Its not even borderline ridiculous. The fines are so low they just incorporate them into operating costs. Jail the entire executive suit and board if a company does this shit, no bail.
I see no reason to cap fines to anything less than 100% of gross revenue. An egregious enough violation should kill the company (which has no inherent right to exist, BTW – being granted a corporate charter is a privilege), even if it’s the first one.
4% of turnover is massive. Take BMW as an example, 4% of their revenue is 5.7Billion dollars, compared to their net profit of 18.6Billion. One third of their entire profit is absolutely enough to make them do everything they can to avoid it. Also, importantly, they cant get up to creative accounting to minimise revenue, misrepresenting that is fraud, unlike profit when companies get up to all sorts of tricks to artificiality lower it.
Honestly BMW comes out quite well in the scenario compared to many of their competitors. I looked up Citroen, Fiat, Ford & GM and they all were in the range of 60-90% of their profit getting wiped out by a GDPR 4% fine.
I was kinda hoping to find one over 100% profit, but I decided not to spend the rest of my evening looking up annual financials for car manufactures
How about national security? Russia or NK might struggle hacking the CIA but Nissan or Mercedes ain’t going to have the same security. Now you have hundreds of thousands of multifaceted information collection devices spread throughout the whole country in the hands of companies that would take the seat belts out if they weren’t legally required to put them in.
This is exactly why it’s forbidden to discuss classified information outside of a secure facility… even if you think you’re alone with another cleared person.
Obviously, humans are gonna do human things, but the government has policies in place to try and prevent this sort of leak from occurring.
This isn’t just about government secrets. This data could be used to blackmail someone based on where their car was and at what time or use other data acquired from the car against them.
From a safety perspective, kei cars have a lot going for them when compared with American-style SUVs and trucks. Their light weight generates less force in a collision, and their stubby front ends reduce driver blind spots. Research suggests that their occupants are equally safe as those inside full-sized vehicles.
Reminds me of a friend some years back. She was 4’ nothing but insisted on driving a large SUV as it was “safer” in a accident. I’m taller than most but I prefer smaller vehicles like older Cherokees and Volvos so it’s quite the odd difference.
At first, I was going to criticize the collision speed of the example study, but found ( ok, I say found, I mean I googled for 15 seconds ) that the average American collision is occurring at less than 40mph, so good to go there.
Second, I was going to comment on the relative safety of being in the Kei truck and being struck by the 2500HD... but that just goes back to the 'participating in the arms race', so feels... stupid.
So, overall: Thanks for providing this. It directly answers the primary concern of 'what if I hit something tho'. There are some other angles I could nitpick on maybe, but they all feel like a kind of 'consolation prize' to the argument.
One thing you also need to remember, is that the smaller car has a far smaller braking distance and is more maneuverable, so is less likely to get in a crash. The lower centre of gravity also decreases the likelihood of a roll-over.
Drove one once, air brakes so can’t legally be driven by everyone (where I live anyway). The owner got it to bring fuel to his machinery, he got it used and it was cheaper than a similarly equipped F350…
This absolutely makes no sense. North america suburbs and neighbors that have no sidewalks are generally low volume and low speed streets. These are “community areas” IMO and should have a pedestrian orientation first and foremost.
On these types of neighborhood streets pedestrian are and should be more then allowed to utilize the street either as a pedestrian walking or a pedestrian on a bike.
As a individual in a car when you drive through a neighbourhood street you should adjust you driving as if there are a bunch of children potentially on the street.
I find the trouble is in north america is we don’t classify our roadways well and definitely don’t differentiate well between a street, a road, a high speed road, and a highway.
This is why we get this weird over-engineering of suburban streets that look like roads where people want to drive at high speeds inside the suburb. And then at the exact same time we get roads (that should have been roads) that are a weird merging between a road and a street (a stroad) all around cities.
The only kind of road in an american planners toolkit is a stroad.
