A vehicle is a 3000lb bullet. If you’re not competent, or irresponsible with chemicals, then everyone on the road is at risk.
No one likes picking up body parts on a road or extracting what is basically meat from a vehicle. Or meeting people who should’ve had a normal.life and are now paralyzed from the neck down. Or, alternatively, a TBI. Broken neuro wiring like someone took an egg beater to sections of their brain, leaving them just sane enough to know they’re fucked up.
That isn’t a privilege. Competency should be required with 3000lb bullets.
I don’t disagree that better mass transit is needed in some cities, but that doesn’t mean we hand drivers licenses to incompetent or irresponsible people.
No one likes picking up body parts on a road or extracting what is basically meat from a vehicle.
You could make the same argument about train derailments or plane crashes.
That’s not what is at issue. Virtually nobody is seriously suggesting we de-industrialize transit.
The problem at hand is profit motive. Personal vehicles force people into debt, both directly through purchase and through secondary demands - parking, gasoline, maintenance. That’s what generates the economic pressure that keeps them in place.
If we were fixated on safety, we could make cars smaller and slower and we could shield pedestrians from them with infrastructure. You’d save far more lives by lowering the speed limit than raising the DMV licensing standards.
that doesn’t mean we hand drivers licenses to incompetent or irresponsible people
People aren’t consistently competent or responsible. So you either install some kind of panopticon for drivers (the private insurance model) and try to price people you suspect are high risk out of your personal risk pool. Or you get people out of cars entirely, knowing anyone can have a day that makes them highly prone to driving mistakes.
You’re being pedantic. We call them 3000lb bullets to describe what they are when not controlled well, not because of their speed. As a driver, it’s good to think of your vehicle in those terms too.
As for monitoring, check out Loyal Moses. His vid on what tech Ford just patented.
you’re right, but the solution is not to give everyone the inalienable right to drive, it’s to redesign the city such that people who can’t drive can still live in it fully (i.e. build public transit and walkable/cyclable path of ways)
the solution is not to give everyone the inalienable right to drive
It’s not a question of “solution” writ large. It’s a recognition of existing infrastructure and the consequences of denying a subset of the population its use.
redesign the city such that people who can’t drive
Sure. Love that idea.
But, in the meantime, if you’ve dropped 40 miles of concrete through my neighborhood, such that I need a vehicle to get across it…
“We should build more pedestrian friendly infrastructure” is very different than “ban a subset of bad drivers and let them pound sand about it”
Driving isn’t a right, it’s a privilege.
In a city without public transit, denying someone the right to drive is denying them personal autonomy.
A vehicle is a 3000lb bullet. If you’re not competent, or irresponsible with chemicals, then everyone on the road is at risk.
No one likes picking up body parts on a road or extracting what is basically meat from a vehicle. Or meeting people who should’ve had a normal.life and are now paralyzed from the neck down. Or, alternatively, a TBI. Broken neuro wiring like someone took an egg beater to sections of their brain, leaving them just sane enough to know they’re fucked up.
That isn’t a privilege. Competency should be required with 3000lb bullets.
I don’t disagree that better mass transit is needed in some cities, but that doesn’t mean we hand drivers licenses to incompetent or irresponsible people.
Judging by the way people drive in my city, that’s exactly what it means :(
How fast do you think bullets move?
You could make the same argument about train derailments or plane crashes.
That’s not what is at issue. Virtually nobody is seriously suggesting we de-industrialize transit.
The problem at hand is profit motive. Personal vehicles force people into debt, both directly through purchase and through secondary demands - parking, gasoline, maintenance. That’s what generates the economic pressure that keeps them in place.
If we were fixated on safety, we could make cars smaller and slower and we could shield pedestrians from them with infrastructure. You’d save far more lives by lowering the speed limit than raising the DMV licensing standards.
People aren’t consistently competent or responsible. So you either install some kind of panopticon for drivers (the private insurance model) and try to price people you suspect are high risk out of your personal risk pool. Or you get people out of cars entirely, knowing anyone can have a day that makes them highly prone to driving mistakes.
You’re being pedantic. We call them 3000lb bullets to describe what they are when not controlled well, not because of their speed. As a driver, it’s good to think of your vehicle in those terms too.
As for monitoring, check out Loyal Moses. His vid on what tech Ford just patented.
This is what they’re doing. New cars will use cameras and sensors to determine impairment and then refuse to start.
you’re right, but the solution is not to give everyone the inalienable right to drive, it’s to redesign the city such that people who can’t drive can still live in it fully (i.e. build public transit and walkable/cyclable path of ways)
It’s not a question of “solution” writ large. It’s a recognition of existing infrastructure and the consequences of denying a subset of the population its use.
Sure. Love that idea.
But, in the meantime, if you’ve dropped 40 miles of concrete through my neighborhood, such that I need a vehicle to get across it…
“We should build more pedestrian friendly infrastructure” is very different than “ban a subset of bad drivers and let them pound sand about it”