Just LOOK at the GODDAMNED ROAD!
Just LOOK at the GODDAMNED ROAD!
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If you want to play games/text/watch movies you can also carpool.
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Won't that just annoy your passengers, though?
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When I tell people that a driver should strive to see 100% of the road where their tires will go when driving, I inevitably get a lot of responses from people who say it's impossible to do. I mean, you don't have to consciously focus on it, just make sure you can see it. That's what I learned in my defensive driving class, and I've been doing it for decades. Obviously, I can't do it perfectly, so there are rare times where I hit a pothole I didn't see, but I don't think you should be driving if you don't try to do this.
I always wonder how many potholes/animals/small children these people hit with their cars.
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If it's impossible to do, that's a good reason to reject the idea of everyone driving in the first place.
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What's even worse, is that I am a person who tries to do a lot of defensive driving, and I've been doing it for decades, and I'm just constantly aware of all the little mistakes I still make. Maybe you can say it's the Dunning-Krueger effect, but I think I'm objectively not a very good driver, and I don't know what that makes all of the other people out there.
But overall, I really do agree that people shouldn't be driving if they can avoid it. (I can't avoid it at the moment.)
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Obviously, I can't do it perfectly, so there are rare times where I hit a pothole I didn't see, but I don't think you should be driving if you don't try to do this.
I agree. Even looking the road all the time you can't see everything at the same time: there are the mirrors, there is stuff far away, there is stuff close. I really can't drive if I don't pay attention the the roaf
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As someone with big wheels and thin tires on a low car I’m hyper vigilant about these sorts of things.
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This meme implies this is only an issue of personal responsibility ; but in truth to actually lower car deaths we need a systemic approach.
Think of cigarette companies laying blame at "addictive personalities". They knew making people personally responsible would not threaten their business, whereas public policies against tobacco did.
This post is doing the same thing : when an accident happens we should not just ask "who is to blame?" but also "how do we prevent it in the future?", which in this case means redesigning streets to be friendlier to pedestrians and developing other modes of transportation.
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Design infrastructure to be actively hostile to cars. It's the best way to be pro environment, pro bike, pro a better future
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This meme is a parody of PSAs aimed at telling people walking and cycling how to avoid getting hit. Y'know, the personal responsibilty + victim-blaming approach.
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Thinking about that cab driver who was so pissed when I asked him to please not watch a movie while driving. dude had a tablet attached to the window in front of him
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Taking the train/subway/tram/bus is just like having your own personal chauffeur.
I hate driving myself anywhere like a "peasant". All the rich folks outsource mundane tasks like driving or cutting ones lawn, that how they stay rich!
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I remember in my childhood reading a joke that went something like: One person says to another: "You know, I've recently started to regularly travel in a large vehicle with its own chauffeur." – "Really? Wow!" – "Yes! Oh, look, my bus is coming!"
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Honestly, automatic transmissions becoming the standard was a determent to driving safety.
I read driving is boring, it's not when you have a stick shift to pay attention to.
It's also harder to speed with a manual transmission I think. Maybe not on a highway, but on roads with lower speed limits, you can really feel/hear the engine when you're going to fast in a lower gear. Sometimes too lazy to shift into fourth gear, when I know Ill have to downshift again anyway for a turn or corner. So I just won't speed and stay in in third gear.
With automatics you can access so many more distractions.
This is just a thought
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You don't shift up because you're lazy.
I don't shift up because my shit box actually starts making power around 3k rpms
We are not the same
Super agreed that automatic transmission makes drivers less aware and should not be what people learn to drive with.
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Haha well said
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I'm a school bus driver. I actually had the dispatcher last year tell me that it was legal to drive 5 miles an hour over the posted speed limit. I was like "so the posted speed limit isn't the posted speed limit?" It's amazing the crazy shit that gets into the heads of people that should know better -- which is fucking everybody.
It should come as no surprise that some of my fellow drivers text, doom-scroll Facebork, and watch movies while driving the buses. I've never seen someone doing it with actual kids on the bus, but I think that's only because they know the kids might rat them out for it.
A few of them vape on the buses, too.
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Speed cameras typically are set to 10%+3mph to account for variations in speedometers/tyre pressure etc. At least in the UK.
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Sure. It's reasonable to say "you will probably not be ticketed for going 5 mph over the speed limit", but that is not the same as saying "it is legal to drive 5 mph over the speed limit". Hell, where I live you probably have to go 40 mph over the speed limit before the cop is even going to wake up.
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i'd imagine many countries still have the "you can't drive faster than is safe" rule anyways, i know we have it in sweden.
Like no you can't drive 80km/h through 1m visibility fog, if you can't see shit you drive at walking speed and appreciate the fact that you have a comfortable vehicle to sit inside instead of having to actually walk.