4+ extra wide lanes of traffic doing at least 10 over the speed limit. Every business is allowed direct access to the stroad. Public transit is forced to use the car lanes and pedestrians may wait up to 5 minutes at each crossing.
part of the reason why the country is so car-dependent is specifically to fuck over non-rich non-white people.
If you can’t afford driving everywhere they’ve set it up so you have to break the law to get where you’re going, and of course the highways were built through poor black neighbourhoods downtown so now most people are forced to live in suburbs where it’s barely possible to walk in the first place.
It's also disingenuous lies. This money is being spent over 11 years so is more in the realm of £750m a year.
This is also a classic trick of the Conservative government and is why the NHS is also in a mess: they steal money from capital investment budgets and use it to spend on day-to-day operational stuff.
In the NHS they took money from the capital budget and diverted it to day to day spending, claiming it as "new money". It was an increase in day-to-day spending but it was not new money. Instead NHS trusts now have big backlogs of equipment and buildings needing replacement and being used beyond intended life cycle because the money was stolen.
Pot hole repair is day-to-day road maintenance, not infrastructure or capital investment. HS2 was a new capital project. This is just more bullshit lies by the government and a huge issue here is how shit journalism is now. The BBC hasn't questioned this spending pledge at all, instead it's posted a bullshit superficial article on potholes.
Blocks of flats are awful places. No garden to put up a workshed, or greenhouse or anything at all, or play with your dog or kids (and no dog - it would be cruel to keep a dog in a flat and not have it able to roam a garden all day), they’re noisy, loud neighbours can be above, below, to the left, to the right, and in front …
You can’t modify your home how you’d like, can’t choose what utility companies run into your home, can’t let your kid cycle up and down the street and still be able to see and hear them from the windows etc.
I see your point about density absolutely, but I HATE flats. Awful places.
I also hate how people have started trying to make them sound fancy and posh by calling them “apartments” to try to sound fancy and European/French, as if that will make them more appealing.
Not everyone wants a yard and/or a dog! Very, very, few people modify their houses in ways that wouldn’t be applicable to apartments/flats too - interior changes are common, but exterior is usually far too much money for far too little in return. And if you’re complaining about people calling them “apartments”, which is what they’ve always been called in the US, I assume you’re in the UK where terraced houses are the most common form of housing, and neighbours are on both sides anyway. (Is it possible you’re hearing people calling flats apartments because of the influence of American TV? Where are you getting “fancy” from, or assuming it’s just because the same word is used in French? Do you avoid American TV shows? They were extremely common on British TV when I was growing up. If you’re not in Britain, apologies! But it seems likely, given most other English speaking countries I can think of use the term too.)
I personally disagree with anyone who promotes a one-size-fit-all approach to housing etc, but I don’t actually think most advocates of density really are doing that. They’re usually Americans fighting the completely insane zoning laws and building practices in the US that force people to own cars, make public transport uneconomic except with massive subsidies, and require Americans own houses that are far bigger and more expensive to maintain than they need. Nobody’s actually better off because of these laws, not even the people who want to live outside of real cities and drive to work - it ends up taking just as long to get to the supermarket to get a gallon of milk in a suburb where you have to leave your home, get into your car, drive it, drive out of your residential neighbourhood where businesses like supermarkets are banned, drive it past large numbers of buildings built for individual businesses each with enough parking to support the maximum number of customers it might conceivably need, 5-10 minutes later getting to the supermarket’s parking lot, which is again, absurdly oversized because it has to have one parking spot per potential customer, finding a spot, walking across this vast expanse to the supermarket, and then doing the same thing in reverse. Time savings? Nil. Tesco was five minutes walk away when I lived in the UK, and while that was unusual, most places I’ve lived in the UK had some kind of supermarket within walking distance. Money savings? Worse: my grocery bill tripled when I came to the US and I had to pay gas prices and for car maintenance on top of that. Not surprising when every store needs 4X as much land as it needs in the UK, just so it has enough parking.
