you need to read some manifesto to understand that they’re not a contradiction. Meanwhile aside from the stupid overdone cookware joke, I think nobody ever questioned the meanings of terms like pan or omni, because they make sense linguistically.
Homosexual is attraction to the same gender; heterosexual is attraction to a different gender. The bi in bisexual is both of these, not attraction to two genders. Think of the bi flag, pink, purple, and blue: what do you think the colors represent? Nonbinary people have always been included in bisexual if you take some time to think about.
I don’t doubt your textbook correctness or the historical correctness of this, and maybe I should stress that I am not trying to exclude anyone from the bi term, but at least in my anecdotal experience, these terms are mostly used “wrongly”, meaning that there is a lot of confusion. And the meanings of words change as people start using them with different intended meanings.
Therefore, given the premise that we want to simplify things by cleaning up some redundant terms, I would prefer to keep the one whose meaning is intuitively clear to everyone. I just don’t see why - given bi, pan and omni all mean the same thing - one should choose the most misunderstood/misused term.
Personally, I would just keep the terms and let people choose whichever they like, I’m just trying to entertain this discussion of choosing to keep only one of them and the pros/cons for each choice.
Exactly, every gay person I know IRL is disgusted by how the pride movement/LGBTQ+ whatever the hell they add on everyday, conduct themselves. It’s like a cult at this point, and I feel it paints a bad name on actual, normal, gay folk. These people who make being gay their entire identity, need to really consider some self awareness exercises.
Gay community can be brutal. It’s not the all-inclusive safe space some people like to think of it as. Gay or not they’re still all male and are mostly into manly stuff and if one is not for example into femine guys it’s not a taboo to say it out loud. Sexual harrasment is quite common aswell and probably wont get you canceled. Many would probably ban women from gay spaces if they could.
Agree. I understand expressing acceptance of non hetero love so kids know that there are other options and they’re valued, but i don’t need to know what labels everyone has chosen, who they’re having sex with, or what is under their undies. And i believe that many people who are medically trans are chasing a masculinity or feminity that they feel is not allowed as a male or female and it’s sad that the stereotype is what they’re moving towards or away from instead of individuality. Also, kinda drunk, so probably disregard.
I think this thinking falls into the common belief that “sexuality” and preference within “sexuality” are actually distinct things. I really think everyone’s sexual preferences are unique, and so even microlabels don’t do them justice. But I don’t think the purpose of labeling your sexuality is meant to be perfectly descriptive, it’s a way to connect with people over shared parts of their experience with sexuality and that can be as coarse or fine as you want it to be. You say there should be only straight, gay, and bi, but we could go even more broad and say there should only be cishet and queer.
I thought it was just a joke, since the first time I heard that word there was a picture of a pan. Similar to people who say they identify as spaghetti.
No don’t worry. We can describe the totality of human sexuality and existence with three simple words: gay, straight, or bi. All these other labels confuse the straight people and therefore should be discarded to appeal to straight people’s infinite compassion.
Upvoted, but I have a slight disagreement. I think bisexual should actually be a label under pansexual. Bisexual doesn’t necessarily account for anyone outside the gender binary.
I think there’s value for folks in the community to have the hyper-specific labels. I’m saying this as a bi person who agrees that pan, Omni, etc are sub categories of bi.
Corporations should only be allowed to exist as long as they’re doing more good for society than the damage they do. Businesses should either be a net positive or run by people who are individually and jointly liable.
Sadly, yes. Probably not here but on the global scale… Because a lot of people see themselves as a future billionaire and they don’t want to ruin for their future self.
if porn is banned then there’s no regulation for it, meaning when people inevitably set up illegal porn sites things like child porn and abuse are not off the table and will be much easier to find than right now. unless of course you want to implement mass survailance to make sure nobody’s watching, which is a violation of our human right to privacy.
It’s like that for many vices such as alcohol- it’s harmful but banning it is much worse than regulating it (see the history of 1920s America). I’m not convinced porn consumption is harmful but even if it was, it shouldn’t be banned.
