this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
203 points (93.2% liked)

Fuck Cars

9882 readers
5 users here now

This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.

This community exists for the following reasons:

You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.

Rules

  1. Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.

  2. No bigotry or hate. Racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, chauvinism, fat-shaming, body-shaming, stigmatization of people experiencing homeless or substance users, etc. are not tolerated. Don't use slurs. You can laugh at someone's fragile masculinity without associating it with their body. The correlation between car-culture and body weight is not an excuse for fat-shaming.

  3. Stay on-topic. Submissions should be on-topic to the externalities of car culture in urban development and communities globally. Posting about alternatives to cars and car culture is fine. Don't post literal car fucking.

  4. No traffic violence. Do not post depictions of traffic violence. NSFW or NSFL posts are not allowed. Gawking at crashes is not allowed. Be respectful to people who are a victim of traffic violence or otherwise traumatized by it. News articles about crashes and statistics about traffic violence are allowed. Glorifying traffic violence will get you banned.

  5. No reposts. Before sharing, check if your post isn't a repost. Reposts that add something new are fine. Reposts that are sharing content from somewhere else are fine too.

  6. No misinformation. Masks and vaccines save lives during a pandemic, climate change is real and anthropogenic - and denial of these and other established facts will get you banned. False or highly speculative titles will get your post deleted.

  7. No harassment. Posts that (may) cause harassment, dogpiling or brigading, intentionally or not, will be removed. Please do not post screenshots containing uncensored usernames. Actual harassment, dogpiling or brigading is a bannable offence.

Please report posts and comments that violate our rules.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (5 children)

In the US speed limits are set by 85% of traffic speed on a road. So if the road was set for 30mph, and then you changed it to 20MPH with no other changes, you will immediately get 85% of drivers breaking the "limit."

Another way to say it is that UK's department for transport has incompetently designed 85% of their 20mph roads.

[–] smeeps@feddit.uk 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

UK highways departments have had essentially zero budget for 2+ decades now. There's no funding to completely retrofit every single residential street to match the new signage. Most of them are already incredibly narrow and tight compared to your average North American street.

[–] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Hmm, sounds like the infrastructure for personal vehicles is pretty unsustainable, perhaps we should start closing off streets so that traffic will naturally be limited to locals only thus solving the problem from the demand side.

[–] Hyperreality@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Another way to say it, is that they haven't installed enough average speed cameras.

If you install a few of those, suddenly drivers do manage to keep to the speed limit.

The US system is stupid. Most drivers drive too fast and overestimate their driving capabilities.

[–] regul@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago

Designing a street so that people naturally drive a given speed is a pretty well-solved problem and you don't have to expand the surveillance state to do it. Also it usually makes the road more pleasant for everyone!

[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] smeeps@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago

Speed cameras aren't surveillance.

[–] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Cool create perverse incentives that do nothing to physically stop a car from barreling down a residential street, but also generate tax revenue so now the government is further discouraged from fixing the problem of a car barreling down a residential street, lest they lose revenue. Good job!

[–] 7bicycles@hexbear.net 3 points 1 year ago

I think it's important to note that the US approach to speed limits is absolute fucking garbage and maybe one should be able to expect people piloting a vehicle to actually read and follow speed limits

[–] BritBloke@mastodon.social 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@PowerCrazy @mondoman712
The 85% rule is insane. Basically, it means that speed limits are set by the most dangerous drivers.
The streets in my town were set out over 120 years ago. But as usual, cars have usurped the rights of prior users to the point where KSIs or peds and cyclists run at 4x the UK rate, and I don't even live in Florida. I mean, jaywalking laws were brought in to ease drivers' consciences about the number of pedestrians they were killing.

[–] BritBloke@mastodon.social 2 points 1 year ago

@PowerCrazy @mondoman712
Don't start me on public transit... 120 years ago my town had a fully-fledged tramway system which connected to other local systems spread over hundreds of miles centred on our local railway station.
The tracks were ripped up to provide space for parking...
Uh-oh! I got started!!!

[–] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Oh for sure. Road design is a disaster for anything other then highspeed thorough-fares, which would be better off as trains. It sucks.