So that’s what the pictures are likely about. The option of high density housing ought to be available to everyone, in the UK it is for the most part, hence it looks odd to you and you’re assuming the intent is to take your detached or semi-detached house from you. But in the US, no it isn’t, the few places that have good high density development are either impractical to live in, because you still need cars to work, or uneconomic for most people because those places are in such high demand to live the property prices are astronomical (think SF or NYC.)
can’t choose what utility companies run into your home,
This is the most farcical complaint. I guess sometimes you can pay a lot to get a new utility option to your owned home, but that's usually not an option.
In a lot of apartments you have no choice of ISP regardless of whether the building has a choice, which might be what they're on about. But I've never owned a home where I could choose which utilities were available. (Except for electric choice which works in apartments, too.)
even then it’s a problem we choose to have, in my apartment area we have a platform that allows us to choose between like, i think around 30? different ISPs, and switch between them freely at any time.
I agree with you fully, except the last part. Which is just a regional gripe, as to say "apartments" in the States is just as degrading/non-special. So it's interesting that you find specialty in that term when my region is anything but.
The lead-up to the commission's vote prompted the Safe Street Rebel group to start "coning," as they call it. Members have long used street theater shenanigans to gain attention in their fight against cars and to promote public transportation.
So they want to decrease cars and increase public transport. Makes sense.
Coning driverless cars fits in line with a long history of protests against the impact of the tech industry on San Francisco. Throughout the years, activists have blockaded Google's private commuter buses from picking up employees in the city. And when scooter companies flooded the sidewalks with electric scooters, people threw them into San Francisco Bay.
Uh, one of their other protests is to block mass transport (not technically public, but better than cars) and destroy items that promote not using cars? I mean I hate that those fucking scooters are littered everywhere, but a simple ordinance that only allows them in certain locations (stations) could fix that.
"Then there was the burning of Lime scooters in front of a Google bus," says Manissa Maharawal, an assistant professor at American University who has studied these protests.
Burning battery-powered devices in front of a bus. I've lost all empathy with this group.
And that doesn't even address how driverless cars will eventually be far, far safer than drivers, and will cut down on total cars. I understand not wanting your streets to be testing grounds, but that has to happen eventually. Test courses can only do so much to simulate reality. All things eventually are tested on volunteers or the public, like medicine. Perhaps they should be pushing for a referendum as to where to test driverless cars? Because being opposed to all cars is unrealistic. With how America is designed, a small fleet of driverless cars to get places public transportation can't cover is an ideal future. Redesigning entire cities isn't a near-term solution.
It started like that, but then there was a nuclear war. That’s why there was the Atomic Cafe in Bartertown. It was a reference to a documentary about nuclear war information films of the 1950s.
Not to mention that at no point is anything about the society depicted as being somewhere actually good to live. The movie ends with defectors from decadence killing the god-king and presumably overturning the order he built, and it's framed positively
I mean, it makes it sound like he crashed into the tree. He scrapped his car mirror off into the tree. Dumb but that tree has seen a lot worse, stop with the damn clickbait
as there are plenty of real problems with cars to talk about.
Cars and car infrastructure is ruining various natural areas, the ones that are left, and most semi-natural ones on land. Cars and car roads are the first wounds in intact land ecosystems, they make room for infection that ruins habitats.
Do you want some reading? I have a bunch of nice peer-reviewed articles on how cars need to fuck off from wild and semi-wild areas.
How does this article not mention the SIZE of new trucks and SUVs? Even 15 years ago a new truck or SUV had a much smaller front end. Now if you buy a new truck its front is 6 feet tall! No wonder there are more deaths! This is a problem that needs to be regulated at the manufacturer level, not just the infrastructure level.
Remember when they banned hood ornaments for posing a risk to pedestrians? How about we ban hoods that are taller than the average person?