My siblings in Christ just because you have an unhealthy relationship with porn doesn’t mean that everyone else does too. Stop projecting your problems into pathologizing everyone else.
I have quite a few. I don’t believe in copyright laws or IP in general. I think it holds back innovation and exists solely to benefit megacorps like Disney or pharmaceutical companies.
For example - you develop a new drug that really helps some people. You charge $50 a pill even though it costs you $5 to produce. Without the government protecting IP, another company will come around and produce it and sell it for $6 a pill, providing cheaper access to healthcare.
People will say “what would give someone the incentive to make new things?” Without actually thinking it through. For a great example of how lack of IP is a good thing, look at how Shenzhen went from a fishing village to a Chinese San Francisco in a few short decades… one company will take the product of another and iterate on top of it.
Another unpopular opinion is I’m pretty absolutist with free speech. I think certain things like calls to violence or intentional defamation of character should be restricted. But pretty much everything else should be fair game.
I believe in open borders and think the US should return to the late 1800s style of immigration. We’re gonna need the population to compete with China in the coming century.
I also think that the primary investment into climate change at this point should be preparing for the inevitable changes instead of trying to prevent the inevitable.
I disagree with your view on IP, at least for pharmaceuticals. For most drugs, the exclusivity period is only 5 years, after which generic companies reverse engineer the product with ease and create a low-cost alternative. Without this period allowing pharma companies to make their money, there’d be no reason to invest the billions upon billions of dollars into R&D to discover and develop the drug in the first place. Most drug candidates fail, and the wins are what prop up the whole industry.
I’m not defending price gouging and I think all governments should control pricing, preferably with a single payer system (looking at you USA), but we would be so much further behind without patent protection. Especially for orphan diseases.
Don’t really agree with you on IP for most creative purposes either. There should be a reasonable length of time you get exclusive rights to something you create. But this doesn’t excuse Disney’s stranglehold on the mouse.
Yeah with pharma in particular you need that initial profitability, as you say.
Additionally…
People will say “what would give someone the incentive to make new things?” Without actually thinking it through. For a great example of how lack of IP is a good thing, look at how Shenzhen went from a fishing village to a Chinese San Francisco in a few short decades… one company will take the product of another and iterate on top of it.
This doesn’t really make sense. Shenzen company’s might have copied products developed by other companies, but surely you still need another company to invest the R & D initially in order to have something to copy.
Consumer products don’t “evolve”. Developing and producing are two different processes. If there’s no IP then there’s only an incentive to produce things, and no incentive to develop them. I think this is especially true of pharmaceuticals given that there’s no incremental / evolutionary pathway to discovering new drugs and the costs of conducting trials et cetera is preclusive.
IP has many many flaws, have to disagree with you on the r&d though. That simply costs upfront money and we don’t do a lot of it anymore anyways.
To some degree companies don’t even patent their stuff, so that they don’t have to publish the inner workings for their competitors. This is especially a problem with china since they pretty notoriously don’t give a damn about patents and just copy it anyway. Your Shenzhen example makes no sense to me.
There is enough about ip to dislike anyways:
It is mainly used as a way to sue each other in the corporate world. This is why they patent everything usually.
Patents don’t even really have to explain how the technique works (or if it really works) in much detail.
there is little to no recourse if the patent office does not want to grant your patent. On the other hand if they feel like it, they can grant complete shit.
patents are prohibitively expensive for private people, in granting and upkeep.
You have to keep some kind of a compensation mechanism in place that guarantees worldly rewards to inventors, researchers or creators for innovation or art. Otherwise why would they work?
Intellectual “ownership”, as ridiculously bullshit as it currently sounds, is the mechanism in place currently. Is there anything else you can suggest?