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it's mind blowing how we are expected to all regularly use a giant dangerous machine like that.
imagine cooking, but the oven can explode at any moment and you have to pay 100% attention all the time while baking, because at any moment, if it were to explode and kill you and everyone in the room, you only have 0.2 seconds to react and not die.
such oven would never exist, but a car?
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Not sure that's the best analogy, because that does also happen. Explosions from cooking oil fires are more common than you might think, and most people are woefully unprepared for that, too.
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most americans still have gas in their kitchens, it's fucking insane
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The speed limit is the maximum, but it is also the minimum if you're the kind of person the police are looking for an excuse to pull over.
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Maybe eliminating cars would prevent cops from being able to fabricate traffic incidents to make ticket and arrest quotas?
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In places where people follow speed limits more than half of the cars are going 5km/h (3mph) below the limit because their speedometer lies and they don't know. I doubt those people increase their chance of being stopped by police
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Does this actually hold up in court? The whole case could be thrown away if there was never a reasonable reason for the traffic stop in the first place.
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No, but we have such a Byzantine legal code that they can often concoct some plausible sounding legal justification anyway.
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Depends what the law is where you are, I imagine. I would imagine what constitutes a reasonable suspicion of driving without due care and attention is down to officer discretion. If they wrote you up for only that (assuming the officer does not decide to start suspecting other things, now that they've got you there) and you decide to take your chances challenging it in court you'd have a pretty good chance of winning, but of course they make the punishment for taking it to court and losing excessively harsh in comparison to the ticket in order to discourage you from doing that.
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I just want to credit the author(s) who happen to be in the fediverse, too: @howdoyouguide@mastodon.social
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The fedi-memes are becoming self sustaining!
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Best comment in the thread. I saw it on Bluesky and didn’t know I could give credit within fedi. Thanks for linking!
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Sure! You are welcome! I visited the site and I was amused there was a mastodon icon at the bottom ❤️
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Oh my god if I could take a train to work I would be soooooo happy.
1: trains
B- I could leave slightly later and be relaxed most of the time
III• if there's dense fog like today or severe weather, I don't have to stress out for 30 minutes going 20 in a 55 because I can't see 150ft ahead of me.
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I had a 55-minute commute by train for a few years and it was absolutely wonderful. It was two hours a day of time to read, or if I was still tired I would just nap the whole way. TBF it really helped that my station was 5 minutes from my house and the train let me off literally in the basement of the building I worked in.
Then I changed jobs and had a 45-minute commute by car, and that shit was just nightmare fuel.
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I did my all my PMP hours and studying during my 40 minute subway commute.
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if we all woke up from our collective nightmare and started building dense housing around railway stations, living 5 minutes from your station could be reality for 80% of the population
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Driving is fucking boring. Let one person do it, take the bus or train
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Totally agree. Time you're driving is wasted time. If you're on a bus, you can set an alarm for a few minutes before your stop and just totally zone out or do whatever.
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public transport apps really need to have a standard functionality to trigger an alarm when the vehicle approaches your destination
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If aggressively bad drivers could read they'd be quite upset about this.
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This post rubs me the wrong way because it shifts blame for a systemic issue onto individual drivers. There are a lot of drivers that should not be on the road but they are forced onto the road by a lack of viable alternatives. The resulting consequences should be blamed on those planning decisions, not on the individuals.
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I mean if you really want to get down to it, people have the transportation options they vote for in most cases. I live in an area where people are pretty enthusiastic about transit and cycling and even here people feel like they have a god give right to do 10mph over the speed limit.
We recently had a big push to install speed cameras outside schools, which would only be active for two hours pers day, and the council meeting was still absolutely filled with assholes trying to argue that literally just enforcing the speed limit during the start and end of the schoolday was a violation of their rights.
The older I get the more I realize that people are always at least part of the problem. Especially in a democracy, since democracy is something you do, not something which is done to you.
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I can't meet whatever threshold of proof, but there's no way "Driving any slower than the speed limit is just as dangerous" ISN'T what the raging lunatics on the road tell themselves when weaving thru traffic before they comment the same thing on posts like these.
It's such a common brain blind spot. Videos of lunatics flipping their own cars trying to pass someone will have comments blaming the other car.
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Of course people are the problem. But the problem is the people arguing and voting for more car infrastructure, which is a different set of people than drivers. A lot of people drive while being supportive of other modes of transportation, because they have to use the infrastructure that already exists.
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Idk man the community is called “fuck cars,” not “transitioning from a car-based culture to a transit-oriented culture is difficult for which I bear no personal responsibility” so it may just be the case that this isn’t the forum for you 🤷♂️
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The problem is car-centric infrastructure, which the description of this community agrees with. Each person's responsibility to fix the problem is their slice of making policy decisions that change the infrastructure. You can't fix the problem just by getting mad at people who use the existing infrastructure.
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The name of the comm uses aggressive language, which sets up readers for conflict right away. Not ideal, and also a reason that the attitudes in here are so hostile, whether from folks who want things different or folks who rely on or even like cars.