This is thankfully only about imports so it will limit the damage, but the coming fuel efficiency standards carve out an exception too (although I believe they are more stringent than the US standards at least).
EDIT: I was under the impression the tax only applies to private imports, but it actually doesn’t. See my below comment. But it is limited to higher priced vehicles at least.
The law refers to cars that aren’t directly sold in Australia, i.e. through private imports. So if you buy from a dealer that has a presence in Australia, the import tax doesn’t apply. And it only applies to cars above a certain price I should add, hence the name: Luxury Car Tax (LCT).
The US also has this loophole, all SUVs are classified as ‘light trucks’ and therefore don’t have to follow the more strict emissions laws. This is what led to these massive cars and trucks.
Also, the roads in many US states are falling apart and larger vehicles and trucks drive better over potholes and bad road conditions.
People prefer big SUVs and trucks when the roads are badly maintained and it will damage normal cars. The trend of larger rims with a thinner sidewall almost guarantees normal cars will have much worse ride quality and be more prone to damage and costly repairs.
The new trucks are so tall and have a massive blind spot in front, you can’t see anything. They are a danger to pedestrians and children in addition to having blinding headlights that shine directly at eye level for any normal car.
Stop blaming roads on consumer trucks. Nearly all the damage is 18 wheelers. Same with the headlights they are just fine unless modified. You have zero evidence they are any brighter or aimed worse than every other vehicle on the road.
Stop blaming roads on consumer trucks. Nearly all the damage is 18 wheelers.
No where did I mention that the cause of road damage was caused by SUVs. I said that people prefer larger vehicles because they driver better on poorly maintained roads due to larger tires and heavy duty suspension.
Also, 18 wheelers don’t drive in residential areas and therefore don’t affect most smaller roads. Those roads fall apart due to a variety if reasons including weather and lack of maintenance and drainage.
As for your other claim, there is plenty of evidence that LED headlights are brighter. This is easily measurable and new headlights have higher lumens and a different color. Newer cars all have LED lights that are more blue than older halogen lights that were yellow.
Trucks and SUVs have gotten bigger and taller over the last 2-3 decades and those headlights are at eye level for most cars. This causes more glare and when combined with brighter LED lights that have a blue color balance lead to glare!
US laws around headlights have not been updated since the 1970s! European laws are also more strict on aiming downward to reduce glare from trucks and tall vehicles.
Most of that but the last line is just you making up assumptions across the board. The f150 and ram are absolutely pointed down and not overly bright compared to the rest and regulation.
Yes the reg needs updating. No trucks don’t do dumb shit any worse than all new cars.
But I do have to disagree. At first you can look at this chart and see proof - clearly by far most road damage will be from trucks. But the other half of the equation is how many. A highway only needs a few trucks with those numbers to create most of their damage. However many local roads rarely, if ever, get full sized trucks. If you have a residential neighborhood, long haul trucks are not a thing, and delivery trucks are much smaller. So yeah, everyone owning a monster pickup might very well cause most of the damage
Not to mention average pickup truck weight has increased since the study. Older trucks were lighter because they didn’t have fully boxed frames and every p/u is an extended cab now.
I only barely survived an unavoidable and unpredictable crash on a road bicycle with 2 cars. I’ve had 6 crashes with 7 cars in 170k miles on the bike since 2009. Only 2 of those crashes were bad. However I only barely survived crashing at 30mph where the weight of the bike was insignificant. I wouldn’t have survived that same crash on anything more significant or at any higher speed. I had the critical damage of C1 and a fracture at the base of my skull. I was told if I hadn’t been knocked out completely, I would have died if I had moved before the swelling could keep everything together.
I wouldn’t recommend motorcycles until humans decide to replace driver’s side airbag covers with daggers. People drive like fools and since their incompetence is nonlethal to them, the culture of incompetence is unavoidable.
