Cars are expensive and driving really isn’t that fun outside rare circumstances that are quickly disappearing. I love cars, and I love a nice drive on a mountain road, but everything else isn’t nearly as nice as it used to be when there were fewer people driving, and less dependence on it.
Not to mention, cars are pretty boring these days. The vaguely cool ones are just remakes of old models, and even Ferrari is making SUVs.
The greatest enemy of good driving conditions is and always will be other drivers. The people who really care about being able to drive should be enthusiastically supporting getting others off the roads because congestion is inevitable.
Especially since it costs less total taxpayer money that way (the classic is Houston vs NYC vs Amsterdam, which spend something like 20%, 10%, and 4% of their municipal budgets on transportation respectively). You’re less likely to have congestion AND potholes in a city with trams and bike routes.
Nah, we know this isn’t the reason because in other countries that have better road design that actually takes psychology into mind for design speeds, they did not see the same uptick. Also, other countries are seeing gradual decreases in road deaths while the US continues to see increases.
You can also look at e.g., the dangerous by design reports and see very clearly WHERE the road fatalities are happening. During covid it was all over the map. Post covid, it is clearly skewing away from the blue cities.
It’s a very clear natural experiment with an obvious conclusion: the US has fundamentally unsafe road engineering. We focus on speed over safety in our designs, which in low congestion works perfectly (i.e., makes roads fast and unsafe) and in nominal conditions achieves neither.
Load up all of AASHTO into rockets and shoot them into the sun.
It IS a cultural thing, but you’re placing blame on bad actors when it’s a systemic problem – a systemic problem with the culture of US road engineering. That is, US road engineers do not have a robust culture of safety. The priority is and always has been speed and “level of service” (aka throughput) in the designs over safety or cost effectiveness or even pleasantness of the urban landscapes.
I’ll never buy the idea that a wide set of diverse people across an entire continent are all just worse than the rest of people around the world. The fact that the problem is widespread is proof the issue is not bad actors.
The US does have more people who shouldn’t be driving driving though, I’ll agree with that much. But it isn’t because they’re reckless lunatics that don’t care about other road users, and I’ll never buy the covid arguments that people all went NUTS during covid and started mowing down pedestrians – because no way that would’ve happened in JUST the US and nowhere else. It is, again, a systemic issue. The same one. Since driving is essential for most people to live their lives in the US, people who had no business driving are driving. Because of our INCREDIBLY terrible philosophy towards urban design and road constructions, we have pigeonholed ourselves into an expensive, unsafe urban landscape.
A lot of mass transit got downsized during covid, for example. That could’ve put more bad drivers on the roads – but it isn’t because they’re monsters, it’s because they have no choice.
Cars are expensive and driving really isn’t that fun outside rare circumstances that are quickly disappearing. I love cars, and I love a nice drive on a mountain road, but everything else isn’t nearly as nice as it used to be when there were fewer people driving, and less dependence on it.
Not to mention, cars are pretty boring these days. The vaguely cool ones are just remakes of old models, and even Ferrari is making SUVs.
The greatest enemy of good driving conditions is and always will be other drivers. The people who really care about being able to drive should be enthusiastically supporting getting others off the roads because congestion is inevitable.
Especially since it costs less total taxpayer money that way (the classic is Houston vs NYC vs Amsterdam, which spend something like 20%, 10%, and 4% of their municipal budgets on transportation respectively). You’re less likely to have congestion AND potholes in a city with trams and bike routes.
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That’s part of why I only go grocery shopping at like 8pm.
Also saw significant increases in road fatalities.
Because it turns out the main thing keeping many of our roads safe was… congestion. When operated at true designed speeds, the roads kill people.
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Nah, we know this isn’t the reason because in other countries that have better road design that actually takes psychology into mind for design speeds, they did not see the same uptick. Also, other countries are seeing gradual decreases in road deaths while the US continues to see increases.
You can also look at e.g., the dangerous by design reports and see very clearly WHERE the road fatalities are happening. During covid it was all over the map. Post covid, it is clearly skewing away from the blue cities.
It’s a very clear natural experiment with an obvious conclusion: the US has fundamentally unsafe road engineering. We focus on speed over safety in our designs, which in low congestion works perfectly (i.e., makes roads fast and unsafe) and in nominal conditions achieves neither.
Load up all of AASHTO into rockets and shoot them into the sun.
Removed by mod
It IS a cultural thing, but you’re placing blame on bad actors when it’s a systemic problem – a systemic problem with the culture of US road engineering. That is, US road engineers do not have a robust culture of safety. The priority is and always has been speed and “level of service” (aka throughput) in the designs over safety or cost effectiveness or even pleasantness of the urban landscapes.
I’ll never buy the idea that a wide set of diverse people across an entire continent are all just worse than the rest of people around the world. The fact that the problem is widespread is proof the issue is not bad actors.
The US does have more people who shouldn’t be driving driving though, I’ll agree with that much. But it isn’t because they’re reckless lunatics that don’t care about other road users, and I’ll never buy the covid arguments that people all went NUTS during covid and started mowing down pedestrians – because no way that would’ve happened in JUST the US and nowhere else. It is, again, a systemic issue. The same one. Since driving is essential for most people to live their lives in the US, people who had no business driving are driving. Because of our INCREDIBLY terrible philosophy towards urban design and road constructions, we have pigeonholed ourselves into an expensive, unsafe urban landscape.
A lot of mass transit got downsized during covid, for example. That could’ve put more bad drivers on the roads – but it isn’t because they’re monsters, it’s because they have no choice.