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I always wonder how much nicer transit is in other cities. One of the last times I took the train here there was still blood smeared across the wall from a stabbing that had happened a couple weeks earlier (it was one of many that year). Every time I drive by the train stations there's people smoking meth in the open, or someone screaming at people.
As much as I'd like to take transit, there's not a whole lot I can do to make it safer. I vote for the parties that might make things better but get outvoted every time here. So how exactly does one "take personal responsibility" in an area where public transit is a safety hazard?
The drivers in this area are all selfish fucks that actively endanger everyone around them... bonus points 60% of them drive a great big emotional support truck. So it really is a choice between the idiots on the road or the methheads on the street, pick your favourite flavour of hazard.
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But you don't understand, they have to speed up to tickle their adrenaline just so the commute isn't boring, and texting to maximise their time.
(real argument, i'm not even kidding.)
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I ride a motorcycle. Whenever I see someone driving like they're drunk, I try to see if I can pull beside them and have a look. Lo and behold, 95% of the time, they're on their phone.
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I hope you've got a helmet camera and send the police the footage with plates and driver holding their phone clearly visible.
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They have to edit out all the illegal lane splitting and speeding first.
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The WHOLE time? Can I not blink!!!
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Not allowed. Glue your eyes open and install an eyedrop dispenser to keep them moist.
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I’m sorry but blinking is for public transit users only.
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But they don’t blink either. They watch their phones the whole time.
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One eye at a time. Feels weird at first but you'll get the hang of it eventually. Now go practice.
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I did it for 10 seconds and felt like I really needed to blink. Now my eyes are watering.
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Dont review the PR while driving
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I think distracted driving is way more dangerous than fast driving, assuming the person going 10mph over is paying attention. That said, people are terribly bad at understanding where and why you should be proceeding slowly.
Freeway? Yeah fine whatever. Blind intersection? Fucking slow down.
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Dont know about other states but in california since covid speed of traffic went from 3-5 over the limit to 10% over the limit, rounded up for speeds over 50. 72 in a 65, 49 in a 45. Something new and infuriating is the number of people who think taking their foot off the brake is enough acceleration to get through an intersection, and the people who think 35 is an acceptable speed to merge onto the freeway.
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We know it’s boring. That’s the game.
Don’t like it?
Perhaps you hate the game.
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I often drive slower than the limit. I set my Sirius XM to classical or new age and don't fucking touch it.
I'm in a hybrid, and I use the pulse and glide technique to maximize fuel economy.
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I’m pretty sure computers do a better job of managing the clutch and the regenerative brakes and stuff, but we need to give more things to drivers to do to help keep them focused and engaged if we’re going to continue to allow them to operate automobiles.
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The road doesn’t have TikTok playing though
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Not with that attitude!
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Just as with q tips: I surely am the exception.
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Not too much slower though. In my state ten over and ten under is covered by the same rule. Its reckless driving.
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I think you might be surprised by how many drivers could reduce their average speed by 20 mph without running afoul of minimum speed limits.
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Why would you say that? I drive forty five minutes to work and back every day. The majority of my route is two lane highway. I'm usually plus or minus five around the speed limit the whole way. I see the same thing everyday. I see regulators who like slowing down when oncoming traffic prevents passing and speeding up to ten over when you can. I also see the mad dashers who wont leave on time passing dangerously in packs as they race to work. For the past year I try to leave fifteen minutes earlier than I used to. This time difference allows me to skip most of the dashers. If I leave any earlier I just get another shifts dashers. Nothing can be done about the regulators. They do it for some pathetic power trip. They are going to do it no matter where and no matter when they leave for work.
There is nothing surprising to me about your statement.
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People driving 5km/h below the limit in peak hour lad other drivers to drive badly. 30km/h below would induce road rage
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when I used to commute, before the pandemic, I read so many books and finished so many games during those two hours a day of transit on the train. Doing that by car would have been so much worse.
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You see it's actually safer if I speed because then I'm less likely to get bored and start watching a movie instead of the road 🤣
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The problem is that most of that people that need to be hit are in the cars, and there are just too many of them. Too many.
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God gave us speed limits for a reason, not driving that fast is disrespectful to him
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See i know you don’t know shit about drivers when you made this
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I really don’t, honestly. I’ve actually never operated a motor vehicle, or even been in a car while someone else was driving. Honestly, the ability to choose the robust public transit option available in the United States has really made me completely oblivious to how driving works at all in the real world. I’m so lucky to have you here to so calmly and rationally explain it to me.
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lol go on educate us then.
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When I was learning to drive the thing that took me by surprise the most is how fast the situation can change. You can take your eyes off the road for a second to check your mirror(s), your speed, etc and just in that tiny bit of time the entire situation on the road ahead of you can change dramatically.
Using a phone while driving is negligence of the highest level. It is so incredibly goddamn dangerous that I would possibly argue it should fall under attempted murder instead.