You likely think you can avoid anything by just being careful. This is not the case. I was ultra cautious and went out of my way to avoid hazardous areas. Most of my hits were from illegal U-turns. If you can predict a random vehicle parallel parked on the side of the road will try and make an illegal U-turn suddenly without warning, directly in front of a large SUV that is passing them, you can avoid the crash that almost killed me. That is the level of stupid that finally got me even on a road bicycle.
The human body is not capable of handling the forces of collision. It doesn’t matter what kind of armored jacket you wear, it will never compare to a car’s tolerance. I’ve seen a lot of people die on bicycles including 3 people I knew. My cousin died on a motorcycle last month.
Man everything you wrote here sucks and I’m sorry you’ve had to experience all that. Riding isn’t a “if” you crash, its a “when” you crash thing.
Even still, I find it preferable to being in a box isolated from the environment. Then it’s just more detached television. Being a part of the environment helps me feel alive.
Glad you made it out relatively unscathed. My old man got killed when a negligent driver crashed into him while he was riding his bike at night. Motorcycles are death traps and I'm always uncomfortable when I'm on the road and one gets near my car.
I like that they're more fuel efficient than cars, and they're a thrill for the rider, but the inevitable incompetence of other drivers, or just plain bad luck like blowing a tire, has such a high mortality rate for bikers.
One of my dad's old biker buddies got hit by a teenage driver who'd just gotten their license. I'm not gonna harp on the kid too badly cause when you're a new driver, you're gonna make mistakes. Just sucks that one little mistake can cost someone so dearly. Dad's friend survived, but he's never been the same due to brain damage sustained in the crash. He wasn't wearing a DoT approved helmet at the time, though, so it's partially on him. His fake helmet snapped in half like a twig.
Biker culture (at least in the US) also has the unfortunate undercurrent of macho shit like "I don't wanna wear a helmet cause that's for sissies. I'll just die like a man." Helmets are mandatory in my state, but it's seldom enforced.
Biker culture (at least in the US) also has the unfortunate undercurrent of macho shit like “I don’t wanna wear a helmet cause that’s for sissies. I’ll just die like a man.”
This is parts extra odd to me because the heavy leather jackets and clothing that are also part of that same culture are actually meant to be a form of light armor should you find yourself in a crash
Reminds me of that TNG episode where one planet has gotten the other planet addicted to a drug only they have, so they can have the addict planet make everything for them while they sit on their asses and do nothing except sell them that drug.
Just replace the drug in that episode with oil and honestly it’s pretty accurate for our world now.
When you scratch at the surface a little, the course of Capitalism always bends towards rent-seeking behaviors. It’s enraging how not only are we trapped in this running-to-stand-still circus, but that every single aspect of our lives is getting monetized such that it’s nearly impossible to just not play the game.
This is my particular argument for the need for EULA and ToS law reforms. The concept that they are negotiable for consumers by means of abstinence is laughably outdated. It is unavoidable to have to sign a contract that you have no negotiation recourse over. All contracts are supposed to be negotiable before signing. There are so many abuses and frankly absurd liberties taken in those things that nobody should ever have to agree to just to play a game or use a website.
Seriously, a game publisher/developer having defacto ownership over the code you produce to make a mod for a game is ludicrous. Or a social media site getting the rights to use content for any purpose without limits and in perpetuity is insane.
I’d argue that for most of the US it is necessary to have a car. We just have adequate public transport. I’d much prefer that we did, but currently we do not. I suspect one could take an aerial photo of many arenas/stadiums located in densely populated cities in the US and they do not have much parking either.
Yeah, necessary to have a car in the US. But I like using public transit when possible. Especially when traveling to NYC. It’s slightly faster to drive, but nothing beats the feeling of not having to park.
Also to be fair, we in Australia are far from being some car free utopia either.
We have heaps of car dependant urban sprawl in our major cities where the vast majority of us live. We are also adding more of this sprawl all the time.
On the plus side most of our state capital cities have got decent heavy rail networks which you can park at stations and ride.
fuckcars
Hot
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.