Enemy of car culture and cisheteropatriarchy
Profile & banner image: bad so-called pedestrian safety campaigns. Profile pic is a poster saying “WALK SAFE most pedestrian crashes are the pedestrian’s fault” & banner is a cartoon crab on a lifeguard stand holding flags that say “save yourself” and “use crosswalks”.
@PapaStevesy IMO active voice includes focusing the sentence on the subject that did the action, not the one that was acted upon but by all means let’s argue about grammatical definitions instead of the problem of motorists killing people and journalists normalizing it. 🙄
@apfelwoiSchoppen But functionally, the victim didn’t die on her own, she died as the direct result of the driver hitting her. For the purpose of accurately portraying who took an action and who was acted upon, it should emphasize the driving, not the dying.
@apfelwoiSchoppen @ByteOnBikes Active voice would be, “A driver killed…”
@FireRetardant @Zoot In fact, narrowing roads and reducing speeding makes it easier for seniors to keep driving as their vision and reaction time decline. Older drivers tend not to feel very comfortable driving on 5 or 6 lane wide stroads.
@FatLegTed @DrCake When I went to driver’s ed, the instructors repeatedly reminded us that we had to be prepared to stop at any time because the driver in front of us could brake for a squirrel or encounter debris in the road or stop for any reason. Most drivers don’t seem to understand the basic physics that stopping distance increases with speed. A key feature of driver assistance systems should be speed-based tailgating prevention.
@DrunkEngineer It’s a terrible example to the public and a potential conflict of interest. How is someone who’s used to getting away with driving like that (& having wide roads that allow him to) supposed to cast unbiased votes on transportation bills?
@DrunkEngineer 34 & “at least” 24 mph over the limit are some pretty serious speeding tickets, and the frequent reports of distracted driving are a serious problem too. Senators who support Vision Zero programs or care about traffic safety at all need to speak up about this and hold him and other negligently driving colleagues accountable. Especially after his stroke & related health problems, he should be extra careful, not distracted & 34 mph over the limit!
@norimee @Gradually_Adjusting Another problem of the politics of austerity and obsession with low taxes at any cost. We’ve defunded water infrastructure almost as much as we’ve defunded public transit. There’s no excuse for a wealthy society to create an environment where many of its residents don’t feel safe drinking tap water and access to any tap water in major cities is periodically cut off by 100 year old pipes predictably breaking.
@frankPodmore @vividspecter Since middle aged, middle to upper class white men are also most likely to drive monster trucks for everyday transportation & recreation, we could also argue that for the safety and comfort of all we should do everything possible to get that group onto bikes instead of trucks.
@TangledHyphae @Nudding US voters have been very effectively conditioned to accept the two party system and to place outsized importance on the president and largely ignore the legislative and judicial branches of government. If you’re not happy, your only answer is to vote for the major party not occupying the White House, even if that party currently controls congress and offers even worse policies. Critical thinking is systematically squashed.
@regul @fireweed That’s how US government works. Democrats propose to do something moderate that would help a little bit but they already compromised on important details before they started, Republicans throw a tantrum, Democrats capitulate, billions more dollars get poured down the toilet (or into highways) with very few dollars going to something useful but the net effect being overwhelmingly bad.
@LibertyLizard @Zagorath Probably, and the public servants who leaked it are owed a debt of gratitude.
@lntl Politicians including those who claim to trust the science on climate change will still be shoveling money to the highway building contractors when the highways are catching fire and melting as soon as they’re built.
@Iamdanno @7of9 Your rights end where someone else’s begin. If your house, yard, or car are so big that they interfere with your community’s ability to provide adequate housing and safe transport for everyone, you are infringing on other people’s rights and imposing excessive costs on society as a whole.
@Snapz @SamVergeudetZeit I wish I’d never seen one in the wild, but in fact I’ve gotten coal rolled by more than one. Of course extreme custom trucks are the tip of the iceberg. Most of the damage is done by the ever-growing fleet of off-the-rack monster trucks for ordinary suburban personal use.
Shaming about genitals or any other body part (including the brain/assertions that it’s “mental illness”) isn’t helpful. Buying/driving monster trucks is bad behavior that people should be ashamed of.
@beefbot @TheTechnician27 Firetrucks are inanimate objects. Humans make decisions about how to design, deploy, market, and accommodate them. A local fire chief just parroting industry dogma may be less responsible than someone with more power who chose not to sell reasonably sized fire trucks for suburbs and small towns in the US, but the trucks aren’t buying themselves or testifying against safe street designs at the planning board.