Developing new drugs costs millions and can lasts decades, especially because of clinical trials. Without IP protection, the company making the effort to find new drugs would go bankrupt (the price of newly found drugs must also pay for other drug research that did not succeed). I don’t know how it works in the USA, in France the system is that that the IP protection lasts 10 years after releasing the drug on the market, then other companies can copy it. And during this 10 years period, the price is regulated by the government.
I disagree with the climate change thing. There will be inevitable damage, which we should prepare for, but if we don’t try and stop it, even if it is past the 1.5 or more degrees, it will just get worse and worse, until it exhausts our repairs and kills us for good. If we dont stop it even if late, it will spiral out of control.
In an ideal world we would be able to control climate change. The problem is that we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a world defined by economics and war. Energy is the heart of everything- without energy you don’t have a modern economy.
Look what happened in Germany right after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Germany was getting most of its natural gas from Russia through pipelines. During the course of the war, those natural gas imports fell of a cliff for various reasons. What did Germany do to compensate? They burned coal. Coal outputs much higher carbon emissions than natural gas. Not only in the burning itself, but in the mining process required to get the coal.
So what was the response of the German society under pressure? Put out more carbon emissions. Just a glance at the global geopolitical situation would tell you that crisis isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
I think this is fundamentally the issue. As long as we live in a world with crisis, governments will never let go of quick cheap and reliable energy. When the economy is in trouble, there aren’t going to be any politicians advocating for things that could potentially cost the economy. And to get rid of our carbon emissions - we need to feel some pain.
In order to meaningfully prevent climate change, we would need to do something yesterday. Instead, we probably won’t be doing anything for the next couple of decades.
Of course, I must end this with a caveat that my comment was made to be a little controversial. I don’t believe all attempts to reduce carbon emissions are a bad idea. To the contrary, I believe we should absolutely enact these changes. I’m just expressing a sort of cynical sentiment that since we can’t really stop it, we might as well start spending money on dealing with it
I used to think like this but now I realise that being in power is much harder than I thought, especially in the context of a democracy. Inevitably, in order to get something done, you usually need the cooperation of your political opponents, which usually requires to make compromises that you’re uncomfortable with or make you go back on campaign promises.
That said, I think I could do a better job than Trump since I think I could at least manage to not put myself in so much legal trouble.
I find it insane that the same people who are anti-fossil fuel and want only green energy is also anti-nuclear power. I also want fossil fuels gone, but nuclear is the only way we are able to get to where we need to.
Nuclear isn’t just benefits. There are major costs and risks. It’s sad how both sides are so ignorant to the arguments of the other side. And no one is an idiot to came to different conclusions.
The risks of nuclear energy are well managed already. Out of all nuclear power plants built to an even remotely modern design, exactly zero have suffered a meltdown, and I don’t see any reason to expect that to change.
My only quibble with nuclear power is how irresponsible people are long term. The critical safety failure is always someone incompetent or cutting costs/corners.
Well and that I think distributed generation is more robust. Natural disaster can’t take out power to half a state if there’s energy being generated and stored all over. The means of production in the hands of the consumers.
Statistically nuclear is by far the safest form of power generation. Of course, it would be good to locate it in areas that are not disaster prone. As far as I understand it though, the issue with nuclear is the cost. But in a perfect world we would need something to smooth out the inconsistency of renewables, either battery tech or something like nuclear that you can turn on and off as needed.
And yeah it is safe, but if it becomes unsafe for whichever reason, it becomes really unsafe. I just don’t trust humans to not eventually something stupid.
Well the problem with the Texas power grid is that it exists in the first place. Still, when it comes to safety, you have to multiply how bad it is by the number of people it will affect, and divide by the amount of power generated to get the right picture. There is a media bias towards rare, intense events which causes people to think they are more common than they really are. This explains people’s views on nuclear power, school shootings, terrorism, shark attacks etc.
