@youCanCallMeDragon@SwingingTheLamp Emotion is what causes people to be more scared of violent crime than the everyday consequences of their transportation choices when cars are much more likely to injure, kill, or sicken them. Data showing how many people are killed by motorists instead of murderers is necessary to help people overcome that emotion and make decisions based on realistic risk assessment.
@pixxelkick If children can't walk to their neighborhood grocery store safely, that's a societal problem, not an individual one. Instead of looking for a scapegoat to punish, fix the fucking neighborhood so it doesn't keep happening (to adults as well as children).
@pixxelkick There was no negligent behavior. Why have we become a culture that criminalizes every aspect of motherhood (ignoring the father's role as an equal co-parent) from having an abortion or even a miscarriage to not keeping your children on a leash for the entire 18 years they are minors (or at least 16, at which time if you can afford to buy them a car you can let them loose to kill people) and then bitches that women don't make enough babies?
@pixxelkick You haven't traveled much outside the United States of AmeriCar, have you? Building stroads through neighborhoods, making it unsafe for people of any age to walk to their nearest grocery store, is the problem. Almost all other high income countries have been steadily reducing their traffic fatalities for decades while the US does the opposite. Which system represents progress?
@fodor@pixxelkick Contrast this with the treatment of rich white parents who buy their teenage children cars and allow them to continue using them unsupervised despite evidence that they routinely speed, drive distracted, and otherwise violate traffic laws when their teenager kills someone with their weapon.
@Alaik@Aragaren It's quite possible the driver was following all the rules and using the road exactly as intended and wasn't able to stop in time because the road design and speed limit encouraged drivers of any age to travel at speeds incompatible with child pedestrian traffic despite being in a populated area surrounded by homes and stores. It's also possible they wanted to retire from driving but were thwarted by the same demonic traffic engineers and land use planners.
@pixxelkick@JSocial For most of history and in most societies today, it was and is absolutely routine for parents to let 7 and 10 year old siblings walk a few blocks together. When my mom was 7, she was responsible for walking her 5 year old brother to school and that wasn't at all unusual in their neighborhood. The problem is the number and size of cars and stroads, not a lack of helicopter parenting.
@SemiHemiDemigod@HiddenLayer555 And sadly many US residents including those employed as traffic engineers or school facilities planners and transportation officials don't see that as unusual or inappropriate.
@Notmikey@Wxfisch Yes, the average consumer is quite susceptible to marketing and follows trends in everything from clothes to food & drink to toothbrushes. Many will look around at their peers and try to "keep up with the Joneses". Rather than evidence that car companies are simply responding to consumer demand, that shows they're creating the demand that most benefits their bottom line and looser regulation on vehicles classified as light trucks is a big part of why they market what they do.
@Notmikey@Wxfisch I know unfortunately many people who own mid-sized SUVs. No one I choose to associate with has one a status symbol. They're motivated by lack of smaller options (particularly for parents who need to fit multiple car seats in a vehicle) and fear of them or their kids being injured by other drivers in comically oversized vehicles.
@Notmikey@Wxfisch Go to a Toyota or Honda dealership and you'll find that longstanding models like the Civic and Corolla are much larger and less affordable than they were at the peak of their popularity. Ford no longer makes sedans and GM makes few. All the car companies aggressively market trucks and SUVs to the exclusion of sedans and hatchbacks. That's not because consumers decided they wanted "status symbols," it's because SUVs & trucks have higher profit margins.
@SwingingTheLamp@orbituary So many of the protests taking place now (especially the Tesla ones) are on 5+ lane stroads where most of the passersby seeing the protest are in cars. It's a dangerous and inefficient way to fight fascism, but what else do people know how to do in Americar? So many suburbanites don't even know how to get into city centers for a protest unless the city has been gutted to provide endless free parking.
@orbituary@relianceschool You don't think Americans living in sprawl and spending most of their time driving around alone in ever larger SUVs and monster trucks has something to do with why so many of them turned to fascism?
@VinesNFluff@ARandomIdiot Yup, and yet the US and its consulting firms desperately try to export this failure to other countries and expect to be paid for their "expertise" in how to destroy cities.
@youCanCallMeDragon @SwingingTheLamp Emotion is what causes people to be more scared of violent crime than the everyday consequences of their transportation choices when cars are much more likely to injure, kill, or sicken them. Data showing how many people are killed by motorists instead of murderers is necessary to help people overcome that emotion and make decisions based on realistic risk assessment.