PedestrianError :vbus: :nblvt:

@mojofrododojo @Lettuceeatlettuce I saw something really wild today. This dude had a Dodge Ram that was lifted… but the tires were small, probably smaller than the recommended size tire for the truck. He was vrooming through a downtown area rolling coal at people dining outside bars & restaurants. So cool. 🙄

@FLX @olutukko Yes. They’re afraid of damaging their cars on them because they insist on driving so fast they sometimes just randomly fly off the road.

@antlion If you’re taking criticism of your vehicle personally, there’s probably a reason you feel the need to be defensive about it. We all have room for personal improvement, but we won’t solve the problem at the personal level. We have to change the incentives to industry that are creating such unsustainable levels of consumption across the board. In the meantime anyone considering an SUV or multiple cars or a big house should think critically about it. @SpiceDealer

@lgsp @mondoman712 I remember my preschool having a big stack of cardboard bricks to build with. Maybe they still have those in toy stores?

@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.

@Moneo @frankPodmore Avoid generalizations and stereotypes if you want to meaningfully analyze an issue. Women score higher than men on risk aversion *on average*. There’s no evidence of enough biological or socialized difference in risk taking to explain the entire difference in bicycling. Various other factors are in play, including childcare burden, street harassment, access to leisure time, social support for cycling by parents & peers, and gendered dress codes/norms at work & school.

@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.

@tetris11 One of the many reasons our transit systems suffer from disinvestment while our roads suffer from overinvestment is that transportation planning decision makers are disproportionately white, male, and abled and all of them make enough money that driving is at least an option for them if not a job requirement.

@tetris11 @DrBob Women make up the majority of US public transit users whether or not they feel less safe using it than men do so maybe instead of trying to get rid of transit the society should try to be less misogynistic?

@ASegar @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars The vast majority of Americans live in either a city, a small town where many of those things are accessible (both towns in Maine I used to live in had at least 10 of the things in walking distance), or sprawling suburbs where they’re surrounded by roads, parking & other people’s houses and not living off the land at all. Rural lifestyles can work (but depend on town centers where one trip can accomplish numerous errands), suburban ones aren’t sustainable or fun.

@ItsAFake @davel Funny how the failure of capitalism is causing people to “choose” not to follow the overconsumptive lifestyle patterns the capitalists insist we must aspire to. A failed system will fall apart one way or another, even if it has convinced most people not to want it to fail.

@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.

@Rodeo @BedSharkPal Crossing away from an intersection is only illegal (or in anti-pedestrian slang, “jaywalking”) if it’s between two adjacent signalized intersections. Crossing against a “don’t walk” signal could also be considered “jaywalking”… but police reports are notoriously inaccurate and windshield biased anyway so take everything with a grain of salt. Most dangerous crossings happen due to bad traffic engineering, regardless of legality.

@diskmaster23 There should be one, but there is not. Cars (or more accurately, their human makers and promoters) have been waging war on nature, communities, and people for over a century with very few of the victims developing the courage or the will to fight back in any meaningful way.