And what happens in the unlikely event of system collapse? If some major cataclysmic event wiped out the world economy and half the worlds population, what happens when suddenly thousands of nuclear plants are abandoned and melt down world wide? Nuclear is safer in a vacuum, but we don’t exist in a vacuum. Anything that can happen, will eventually happen. Even if those power plants are able to be shut down safely, in a post stable world, the storage of the spent waste would be incredibly problematic as we would no longer have the capacity or knowledge to bury it 4 miles down. I would say that nuclear power is far more risky long term than people give it credit for. We are evaluating it’s risk only based on the present stability and regulations of our current systems. Modern technological stability is really a tiny blip in earths history, we really can’t guarantee a future that will know what to do with spent nuclear waste. Nuclear power is really an all-in bet on our own technological dominance of the future.
I say this as someone that is not against nuclear power, but I think people view it as some sort of quick fix when it just presents it’s own problems. The truth is, you don’t get something for nothing. All energy costs something and that cost should be distributed between several systems and our consumption should be reduced.
*it is one of the pieces of the puzzle. It is not renewable and generates trash that lasts thousands of years. It is another tool, and dismissing it is dumb, but it is not a silver bullet, and also isn’t that desirable for the long run.
Blaming slow drivers for your dangerous driving to pass them immediately and dangerously has the same energy as a rapist blaming what the victim was wearing: The other person made me do it. I have no agency over my own reactions.
While I wouldn’t pass dangerously it has to be said that a slow driver is definitely a hazard if they are significantly below the speed limit. Especially on a highway. Ive been caught behind someone doing 15 under and it is extremely scary as you hope everyone behond you see’s you in time. In general speed differential causes accidents both in the case of people speeding and going under the limit.
Case and point: In your scenario, the danger comes from the speeding, inattentive drivers behind you, yet you have displaced the blame onto to the poor sap in a U-Haul box van with all of their stuff in it. What else might the speeding drivers not see in time? If they can’t see a vehicle going 55MPH in front of them in time, what about stopped traffic?
I never said anyone was speeding I said the car in front of me was going 15 miles an hour under the limit, so even people going the limit will be coming up significantly faster than they expect. There’s a reason some highways have a minimum speed limit. If you cannot operate a vehicle at least 5 below the speed limit you shouldn’t be driving on that road. Also sudden slow downs in traffic literally cause accidents daily which is why we shouldn’t be causing them when we have the ability not to.
You seem to think im defending speeding when all i am really saying is big deviations from the limit in either direction increase the chances of an accident exponentially.
No, the “speeding” part is from my own experience. The speed limit here in Wisconsin is 70MPH, but hardly anybody follows it. In any case, a driver who cannot handle a 20-25MPH speed differential should not be on the road, period. Most people can’t even handle going that speed on residential streets, it’s that slow. I propose the following thought experiment to make it obvious:
Two identical highways, both empty. On one, the U-Haul driver following the company’s 55MPH speed limit. (Minimum speed on 70MPH highways is often 45MPH, by the way.) On the other highway, a driver following the speed limit at 70MPH, but is who cannot handle closing in on things at 15MPH. Distraction, eyesight problems, who knows? The slow, 55MPH driver will have no problems. The faster driver has a high likelihood of crashing into things, even without slow drivers in the way.
If speed differentials are that much of a problem, then it’s the faster drivers that are the source of it, and the speed limit is too high.
Exponentially both ways though I would argue, often, the slower driver is more of a hazard to other drivers!
If someone burns past in the left lane unless someone else does something wrong (like move lanes without looking first) or causes rapid traffic slowdown in the left lane either by merging poorly or being too aggressive on the brakes, they are more or less not a risk.
If someone is driving too slow they are dangerous without anyone else making a mistake - if you or anyone behind you doesn’t have visibility (eg behind a truck, around a bend, glare from the sun etc) then there’s a hard braking event, which is always dangerous. The more slowly compared to prevailing traffic they go, the more attentive other drivers need to be, the more dangerous it becomes.
Wrong. Traffic laws in multiple states are “slower traffic keep right”. Just obey the law, grandma, and everyone will be safe and you can drive as slow as you’d like.
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